
Why is there only one Elon Musk? - jnp
http://blog.paintbottle.com/post/47537655245/why-is-there-only-one-elon-musk
======
edw519
This post reminds me of that old joke:

Husband: I am the head of the household! I determine our family's position on
all of the major economic, political, and social issues of the day!

Wife: I decide the little things, like where we'll live, what we'll eat, and
where the kids go to school.

As much as I admire the dreams and accomplishments of Elon Musk, I have
trouble getting past the idea that he failed to maintain his marriage (the
biggest promise of them all) and rarely sees his own children.

Maybe the answer to OP's question is, "Because many who _could_ dream and do
like Elon Musk would rather focus on the "little things" like life, love, and
family.

~~~
unreal37
Having not been able to maintain my own marriage, I think its more complicated
than that.

But the quality Musk has that almost no one in his position has is the
willingness to risk it all for the dream. Musk himself almost went broke on
SpaceX and Tesla. Most billionaires are into preservation of capital in a big
way.

~~~
loganfrederick
"Most billionaires are into preservation of capital in a big way."

Depending on how you define "are into", this could be argued as empirically
wrong. A study done by the editor of the updated edition of Graham's "The
Intelligent Investor" shows that the Forbes 400 (400 Richest Americans) only
had 68 members who stayed on the list from some time in the 1980 to the early
2000s. The author calculated the return required to stay on the list and it
was approximately 4.8% annually, which is very reasonable with their level of
resources.

Due to these results (only 68 out of 400 richest people staying in that
position), you could say that billionaires are NOT into preservation of
capital, when making 4% annually is not even accomplished.

The hypothesized reason for these results is that most billionaire's fortunes
are tied to one or two major companies/investments. Fluctuations in business
over time eventually devalue their investment in the single entity. If they
really cared about "preservation of capital", they would liquidate more of
their stakes when one company made them rich then diversify their holdings.

Apologies for the vague dates. I am at work and do not have the book handy,
but just read that passage 48 hours ago. If someone replies that they want
more specific numbers and references, I can update this post in 10 hours.

Reference: [http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Book-Practical-
Co...](http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Book-Practical-
Counsel/dp/B0002X1JKU)

~~~
jessriedel
Hey this is really interesting. Thanks very much for posting this.

------
manaskarekar
James Gosling: Liquid Robotics
[http://www.liquidr.com/news_events/press/2011/2011-08-30-gos...](http://www.liquidr.com/news_events/press/2011/2011-08-30-gosling.html)

John D. Carmack: Armadillo Aerospace
<http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home>

I'm tempted to throw in Google's Sergey Brin (Larry Page too?) for Google
Glass.

And I'm sure there are a few others. Elon Musk just shows up more in the news
due to his success.

Also, not all billionaires are technically inclined geeks.

~~~
CodeCube
Jeff Bezos: <http://www.blueorigin.com/>

In addition to glass, the google guys get credit for
<http://www.planetaryresources.com/> and the driverless cars ;)

~~~
rayiner
What did the Google guys do for Glass or driverless cars other than bankroll
them?

~~~
dbrian
Isn't that kind of the point?

~~~
CodeCube
So what? what did Elon musk do for spacex and tesla other than bankroll them?

edit: meant as reply to GP :)

~~~
rayiner
Quit his day job to run them?

------
thomseddon
I'll take your one Elon Musk and raise you one Richard Branson:

<http://www.virgingalactic.com/> <http://www.virginearth.com/>
<http://www.virgingreenfund.com/>

\+ Massive, continued, success in countless other markets (+ set a few
personal world records)

~~~
keepitkosher
From my unresearched perspective, the difference is that Musk (admittedly) is
pursuing crazy ventures because he's passionate about them -- and oftentimes
for no other reason. He apparently originally expected that SpaceX would be
broke by the time he had managed to get to Mars.

Branson seems to be deeply rooted in a business-first approach to creative
innovation. "Yeah, we'll do it, but if the market accepts it."

~~~
thomseddon
Yes and no. (Mainly no)

It is unquestionable that Rb has pursued many different avenues despite there
being little to no obvious commercial benefit. I do concede that you could
argue it is just in the name of building his own profile, but for example did
you know he started a charity aged 17, the Student advisory centre where he
used to personally give advice over the phone (apparently still running) and
that he started mates condoms[1] (UK based). He is also the one behind the
eldars[2] (<http://www.theelders.org/>) and countless other projects including
helping african communities establish sustainable business (to name just one).

