Being rich has almost nothing to do with your ability, talent, or intelligence. It the single most important factor is luck. This is why you often find CEOs looking down on those with PhDs, because they have an inflated sense of self-worth for being "more rich." When in reality a PhD is a very difficult test of your work ethic and creativity, and being a successful CEO is a matter of luck and connections.
Was it lucky that he happened to start what became PayPal with some others? Was it lucky that he took on an Electric car company and turned it into what it is today? Was it luck that he happened to stumble into launching reusable rockets into space?
Are you going to go further on the whole Paypal situation? The fact that he was running the company into the ground, had to be ousted and replaced all of which occurred before Paypal saw any success?
The 'luck' there is that he got removed and replaced by someone far more successful, but retained a large share of stock.
> Was it lucky that he happened to start what became PayPal with some others?
Yes, it was luck. You could say it was 95% luck, because of course the product has to exist to get lucky so it's not entirely luck. If you made a copy of PayPal tomorrow, would you be rich? What if 100 people did? A thousand? You will misattribute this to idea that there must have been _something_ special about PayPal, but the reality is it was luck.
> Was it lucky that he took on an Electric car company and turned it into what it is today?
This one has less to do with luck, because Elon is already very,very rich by the time he is working with Tesla, same thing for SpaceX. However, remember that prior example about your starting up a copy of PayPal? Tesla is not the only electronic car company, and I would personally never recommend someone buy a Tesla, there are simply better electric cars.
So at this point, it is, in my opinion, hero worship, marketing, and giant coffers.
>Being rich has almost nothing to do with your ability, talent, or intelligence.
So we should imagine that most self made rich people's IQ distribution is completely matching the general populations, and similarly for their work ethic, no?
Musk is not "self made rich", his family was already quite wealthy. But I'd guess the distribution is pretty close for rich people in general. Consider some of the outstandingly stupid rich people out there like the "MyPillow" guy or Donald Trump.
Edit: Interestingly, one thing that is more prevalent among the rich is "dark triad" traits[1]. Make of that what you will.
His family wasn’t wealthy, unless you mean well off in the upper middle class sense. His father gave him something like 15k to start his first company.
So his dad gave him $250,000,000,000? Is that really what you're saying?
As you seems to view them as such, I'll say that only a fool under-estimates their enemy. The wise man loves and respects his enemy, and gives credit where credit is due.
Lindell built a large consumer enterprise worth almost 1/4 of a billion dollars. He's had a rough life, struggling with addiction (not unlike Hunter Biden) but got clean and built massively successful business.
Trump built a global brand worth billions on the back of a real estate company worth but a fraction.
Musk is the richest man on planet earth for very clear reasons.
None of those successes were accidents or even luck. It takes vision, foresight, ability, talent, persistence, and hard work to get there. None of the aforementioned traits are traits of stupid people. And none of those three men can be considered stupid. The virtue of their accomplishments are obvious.
Ergo, if they are stupid while being hyper-successful, what does that say about those who are abject failures?
A fool is a genius in his own mind, seeking superiority by bringing other down, yet a genius builds something of value while lifting others up.
Trump, Lindell, and Musk are successful precisely because they are NOT stupid and have built something of value.
What have you built?
You do realize that the three traits in the "dark triad" are also present in people who live on the streets, right? It is almost like every human being is different.
