David in Lincoln

What Elon Musk being a trillionaire means: 1. That is his net worth, not how much money he has. The reason it just went up so much is that SpaceX--a company he started that would not exist without him--went public, which means the number of shares he holds times the going rate for each share was added to his net worth. He could not get that much actual money from if he wanted to b/c selling all of his shares would tank the stock price. 2. The reason it is possible to be a trillionaire is because we have a central bank that creates money. There is more money in the system than ever before, and as the money supply increases, people who hold assets gain wealth while life gets more expensive for everyone else. If you're going to be mad at someone, be mad at the Federal Reserve and advocate its abolition. 3. Net worth is closer to an approximation of how much you've contributed to society than how much you've extracted from it. You can't eat money. You can't build anything with it. The primary purpose of money is trading it to move resources around the economy. If you earn more money than you take in, you are contributing more to the economy than you are taking from it. Elon didn't take that money from you. Even if you believe Marxist exploitation nonsense, if you don't work for one of Elon's companies, there is no way he took that money from you (see caveats). 4. Even if Elon had that much money, it would not negatively affect you. If he was sitting on that much money, then that would mean he wasn't using that money to take resources, good, and services from the economy that you could be using. The rest of the economy would keep churning without him, and he would be abstaining from taking those resources for himself. If he were to spend all of his money, that means stuff you want would be more difficult to get. 5. No, Elon cannot solve world hunger with that money. Again, you can't eat money. The issue isn't money, it's food and distribution. Spending that money on food for poor Africans would just spread the available food around more thinly, and it would feed them for a day. It would do nothing in the long run. Governments around the world have cumulatively spent far more than $1T trying to solve world hunger, and it hasn't worked. 6. No, Elon is not why you're poor. If Elon actually had $1T and spread it out evenly among the American adult population, that would be about $3,000 for each of us. Not per day or per year. One time. Did the Covid checks change your life? Did they fix society's problems? No? Again, if you want someone to blame for how hard it is to get by these days, blame the Federal Reserve. Google "What Has Government Done to Our Money?". CAVEATS: 1. Subsidies: Yes, Elon's companies take subsidies, and that is in effect extracting wealth from you via government taxation. Elon has repeatedly advocated for abolishing all subsidies, but he takes them while they exist. Is this philosophically inconsistent? Maybe. Understandable? I think so. Money made through voluntary exchange is valid; money taken by force is not. Corporate welfare is theft. 2. We do not have a free market. The way I described how net worth is an approximation of how much you've contributed to society is how it works in a free market. We don't have one, and there are plenty of people who've used government coercion to accumulate wealth. Elon is far from the worst offender in this regard. 3. I personally think SpaceX is a silly use of resources. I feel the same way about NASA. We have plenty of room on this planet. Keep the resources here and build things that improve our lives more than just "ooh, cool, rocket ship".