It has finally come to pass; the first trillionaire in the history
of the world has just been recognized and acknowledged.
It was not that many years ago that it was a very big deal
when a millionaire achieved his billionaire milestone,
and not many more years earlier when someone became a
millionaire was that a reason to stop the presses. But at long
last someone has achieved a sensational, astounding,
earth-shaking, mind-boggling feat that many for years thought
was both out of reach and out of the realm of possibility:
billionaire and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk ascended to the
peak on June 12.
Musk became the history-maker on the strength of the IPO
of his company, SpaceX, which began trading on the NASDAQ
at $150 per share, giving the firm an almost $2 trillion market
cap. Forbes Magazine, which has been the chronicler of the rise
and fall of fortunes across generations of families, industries,
and nations, estimates that the IPO raised Musk's fortune to
$1.1 trillion, just after his new worth rose to $982 billion on
Thursday June 11 when SpaceX priced the IPO at $135 per share,
thus declaring Musk the world's first trillionaire.
Most of the Musk fortune is "on paper", which is to say that said
worth is not easily liquid, able to convert into cash. Musk owns
4.8 billion shares of SpaceX, presently worth $715 billion, and
has another 350 million stock options worth $50 billion which
gives him a 38% stake in the company.
Musk made his debut on Forbes' yearly World's Billionaires list
in 2012, Musk then having an estimated $2 billion fortune.
From this mark, showing Musk to be the 634th-richest person
in the world, he took a mere nine years to rocket to the top spot
as the world's wealthiest person as Tesla's shares shot upward,
Tesla being Musk's automobile manufacturing company.
Such a feat can only happen in a free market economy. In this kind
of economy there are less fetters applied by the state in the forms of
regulations and taxes and a greater understanding of how these things
factor into the ability of the economy to grow and create careers with
many job opportunities for people willing to learn and apply new skills
and to work at jobs which with said requirements will match the very
skills learned.
As for the employees of Elon Musk, his building his incredible
gigantic business holdings, made possible only by virtue
of his revenue and profits generated in the process has made many
of them wealthy themselves; some were made millionaires and
a few were made billionaires. And the demand for the products
Elon Musk's businesses supply to his customers make a connection
which benefits both customers and Musk's companies; the customers
get high-quality products, i.e Tesla automobiles, while Musk and his
employees get a steadily-growing flow of revenue from which they
derive and receive considerable income as their reward for providing
aforementioned high-quality products to a public that desires them.
This is how the free market works, and why it is superior to any and
all other markets in the world.
In a socialist economy, in fascist economies and in communist
economies people cannot go into business for themselves and build
large and extremely profitable companies like Elon Musk built.
Any and all businesses would be subjected to stringent regulations
and exorbitant taxation, the former to bring the entrepreneurs'
businesses under greater control of the state while the latter siphons
great sums of revenue into the coffers of the government. If any of
the business owners don't pay up, or if they complain about the
crushing regulations and taxes imposed on them, the state grabs their
businesses and imprisons their owners; in communist-run countries
they simply grab the businesses anyway, as private ownership and
enterprise is absolutely forbidden. And the only ones in these woeful
places with any significant money are the government elites,
including a few apparatchiks (high-ranking officials and senior
bureaucrats in the government). About quality of products made
(whenever any are made at all), forget it. Slipshod-made junk,
snapped up by a public not given any meaningful choices in
the marketplaces but lots of said junk and lots more empty store
shelves.
In summation, free market (or capitalist) economies encourage
creation; in the other kinds of economies expropriating money and
property is the order of the day --- every day. The former builds;
the latter destroys. And Elon Musk is definitely a builder.
Congratulations Mr. Musk! You are a business and financial pioneer
soon to have many following you to the financial heights once
thought impossible to reach. Only in a free market is this possible!
Capitalism has made more people financially secure and more,
having made a middle-class and a wealthy class, with people in the
lower levels of financial status able to thus climb up to the middle-
class and those in the middle-class (and some from the lower classes)
able to reach the wealthy class and to stretch that category upward.
Let's hear it for Elon Musk and for economic freedom!
MEM
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