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Why is there only one Elon Musk?

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Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#81

Post by jessriedel »

JDGM wrote: post #63
jessriedel wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on how Katja's idea in the OB post might be used here? To me, it seems like it supports the OP (quite nicely, actually). In particular, Elon Musk shows that Tony-Stark-ness (as you've correctly defined it) is pretty darn visible. If there were more Tony Stark's out there, I'm now more likely to expect expect that I would have heard about them in the same way I've heard about Musk. This increases m…

"Could you elaborate on how Katja's idea in the OB post might be used here?" Exactly in the way you describe. I was indeed using it to support the OP and not myself: "I'm not sure which of us is right, quite possibly the author and not me - LINK".

Ahh, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.

Do you really think there are a bunch of Elon Musk's out there who, say, just aren't doing as much self-promotion?

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#82

Post by DanBC »

We're only just at the point where doing crazy-fun science fiction stuff is possible.

One reason is that people in the past just didn't have that kind of money. The very wealthy today are a lot richer than the very wealthy of the past century.

Another reason is legalistic and infrastructure and technical stuff. There are laws governing every aspect of this stuff, and to get involved takes considerable planning and etc.

Finally, the tech just wasn't available in the past. It's much easier to build a few schools and pay for opera than it is to set up a rocket company.

I guess it's interesting to know what those billionaires are doing with their money. Maybe it's not liquid? Maybe they're happily oppressing a nation. Maybe they're building shape-shifting buildings.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#84

Post by loganfrederick »

unreal37 wrote: post #34
edw519 wrote: post #30

This post reminds me of that old joke: Husband: I am the head of the household! I determine our family's position on all of the major economic, political, and social issues of the day! Wife: I decide the little things, like where we'll live, what we'll eat, and where the kids go to school. As much as I admire the dreams and accomplishments of Elon Musk, I have trouble getting past the idea that he failed to maintain…

Having not been able to maintain my own marriage, I think its more complicated than that. But the quality Musk has that almost no one in his position has is the willingness to risk it all for the dream. Musk himself almost went broke on SpaceX and Tesla. Most billionaires are into preservation of capital in a big way.

"Most billionaires are into preservation of capital in a big way."

Depending on how you define "are into", this could be argued as empirically wrong. A study done by the editor of the updated edition of Graham's "The Intelligent Investor" shows that the Forbes 400 (400 Richest Americans) only had 68 members who stayed on the list from some time in the 1980 to the early 2000s. The author calculated the return required to stay on the list and it was approximately 4.8% annually, which is very reasonable with their level of resources.

Due to these results (only 68 out of 400 richest people staying in that position), you could say that billionaires are NOT into preservation of capital, when making 4% annually is not even accomplished.

The hypothesized reason for these results is that most billionaire's fortunes are tied to one or two major companies/investments. Fluctuations in business over time eventually devalue their investment in the single entity. If they really cared about "preservation of capital", they would liquidate more of their stakes when one company made them rich then diversify their holdings.

Apologies for the vague dates. I am at work and do not have the book handy, but just read that passage 48 hours ago. If someone replies that they want more specific numbers and references, I can update this post in 10 hours.

Reference: http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Book-Practical-Co...

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#85

Post by gazrogers »

Egregore wrote: post #62
edw519 wrote: post #30

This post reminds me of that old joke: Husband: I am the head of the household! I determine our family's position on all of the major economic, political, and social issues of the day! Wife: I decide the little things, like where we'll live, what we'll eat, and where the kids go to school. As much as I admire the dreams and accomplishments of Elon Musk, I have trouble getting past the idea that he failed to maintain…

What's more importing preserving a marriage or flying to Mars?

If you're their kids, I'm pretty sure the marriage comes out on top.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#86

Post by dbrian »

rayiner wrote: post #68
CodeCube wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff Bezos: http://www.blueorigin.com/ In addition to glass, the google guys get credit for http://www.planetaryresources.com/ and the driverless cars ;)

What did the Google guys do for Glass or driverless cars other than bankroll them?