1: <http://www.mates.co.uk/mates-expert/history/> 2:
<http://www.theelders.org/about>

------
rgbrenner
You really have to have a terrible case of tunnel vision to write this post.
One Elon Musk? Sure, I only see one guy named Elon Musk on the list of
billionaires.

What is the requirement here?

A space company? There are several of those.. Jeff Bezos (worth 23b) has Blue
Orgin.

He says "cool sci-fi shit"...

What about self-driving cars? Those aren't sci-fi enough for you? How is
Tesla's battery powered car MORE sci-fi-ish than a self-driving car?!

Look, I wish the best for Musk... but the author needs to take a look around
at what other people are doing.

~~~
resu_nimda
So I guess you didn't read the full article before blasting off...he
specifically pointed out self-driving cars, as well as numerous other non-Musk
sci-fi initiatives.

His point is less about a dearth of cool sci-fi shit than a lack of extremely
wealthy individuals wielding their fortunes to aggressively push these things.

Edit: And not just "a space company." A space company, an electric car
company, a renewable energy company, and the crazy passion to make these
things work. What results has BlueOrigin produced? SpaceX is actually Getting
Shit Done.

~~~
ohwp
Like Richard Branson?

~~~
resu_nimda
Yeah, ok, I get that the article did say there is "only one" Elon Musk, but
pointing out the small handful of individuals in a similar space doesn't seem
like a very solid refutation of the points made.

And with the possible exception of Branson, none of them are close to doing as
big of things, with as much success, and as much inspirational flair and
passion, as Musk.

~~~
rgbrenner
The author is the one who narrowed the field, and unnecessarily so, to make a
point.

He starts the criteria with "billionaires".. 0.000000215% of the worlds
population.

Then to narrow it down farther he says they must be working on 'cool sci-fi
shit'. Ie: they can't just be doing innovative things, they must be sci-fi
things, and even if they are sci-fi, they must be 'cool'.

Of course there are only a few people who meet that criteria.

------
simonsarris
I sympathize with the author, and I think a lot of the comments here are
missing at least part of the point of the post.

Maybe its 12 years of catholic school plus a philosophy degree talking, but in
times of peace my brain likes to hold everyone guilty of all the good they
didn't do. This applies to me, you, congress, billionaires, and so on. The
author swaps my "good" for "awesome stuff", but I think the feeling is
probably similar.

In other words, I think that being a billionaire and doing nothing ambitious
with their money is _much less impressive_ than not being a billionaire. I
think the author is remarking upon that in a similar way.

I think the author is slightly incorrect in thinking Musk is the only one, but
that doesn't really detract from his general point.

(Of course, billionaires don't "owe" us/society anything, though some might be
able to argue that society allowing one person to accumulate such wealth ought
to have some kind of obligation, but as it stands they don't, and that's
probably a topic for another time)

------
aashaykumar92
After reading, I'd say your base question/thesis is: "Why on Earth aren’t
there more billionaires doing really cool sci-fi sh!#?". You go on to give
plenty of examples (FYI--some of these are already being done such as self-
driving cars and flexible displays) but all of them, to truly build, would
require a solid understanding of mathematics/physics/some type of engineering
right? Not every billionaire has that knowledge. Elon Musk does--I believe he
has a degree in physics from Penn and dropped out from the PhD program at
Stanford. This knowledge simple does not exist among the majority of
billionaires. And exactly because of this lack of knowledge, I don't think
billionaires CAN actually do 'really cool sci=f sh!#'.

When you think of a crazy idea, out of the first few questions that come to
your mind, one of them is probably, "Is this idea feasible?" To Musk, the idea
of Tesla and SpaceX were both feasible, BECAUSE he had the necessary base
knowledge in those areas to realize that with money, these visions could
become realities. I like to think many people, other billionaires included,
have had the idea of cool battery charged vehicles but without the ability to
realize it is possible (aka the base knowledge), they stopped at that. Good or
bad, this is most likely the reality of it.

All of that being said, I would like to see billionaires do what J.P. Morgan
and George Westinghouse did for Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, respectively--
and that is to find and fund geniuses with these revolutionary, futuristic,
'really cool sci-fi sh!#' ideas. If more billionaires sought out to find
scientists/engineers working on 'the next big thing', I imagine more would
happen and newer, more fascinating, industries would be formed.

