I agree that people tend to overstate his income due to misunderstanding his relationship with his father. And the story about him keeping emeralds in his pockets is murky at best.
But his wealth compared to the average income of any black person in South Africa in 1971, still makes him vastly better off than any ‘colored’ child born in the same country, making him institutionally old money by grace of being born white.
Certainly he was above average. But that’s not “born into wealth.” $28,000 is the price of a modest new car. There are huge numbers of people who are able to get seed money like that from friends and relatives to start a business, but clearly Elon did something more than those people to grow that to the $400 billion his current net wealth stands at.
The problem is that Musk has become such an intensely politically and culturally polarizing figure that saying even the remotely “positive” thing about him - such as “he’s actually a pretty good self-made businessman” - gets interpreted as “boy howdy do I ever love Trump and misogyny!”
When 90% of your countrymen are born into a world where they cannot legally hold the same jobs as you. You are born into extreme privilege.
After reading the book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors
by Edward Niedermeyer I came away with the feeling he really wasn’t a pretty good self-made businessman.
I agree that people tend to overstate his income due to misunderstanding his relationship with his father. And the story about him keeping emeralds in his pockets is murky at best.
But his wealth compared to the average income of any black person in South Africa in 1971, still makes him vastly better off than any ‘colored’ child born in the same country, making him institutionally old money by grace of being born white.
Certainly he was above average. But that’s not “born into wealth.” $28,000 is the price of a modest new car. There are huge numbers of people who are able to get seed money like that from friends and relatives to start a business, but clearly Elon did something more than those people to grow that to the $400 billion his current net wealth stands at.
The problem is that Musk has become such an intensely politically and culturally polarizing figure that saying even the remotely “positive” thing about him - such as “he’s actually a pretty good self-made businessman” - gets interpreted as “boy howdy do I ever love Trump and misogyny!”
When 90% of your countrymen are born into a world where they cannot legally hold the same jobs as you. You are born into extreme privilege.
After reading the book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors by Edward Niedermeyer I came away with the feeling he really wasn’t a pretty good self-made businessman.