Isn't that kind of the point?

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#87

Post by rayiner »

jessriedel wrote: post #67
aashaykumar92 wrote: post #38

After reading, I'd say your base question/thesis is: "Why on Earth aren’t there more billionaires doing really cool sci-fi sh!#?". You go on to give plenty of examples (FYI--some of these are already being done such as self-driving cars and flexible displays) but all of them, to truly build, would require a solid understanding of mathematics/physics/some type of engineering right? Not every billionaire has that knowl…

Another way to say this is that the process of becoming a billionaire selects for intelligence, but it actually seems to select strongly against a great technical training and nerdy dreams. (Maybe I'm wrong about that?) Would be really interesting to know how many billionaires have STEM PhD's after controlling for their general intelligence.

A disproportionate share of billionaires are engineers.

Of course part of that is because the petro-chemical industry mints a lot of billionaires. E.g. Charles and David Koch both have bachelors and masters degrees (mechanical and chemical engineering) from MIT.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#88

Post by rgbrenner »

jessriedel wrote: post #72
rgbrenner wrote: post #58

You really have to have a terrible case of tunnel vision to write this post. One Elon Musk? Sure, I only see one guy named Elon Musk on the list of billionaires. What is the requirement here? A space company? There are several of those.. Jeff Bezos (worth 23b) has Blue Orgin. He says "cool sci-fi shit"... What about self-driving cars? Those aren't sci-fi enough for you? How is Tesla's battery powered car MORE sci-fi-…

> A space company? There are several of those.. Jeff Bezos (worth 23b) has Blue Orgin I think most people would agree that Bezos is a runner up, but how many is several? I can think of him and Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic). And neither of them seems to have made it their mission in life rather than just a billionaire's hobby.

  SpaceX
  Blue Orgin
  Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic
  Armadillo Aerospace
  Bigelow Aerospace
  Stratolaunch Systems
I think that counts as "several"

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#89

Post by lazyjones »

rgbrenner wrote: post #58

You really have to have a terrible case of tunnel vision to write this post. One Elon Musk? Sure, I only see one guy named Elon Musk on the list of billionaires. What is the requirement here? A space company? There are several of those.. Jeff Bezos (worth 23b) has Blue Orgin. He says "cool sci-fi shit"... What about self-driving cars? Those aren't sci-fi enough for you? How is Tesla's battery powered car MORE sci-fi-…

I would definitely add Bezos to this list. However, Musk is very good at getting one thing going and turning to the next, while people like Bezos, Gates, Jobs have a narrower vision and pursue it without straying aside (actually jobs did with Pixar). Or perhaps it only looks that way because IT is such a broad field (and the iphone is as close to apple tv as tesla cars are to spacex rockets?).

OTOH, do you really need to be a billionaire to do "cool sci-fi shit"? Arguably, Musk didn't get rich with amazingly cool stuff, he just got a bit luckier than most people with the valuation of Zip2 and early PayPal.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#90

Post by resu_nimda »

rgbrenner wrote: post #58

You really have to have a terrible case of tunnel vision to write this post. One Elon Musk? Sure, I only see one guy named Elon Musk on the list of billionaires. What is the requirement here? A space company? There are several of those.. Jeff Bezos (worth 23b) has Blue Orgin. He says "cool sci-fi shit"... What about self-driving cars? Those aren't sci-fi enough for you? How is Tesla's battery powered car MORE sci-fi-…

So I guess you didn't read the full article before blasting off...he specifically pointed out self-driving cars, as well as numerous other non-Musk sci-fi initiatives.

His point is less about a dearth of cool sci-fi shit than a lack of extremely wealthy individuals wielding their fortunes to aggressively push these things.

Edit: And not just "a space company." A space company, an electric car company, a renewable energy company, and the crazy passion to make these things work. What results has BlueOrigin produced? SpaceX is actually Getting Shit Done.

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