My plea: If you're a billionaire who appreciates what people like Elon Musk
has done/is doing but don't have the skills to do so yourself, go find more
people like him (in the sense that they have crazy futuristic ideas) and help
them to help the world.

~~~
jessriedel
Another way to say this is that the process of becoming a billionaire selects
for intelligence, but it actually seems to select strongly _against_ a great
technical training and nerdy dreams. (Maybe I'm wrong about that?)

Would be really interesting to know how many billionaires have STEM PhD's
after controlling for their general intelligence.

~~~
rayiner
A disproportionate share of billionaires are engineers.

Of course part of that is because the petro-chemical industry mints a lot of
billionaires. E.g. Charles and David Koch both have bachelors and masters
degrees (mechanical and chemical engineering) from MIT.

~~~
jessriedel
> A disproportionate share of billionaires are engineers.

Thanks, do you have a cite for this? My intuition is still that a much higher
fraction of billionaires are business/management types than the general
population of people at their intelligence level.

~~~
rayiner
> My intuition is still that a much higher fraction of billionaires are
> business/management types than the general population of people at their
> intelligence level.

It can be true that business types and engineers are over-represented among
billionaires.

It also depends on how you define "engineer." Nobody makes billions as a line
engineer (but nobody makes billions as a line "manager" either). But in my
experience once you get a degree in engineering, that totally shapes your
world view and how you approach problems even if you go on and do other
things. So I think those people should count too.

Using a relatively narrow definition, out of the Forbes 25 you might count
Charles and David Koch (BS/MS in ChemE/MechE), Jeff Bezos (BS EECS), Larry
Page and Sergey Brin (BS CS), and Mukesh Ambani (BS ChemE). These guys all
made their fortune at companies related to their engineering discipline.
Broadening the definition, you can also throw in there Larry Ellison (no
degree, but worked at Amdahl and Ampex as a programmer on databases), and Bill
Gates. Finally, you could throw in Michael Bloomberg (BS EE--went straight
into finance) and Bernard Arnault (BS CivE, worked as a civil engineer but
made his fortune elsewhere).

That's disproportionate, considering that only 1-3% of the population is
engineers.

~~~
jessriedel
Ahh, this is very interesting. Thanks much.

------
unreal37
The author is making a decent point, that out of the 1,000+ billionaires,
almost none of them are trying to change the world in a majorly significant
way. The vast majority are busy running the businesses that made them
billionaires.

Take Mark Cuban. After he sold broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5 billion, why
didn't HE start a space company? Instead he started another TV channel - we
already have a bunch of those.

I think Richard Branson is the counter point. There are actually two Tony
Starks - Branson and Musk.

I think the problem is legacy. People like that are trying to create the
businesses that will define their legacy after they are gone. If you've worked
30-40 years to build a company from scratch and become a billionaire off that
(like Walmart or Fedex), that is your legacy. You work til your dying breath
trying to make Walmart successful. You don't go try starting robotic or
advanced tech businesses.

~~~
Anechoic
_The vast majority are busy running the businesses that made them
billionaires._

Perhaps we just need to look more closely at the list of billionaires "running
the businesses that made them billionaires"? Making a spaceship certainly
sounds (and is) sexy, but those spaceships are built on top of other
technologies like material science, energy storage, communications, etc (and
those in turn are built on other technologies like extraction and
manufacturing). I'd bet a number of those "businesses that made them
billionaires" are working on that kind of tech, but those technologies don't
generate the kind of headlines in mainstream media outlets like self-driving
cars.

It's the difference between developing packet-switching technologies and
Google fiber. You can't have one without the other, but only one sounds
exciting.

------
JDGM
I assume that we're taking Elon Musk's "Tony Stark"-ness in this context to
mean electric cars, space travel, and solar power. To the best of my knowledge
he is neither an alcoholic nor a superhero, though I did just look up his
marital history on Wikipedia and with assistance from Google Images I have to
award 8 Tony Starks out of 10 on that one.

