Mount Coré

It's quite funny that this dude's historic wealth might be the most persuasive blackpilling possible on capitalism, and yet the socialist warriors do not take advantage of the opportunity. Let me explain. His wealth is fundamentally disconnected from personal merit or direct labor. He is the CEO of three companies and in the C-suite at many others. There is simply no possibility whatsoever that he works the hours expected of such positions and that the little personal labor he dedicates to them represents the the incredible wealth he has extracted from them. Moreover, there are several, well-documented claims from insiders that they have to handle or buffer his erratic behavior, and that the executives that actually do the work are relieved when he gets hyperfocused on another company and leaves them alone. What work he does when he is hyperfocused consists mostly, according to insiders, as extreme micromanagement. He self-describes himself as a "nano-manager," and his official biographer talks about his hyper-critical "demon mode." There is a pretty reasonable argument to be made that his presence harms these companies, rather than helps them. This is only boosted by how many expensive, high-profile lawsuits his companies have been embroiled in by his public remarks, nonstop posting, and refusal to abide by financial disclosure deadlines. How he treats his employees and unilaterally fires people without cause also causes employment lawsuits. Substantively, his companies also benefit from him lying to the market to cause speculation and government subsidies won by quid pro quo behavior that would have, in better times, been considered criminal. Musk causes Tesla and SpaceX to consistently lie about its products, and he is never punished enough to offset the personal benefit he gets from the market or subsidies by such lying. His wealth is an illusion driven by retail investor enthusiasm based on these lies, market expectations based on his lies and the fact that he has yet to seriously pay for lying, and pay packages approved by boards stacked with flunkies that cannot articulate how he can possibly do enough work as the CEO of three companies and executive of half a dozen others to justify his intensely bloated pay packages. He receives that pay even when his companies are not profitable, which has led to constant shareholder lawsuits. If there was a poster boy of American Capitalism, it is him. He represents everything wrong with the reality of how the system works, and how lying and anticompetitive behavior is not adequately curbed.