Earlier quoted context omitted.
Musk's money came from creating a business that was worth a lot of money. I.e. he created his wealth. It was not transferred to him. The same goes for Bezos, Jobs, Gates, etc.
He ended up with all of the profits, but he didn't put in all of the work. A lot of people worked very hard for that wealth, either for salary or a minuscule fraction of the profits. He gets to keep the lion's share of the profits because he was the one who took the risk with his capital. And bully for him; well done that man. But we treat him as if he had all of the ideas and wrote all of the code, and that's simply…
Obviously not. The investors got their share, and employees got their stock options.
> But we treat him as if he had all of the ideas and wrote all of the code, and that's simply not true.
What were the names of the crew of Captain Cook's ship? Who was under the command of General Sherman? Who won the battle of Yorktown? Who created Standard Oil? We give credit to the head of something, not to the people under his command.
> If it weren't them it would have been someone else.
Nobody knows that.
> And even that much is more luck than skill.
If I hit a home run once, I would attribute it to luck. If I hit a home run 3 times, then I have skillz.
Gates maneuvered 3 dramatic changes in Microsoft, where other companies failed at the transition. Jobs made 3 fortunes. Musk has made several diverse fortunes.
At some point, you're going to have to give these people credit.
Musk has created a million times more wealth than others. If his life story was a novel, I would have put it down as absurd.