In all seriousness though, are we _sure_ not one of those other 1,225
billionaires is "pursuing major advances in technology with a childlike wonder
about the world’s potential"? When I hear about Elon Musk I tend to draw a
different conclusion from the author of this piece: not that he is one of a
kind, but that there are many more like him out there. I'm not sure which of
us is right, quite possibly the author and not me - sometimes seeing X
suggests 'generally ¬X' ([http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/03/when-seeing-x-
suggests...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/03/when-seeing-x-suggests-
generally-¬x.html)).

~~~
jessriedel
Could you elaborate on how Katja's idea in the OB post might be used here? To
me, it seems like it supports the OP (quite nicely, actually). In particular,
Elon Musk shows that Tony-Stark-ness (as you've correctly defined it) is
pretty darn visible. If there were more Tony Stark's out there, I'm now more
likely to expect expect that I would have heard about them in the same way
I've heard about Musk. This increases my confidence that there are _not_ many
Tony Starks compared to my pre-Musk assessment.

And then, of course, the question is: with so many billionaires out there,
why?

~~~
JDGM
"Could you elaborate on how Katja's idea in the OB post might be used here?"

Exactly in the way you describe. I was indeed using it to support the OP and
not myself: "I'm not sure which of us is right, quite possibly the author and
not me - LINK".

~~~
jessriedel
Ahh, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.

Do you really think there are a bunch of Elon Musk's out there who, say, just
aren't doing as much self-promotion?

~~~
JDGM
I don't know. It was one of those comments that started as one thing and by
the end I'd basically persuaded myself of quite the opposite. The turning
point I think was getting used to the idea of <1500 worldwide billionaires.
For some reason I thought there were a lot more than that. I suppose I
imagined them all hanging out together, puffing on cigars and saying things
like "that Elon eh - what happened to just saving the planet _without_ being
on the front page of Hacker News every day?".

------
olympus
There are plenty of people/organizations that are researching cool new
technologies that don't have the publicity of Elon Musk, either from them
actively avoiding the spotlight or the media has just decided that they aren't
"cool" enough to be covered. DARPA is doing some cool stuff even though they
are a government organization, Mars One has set the lofty goal of sending
people to Mars, James Cameron has a pretty sweet submarine, and the list goes
on and on.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the author has overlooked a lot
of cool stuff to make his point. While I agree that there needs to be more
billionaires doing cool s#!t, don't overlook the people and organizations that
are already doing it.

edit: In the time it took me to write this comment, a whole bunch of other
examples popped up in the comments, further reinforcing my point that there
are already a lot of people doing cool s#!t.

------
danso
This is one of the more annoyingly shortsighted posts I've read on HN in a
long while. It reflects the attitude of someone too spoonfed by blockbuster
movie culture: _if shit ain't being blown up, then who cares?_

When Norman Borlaug died a few years back, there were a lot of people who
thought, "Who?" And when they learned that this farm-raised Iowan is credited
with saving a billion human lives, they said, "Well why wasn't he celebrated
more?"

And the mindset of the OP, well, there's your answer.

~~~
jnp
I wrote the article. In it, I clearly outline that the topic of discussion is
-- _specifically_ \-- childlike wonder and what happens when it mixes with
wealth. Not "that every wealthy person should behave in a particular way."

~~~
danso
Yes, but you place too great of emphasis on a certain kind of
achievement/product as being indicative of this ideal mixing of childlike
wonder + wealth. Or else how could you characterize Bill Gates' work as being
somehow less creative or less wondrous. Bill Gates is trying to foster a world
free of disease and poverty, which requires no less of a cool, sci-fi-
brainstorm to accomplish...how is that less of a crazy childlike ambition than
building an electric car?

In fact, I would argue even that Gates' path is even far more crazy and
childlike. In order to do what he has done, he's had to get out of the
relatively clean, logical bubble of technology and deal with messy, real world
politics to accomplish his goals...and yet he still pushes forth in idealism.
Contrast this with Musk, who after a less-than-favorable review in the New
York Times, threw a fit. I'm not saying Musk was or wasn't justified, I'm
pointing out that real world revolution takes both child-like wonder and an
ability to handle out-of-your-realm realities...Gates is farther along in this
difficult path than Musk, though I agree, Musk is more likely to have an Iron
Man-like movie made about him.

------
jerf
A poorly-known characteristic of bell curves is that despite the bulk of the
curve being fairly "normal", the extremes can be very extreme, and at the top
end the spacing between #1 and #2 can be surprisingly large. Outliers can
really be outliers. But you'll never have very many of them.

~~~
jessriedel
Sure, but the OP's point is that there are over a thousand billionaires in the
world. It's not the fact that outliers exist, it's that fact that among people
with a billion dollars, most don't seem to care about this type of greatness.

That is: it's easy to imagine a world where _half_ of the billionaires are
doing outlandish things, and the outliers are (say) the guys who are putting
men on Mars at a reasonable price. Why isn't the world like that?

