Sure. I’m not disputing these are brilliant people. But there are a lot of brilliant people. Just most of them don’t end up being one of the wealthiest people who have ever existed and that’s almost entirely down to luck. Elon Musk like Steve Jobs like even FLW was/were lucky fucks in the great lottery of life and that had a disproportionate finger on the scales than there brilliance.
Apple stock is up 12x since dumb asshole died versus 6x for NASDAQ. Grunts doing the real work are doing just fine under Tim Apple.
There’s a difference between running a company and building one from scratch.
Sure - he’s incredibly lucky, no doubt. You have to be brilliant and lucky obviously. But I seriously doubt the guy is just Mr. Magoo wandering into 3 successful companies.
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Commentary: 12% of corporate leaders are psychopaths
Too low by a factor of about 8.
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Yes, right place, right time and psychopathy. Bill Gates is another example, not his vision that made him wildly rich and famous.
Gates stealing other people’s code and legally maneuvering to lock in patents on them ~= Musk hoarding government subsidies for electric cars and privatization of space exploration then becoming a far right wing ideologue and flouting market manipulation laws to lock in and enhance gains.
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It’s not just that it was a business idea that didn’t pan out, Hyperloop was a complete clownshow from start to finish.
By most metrics trump is a fantastically successful person. In fact one of the most fantastically successful people that’s ever existed. But he is a fucking moron. You don’t have to be brilliant but you do need to be lucky. Whether that’s an accident or birth or making a good decision at the right time.
All I’m saying is Musk doesn’t particularly strike me as some super genius leading brilliant people to ever greater discoveries more of someone willing to take risks on oddball things which have at least early on proved to be wise choices. Shrug, maybe he is the genius who will solve the worlds problems or maybe in 30 years time he’ll still be talking about the shit he does now which is nowhere near completion or even for the most part nothing more than just some sci-fi pipe dream he has.
Couldn’t you say he was smart then for not putting any money into it and just giving the idea away?
If you go into competition with thousands of people, many of them quite driven and intelligent, to come out on top you have to be really smart, like Jamie Gold.
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If Jamie Gold won the WSOP three times, he’d definitely be onto something.
It’s ok to not like someone but still admit they’re good at something.
OJ Simpson was a hell of a running back.
I don’t think anyone is refusing to admit Musk is a hell of a self-promoter.
It was already a long series of luck. He didn’t win one lottery drawing. Makes him look smart. But, if there’s luck involved and a lot of people trying, the winner of even three competitions is likely to at least mostly have luck to thank for it.
I don’t hate Elon.
I’m getting close to hating him. He has a ton of influence, and he’s spewing nonsense about the left being out of control.
One of the interesting things about Musk’s career isn’t really luck, it’s the insane amount of risk he took at various points. After PayPal was sold, he had north of $100 million in cash, and he puts basically all of it in Tesla and SpaceX. It’s crazy.
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That’s not really saying it’s not luck though. I don’t know how smart he is (he’s probably real smart) or how much of a head start he had (moderate to a lot I think), or how big a risk taker he is (probably big) but regardless, I would say with a pretty high degree of confidence that the most x-sigma thing about THE richest person out of all 7 billion people on Earth (aside from net worth) is luck.
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I’m not a fan of the Great Man Theory. I think it’s quite harmful.
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