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Originally Posted by Rainmaker
SpaceX and Tesla existed before he got there. Both companies rely on handouts from the government to make money and stay in business. They could not survive in a true free market.
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Tesla did. SpaceX did not. Regardless, I really don't get the point you are making here. Unless you think every single piece of equipment the government uses they should build themselves - every pencil, every eraser, every building, every computer, phone line, every everything, then at some level you need private businesses working on government contracts. Why is it bad to have that kind of company but good to have one that conducts it's business with non-government entities?
I don't think we're worse off having capabilities like the Falcon Heavy, Starlink, and the Tesla 3, the highest-selling EV ever. Maybe you do. It's possible SpaceX will get to Mars before NASA does - it's also possible it will end up being a complete failure. But I think we're all better off for the attempt being made.
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Originally Posted by Rainmaker
Most of our parents didn't own a lucrative emerald mine.
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It's more an issue of willingness, as I stated. It's like the meme that goes around about how we need a reality show where billionaires have to live on the salary of one of their lowest-paid employees for a month. My response is yes, let's absolutely do that. At the same time, let's pick a group of those employees at random and give them the billionaire's lifestyle - and everything that comes with it. Meaning not just the income to live on, but also the responsibilities. Most would run away screaming, because they don't want to have to deal with all of that for
any amount of money. And most people shouldn't, and it's entirely healthy and appropriate that they don't. It is also beneficial to society that some do, because that's where innovation comes from.
I'm with you on the idea that we shouldn't put Musk on a pedestal as a role model or hide the failures past and present. At the same time this objection to anything/anybody rich or corporate regardless of justification for it makes me want to puke.
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Originally Posted by sterlingice
there are a lot of people who start off with money who burn through it and turn their something into nothing. But that's dwarfed by the number of people who never had a chance at those millions. It's along the lines of the "hey, this person worked hard to get what they have" - lots of people work hard to get what they have. But person working a hard double at Mickey D's versus guy working hard on Wall Street could be as simple as the latter had Mom and Dad's savings to fall back on and could take an unpaid internship on Wall Street versus the other needed to work at age 16 to help the family.
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Well over two-thirds of millionaires inherited nothing. Opportunity is certainly a huge factor, but most people can become a millionaire in their lifetime in America if they live frugally and invest intelligently. Not expertly, just intelligently - a modest amount consistently over decades, diversified without everything high-risk, etc. The reason one person is on Wall Street and another is at Mickey Ds also very often has a lot to do with the fact that the one at Mickey Ds didn't want to sacrifice as much early in life to further their education and have a better life in the future. Sometimes it is just about their level of opportunity, but far more often it's about their own choices.