~~~
Someone
I don't think it is surprising most billionaire do not pursue this kind of
greatness. They just aren't different from other guys. There, the few who go
and try to climb mount Everest "because it's there" or who try and row the
pacific are rare, too.

Secondly, if half the billionaires were to do the same outlandish things, we
wouldn't call them outlandish.

For example, there probably was a time when quite a few billionaires went
elephant hunting. Then, that was not outlandish. Now, it would be.

Now, I think there are plenty of billionaires doing outlandish things, but
just not in a highly visible technical direction. For example, Ted Turner
started a world-wide news network, tried to start his own Olympic Games, and
has a huge herd of bison. Others buy sports clubs, try to win the America's
cup, or try to build a mechanical clock that will run for 10000 years
(<http://longnow.org/>). Yet others see it as their goal to get higher on
Forbes' list of billionaires (<http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml>)

Another thing I am curious about: who are the one or two billionaires at the
other end of that curve?

------
distant-
Meanwhile, the author of the blog post runs a porn website. I find it amusing
that all of these advocates of tackling "big issues, that matter", "building
world-changing technology" are very far from walking their talk.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Not only does he run a porn site, he posted this _to his porn site's blog_.
The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming.

------
snowwrestler
A few others who come quickly to mind:

\- John Carmack - id software and Armadillo Aerospace

\- Jeff Bezos - AWS, Kindle, Blue Origin, and the Long Now Clock

\- Larry and Sergei - Google, Android, Google Glass, self-driving cars, etc.

I'm sure we can think of others.

~~~
unreal37
Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic which predates SpaceX in the space race.

~~~
kenkam
James Cameron and ocean diving

------
sheri
We're lamenting the fact that billionaires are not like cartoon characters?

This is ridiculous. Bill Gates is creating real impact to people's lives with
his money and charity, and the author just dismisses that as being not cool
enough.

Instead of applauding responsible and charitable behavior, we want them to be
playboy types?

------
jechen
I think it's important to keep in mind that Elon Musk got to where he is today
(especially financially) because of a consumer web service he helped found.
I'm sure (perhaps on the more optimistic end) that more entrepreneurs would
jump on his bandwagon if they had ready/easier access to the amount of capital
Musk had at his disposal to invest in his "cool sci-fi shit" ventures.

~~~
kiba
What he was working on is a financial service, not just a consumer web app. He
changed the world by making payment and ecommerce easier. It may not be sci-fi
or anything like, but what he was doing was of importance.

~~~
rollo_tommasi
Right, but he didn't jump right into future-tech industries; he had a huge
pool of personal capital to draw on, and only himself to answer to in using
it. The point the parent is trying to make is that there are probably a lot of
people working in less glamorous businesses who would love to jump to working
on the cutting-edge, but they don't have access to hundreds of millions in
personal funds.

~~~
kiba
I would argue that paypal was the future tech of its time. It was in 1998 that
paypal launched.

------
JoeCortopassi
There's always been more than one "...billionaires doing really cool sci-fi
sh!#", we just only have enough attention span to collectively idolize one at
a time.

------
frobozz
I would hazard that it's partly because the rich don't get rich by throwing
their money away.

The thing about "cool scifi sh!#" is that it stands a very good chance of not
being profitable, and an even greater chance of not being profitable any time
soon.

The author writes:

> As more entrepreneurs become self-made billionaires in the Internet age, I
> think we’ll see the Tony Stark Rating rise

I disagree. I think the only thing that will make that happen is inflation.
When the value of a billion is halved, then we'll see it rise.

I would be surprised if there weren't plenty more Sub-Billionaire Elon Musks,
who have reached a level of wealth that they consider sufficient for future-
proof work-free financial independence, and decided to pursue their least
profitable or most fanciful of dreams. The author himself points to various
cool projects that don't have a single Tony Stark figure at the helm.

To become a Billionaire, whilst still being of a mind to do "cool scifi sh!#"
requires at least one of these three things:

1) Suddenly becoming very rich (at least a near-billionaire).

2) Some of your "cool scifi sh!#" becoming profitable.

3) Persisting in moneymaking when you could be doing the cool stuff instead.

Also, how many billionaires (openly or anonymously) fund chairs or grants at
universities? A billionaire of the sort that inherited multiple millions, then
made a load more money through speculative finance whilst also working as a
corporate barrister is not going to be a Tony Stark; but they may want to see
robots with Genuine People Personalities become a reality. It would be far
better for someone like that to fund existing university research than to set
up their own version of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

------
graeham
Part of the issue - only about 200 of those billionaires are under 50. People
can be "Tony Stark" after that, but I think its probably more likely that
younger people will have the energy and willingness to invest the decades it
takes to build large disruptive companies.

A non-negligible amount of wealth is inherited. Again, not to say that
inherited wealthy aren't going to be making innovative companies - Tony Stark
himself inherited Stark Industries. But I think the Elon Musk assumption is
for serial ambition in entrepreneurship, which probably more likely comes from
self-made people.

A lot of wealthy (and innovative) people like doing things behind the scenes.
Like Tony Stark, but without the fireworks and cheerleaders.

Finally, as others have said, there are other people who have made multiple
innovations on the scale of Musk - Edison, Tesla, Ford, Howard Hughes in the
past, more recently Gates and Allen, Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey. Maybe
Zuckerberg and Dorsey are the next to join these ranks. And that is just in
the computer and internet industries.

------
darkchasma
Why is there only one Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, etc... Because
people are not made in a factory with a cookie cutter.

------
simonbarker87
I wonder what percentage of the worlds billionaires are over 50? Over that age
the ability to assimilate and do "new stuff" drops of considerably I should
think, along with drive and determination as well.

As the article suggests hopefully some of the Zuckerburgs and co will help
remedy this.

~~~
binarymax
This is straight up ageism. When I am 50 I will have 15 more years of
knowledge and experience under my belt - and will be just as excited and
determined as I am now.

~~~
k__
can't say this for most of the +50 I know.

~~~
dasil003
The only difference between over 50 and under is that young people have more
time ahead of them to delude themselves that they will eventually act on their
big ideas. In terms of actually doing things, young and old people have very
similar moment to moment potential.

~~~
k__
I don't say all are like this... but most :\

At the company I work are 2 +50 people I work with. The dev is like "give me
any programming language and I will programm with it" The admin is like "I
give you the IDE I choose and you use it!"

------
DanBC
We're only just at the point where doing crazy-fun science fiction stuff is
possible.

One reason is that people in the past just didn't have that kind of money. The
very wealthy today are a lot richer than the very wealthy of the past century.

Another reason is legalistic and infrastructure and technical stuff. There are
laws governing every aspect of this stuff, and to get involved takes
considerable planning and etc.

Finally, the tech just wasn't available in the past. It's much easier to build
a few schools and pay for opera than it is to set up a rocket company.

I guess it's interesting to know what those billionaires are doing with their
money. Maybe it's not liquid? Maybe they're happily oppressing a nation. Maybe
they're building shape-shifting buildings.

------
shirederby
>Whether it’s transparent batteries, flexible displays, nano bots, affordable
and effective VR headsets, highly-accurate and highly-portable motion sensors,
self-driving cars, doors that unlock when you walk up to them, swallowable
computers, affordable genetic testing

I think it's worth noting that many of the areas are saddled with burdensome
regulation, with the caveat that this is certainly not _the only_ or even _the
primary_ hindrance, and that the fact they may be hindrances doesn't in itself
mean they aren't warranted.

------
ScottBurson
I'm really surprised that (AFAIK, haven't checked lately) no billionaire is
funding Polywell, focus, and/or other fringe fusion research projects. I know,
the odds of these panning out are not great, but if you want to become a
trillionaire, seems like these are the kind of lottery tickets that could get
you there -- and do a massive amount of good for the world in the process. I
can tell you, if I had a few hundred million to throw around, I would be all
over these things.

------
mikecane
One Elon Musk? There are probably more of them than we can count. They just
can't rise to the top due to one thing or another. Where would Jobs have been
without Wozniak? There are many factors. And I see some people have cited some
names. Well there are probably many Musks outside the U.S. who we have never
heard of because they don't do something as world-changing as his publicly-
stated aspirations. Plus, not everyone wants a spotlight on them.

------
scotty79
Lot's of people who made a lot of money are good at exactly that. Making a lot
of money. I guess following childlike creativity and aptitude to make a lot of
money don't go hand in hand.

Fortunately internet happened and a lot of people who would suck at making
money in any other circumstances made a lot of money anyways. So we have Elon
Musk, Larry Page and hopefully we'll get more of them in the future.

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codex
While there are few billionaires, which is a big part of the story, I would
argue that there are plenty of Elon Musks out there, but only a finite
capacity of humans and media to idolize. There is only so much attention to go
around. Therefore, there is only one or two Elon Musks at a time. He has
filled the role Steve Jobs once had in the eyes of the technorati.

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kirk21
I admire him since he admits failures. Also from an intelectual standpoint
(e.g. first principles reasoning), he dares to push the limits.

There are not a lot of t-shirts available of Elon so I made one myself:
<https://www.teepublic.com/show/2278-elon-musk>

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sidcool
Seriously, I am such a big fan of Musk. He is challenging every status quo.
Big oil companies and auto manufacturers have been stalling the progress of
electric cars since decades. Musk went ahead in spite of the tall odds. He's a
Tony Stark of our age.

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smackfu
The funny thing is that someone else will look at Musk and see him as wasting
his money on useless space stuff rather than helping out the poor and
downtrodden. Cool is in the eye of the beholder.

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cjoh
A lot of those billionares were born that way. I suspect that to understand
what to do with that kind of money, you've got to have been without it at some
point in your life.

~~~
mjn
The ones who were born with it are often quite interested in wealth-
preservation as well, to pass the money on in turn to their own heirs. Rather
than spending it on something risky, they're more likely to put it in, say, a
generation-skipping trust that makes diversified investments.

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ChuckMcM
Fascinating discussion. Restores my faith in HN to have these sorts of
threads.

#1 To edw519 on Elon's failed marriage, I'm reminded of that economist joke
about "is that expensive or is it valuable?" For me, my family is priceless I
cherish them with all my heart, but for others I know their work drives them.
I don't begrudge them for having different reward structures in their brain,
and I would never go so far as to suggest that one set of choices is "better"
than another. I share the opinion that making a vow of marriage is a pretty
huge promise, but that is because in _my context_ it was a huge promise that I
made. As opposed to folks I've known who got married but made a different sort
of promise. I attended a wedding where the vows were not "until death do us
part" but were "for as long as we both shall love." To which I said,
"Seriously? Until you decide you are tired of it?" But my point is that we
don't know _what_ promise Elon made when he married.

#2 on the "where are they" question, the author (jnp) doesn't take into
account that first you have to be a billionaire and _then_ you have to care
about "sci-fi stuff". When I sample the general population I find that people
who care about science fiction type technologies and making them real is a
small fraction of the general population, so I am not surprised that only a
small fraction of the billionaires have similar ideas about interesting
questions. What I find even more amazing is that none of them have apparently
taken any of the 'unconventional' fusion projects under their wing (which is
almost _thematically_ Tony Stark).

The last bit I'll add is a bit I've added before which is that I have observed
that "rich you" is a different person than "not-rich you" for most
technologists I've met. (sample size isn't large but I think over the years
I've known/observed on the order of 200 people who have gone from "not
rich"[1] to "rich"[2] and in most of the cases there was a pretty big shift in
what they valued and who they were. Because of that one has to add that
someone who is interested in sci-fi stuff now, needs to still be interested in
it post-change. And as others have pointed out, Elon has put everything on the
line to advance sci-fi stuff a number of times, and that willingness to risk
being "not rich" again is perhaps the rarest trait of all.

[1] Defining "not rich" as having debts that they would have to forfeit if
they lost employment and future obligations that are not yet funded.

[2] Defining "rich" as having no debts for which forfeiting them would change
their lifestyle, and having a source of income from passive investing that is
sufficient under both optimistic and pessimistic economic scenarios.

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stephencanon
There are almost certainly lots of “Elon Musks”. Very few of them have been
lucky enough to become super-rich and attract public attention.

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film42
Because if there was (and I'm sure there are), we would compare him/ her to
Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs, etc.

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pandemicsyn
I kinda always assumed Larry Ellison would do more to push the envelope (in a
evil overlord sorta way).

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paulovsk
Don't worry, I'll come next.

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orochi235
Because most parents have much better taste in baby names.

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kornifex
I think he missed Richard Branson…

