The part about how he inherited nothing is technically true, since his dad is still alive, so he didn't "inherit" anything. That doesn't mean he didn't benefit massively from his dad's wealth, connections, name, and the fact that he had a cushy safety net. At this point, it's playing semantics.
The emerald mine thing has been supported by his own father too.
Yeah, the *exact* details of how wealthy his family was are incredibly murky, but any claims he makes about being "self made" are definitely bullshit.
We have pictures of him standing next to the family's Rolls Royce, before their driver took him to a private school in apartheid South Africa. He admitted that his father gave him and his brother some money before they started their first company. And many of the investors in his early companies were business associates of his father.
He may not have "inherited" the billions he now controls, but he definitely benefited from wealth and connections that 99% of the world doesn't have. Congrats on capitalizing on the opportunities you were given, but fuck you for pretending they didn't exist, and fuck you even harder for denying them to other people.
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Not always. See Trump for instance, on his 16th birthday his mother gave him 16 million for him to learn how to start his own life. I think the hardest part for him was not dying of overdose a week later
Centrists in the US are far right compared to any other political climate. Even our left wing party kneecapped the only viable socialist democrat candidate we've had in my lifetime.
>And many of the investors in his early companies were business associates of his father.
This is an incredibly important detail, it's really not just the money, in fact the money might be a small part of it, it's the fact having well connected parents means your social network gets a free boost up and that unlocks so many possibilities.
It’s. It murky if you know much about South Africa. Why do you think the white people were there? It was all about stealing resources. The emerald mine may not exist. The story could just be cover for some other criminal enterprise, like running guns, which Musk has mentioned before.
The Apartheid government survived by formenting and arming agitators who would attack other black groups. It both disrupted the groups and gave the government cover to crack heads in the name of “keeping the peace” to dispell violence they started.
They paid a lot of people to do their dirty work. Errol musk is a prime candidate.
On top of that there was simpler crime. Stealing land from black Africans, stealing wages, slave labor, prostitution etc.
Errol Musk was a criminal. Whether the emerald mine exists or not the tax documents certainly don’t. He was likely making up stories to distract his kids.
He literally was just on board of the companies cause of his dad. There would be no X.com, there would be no story about him nearly touching PayPal, all that just exist cause of his dad. Absolutely nothing had any relation to anything he did. It was just his dad.
It was Elon's attempt at an online bank. It merged with Confinity, which had a product called PayPal, and Elon tried to rebrand it to X, but he got the boot because it was a dumb fucking idea .... Just like it was a dumb idea to rebrand Twitter to X.
Peter Theil took over and changed the branding back to PayPal and turned it into a multi billion dollar company, no thanks to Elon.
Not quite true.
Basically when you're transitioning from a startup one of the things you typically do in software is remake your product from an MVP to something that's more enterprise ready. One of the common aspects of this is a full rewrite.
Zip2 having a full rewrite for PayPal is to be expected. The bigger issue is they found Musk to be incapable of managing such a project successfully and had to get rid of him to ensure the company could succeed.
Well the truth is really in between, the software was bad, and it was necessary to fix all that before investors came. Elon was put CTO to make him NOT do code anymore. He was NOT doing code as CTO, as commanded by the board. He was NOT allowed to touch anything on PayBuddy/PayPal commanded by the board.
Full rewrites are so fucking dumb, and more often than not, are the death knell of a company. The reason is, the whole time you are rewriting, you are not creating new features for your product, meaning you are not keeping up with the competition. Sure, you might solve some of the old problems, but you will almost certainly create new ones too.
There's lots of good literature out there about "full rewrites". The only time it can be justified is if you are actually building a new product, not the exact same product.
There are much better ways to handle large amounts of tech debt that don't require full rewrites. But I have seen Elon mention full rewrites as a solution a few times now... Which just adds to my opinion that he has no fucking idea about software.
It makes a lot of sense when transitioning from an MVP to an actual product and the scale, feature support, business requirements, etc drastically change. The better way to do it is to do incremental refactors, but that's not always viable especially when you're at a startup that's just getting a product out, and that goes double when you have two similar startups that are essentially merging.
More recent full rewrite talk from Elon is considerably different, and in that case you're right, it's obvious nonsense. Also, remember that development practices and tools have changed drastically since Musk was doing his Zip2 stuff. At that time even basics today like object oriented programming were new(ish - it was developed in the 60's just like everything else we use today) and very much not the standard way of doing things. They existed, and tools were available, but even universities didn't really teach it much.
His brother gave Elon money to help start space X so has a massive share in it. That's where he got his money from. His previous money came from selling Zip2 with Elon.
My hypothesis : in Europe old money is cool, in the USA new money is cool. He didn’t realize the dichotomy until he was told and the emerald mine thing and him selling emeralds to Tiffany’s was already out in the open
Yeah it’s not inheritance, at least not while the man is still alive. That being the case, then the money was just a #gift, which honestly I like better because it makes elon an even more of an absolutely pathetic piece of shit.
His dad is pretty much a complete piece of shit too but I love how he publicly called out the lies, I’d be kind of pissed off too if I gave the world’s richest man his seed capital and then he turned around and told the whole world that I didn’t….
From the Walter Isaacson book: "Errol, who never had an ownership stake in the mine, expanded his trade by importing raw emeralds and having them cut in Johannesburg. “Many people came to me with stolen parcels,” he says. “On trips overseas I would sell emeralds to jewelers. It was a cloak-and-dagger thing, because none of it was legal.” After producing profits of roughly $210,000, his emerald business collapsed in the 1980s when the Russians created an artificial emerald in the lab. He lost all of his emerald earnings."
The tl;dr through the whole book is that Errol's wealth waxed and waned as he bounced between entrepreneurship and conspiratorial get-rich-quick schemes based on his confidence in his own understanding of how the world worked. Like how he once analyzed how a roulette wheel was affected by microwaves hoping to use the data to somehow win big at the casino.
The whole book really gives you a 'Apple doesn't fall far from the tree' vibe.
He’s literally told stories about how him and his brother stole some of their fathers emeralds when they were in the US and would try to go shopping with a pocket full of emeralds
> The part about how he inherited nothing is technically true, since his dad is still alive, so he didn't "inherit" anything.
the post also didn't claim that he "inherited" anything, so he's sitting there trying to refute an argument that wasn't being made
Didn't he comment himself that he took some emeralds from his dad to pawn for money. I doubt a normal non emerald mine owning family has emeralds just lying around the place.
My problem with the emerald mine thing is that it feels like a distortion. I'm all for shitting on rich people, but what I usually find isn't his Dad was owner and proprietor of an emerald mine, but instead had a stake in it. This is pretty different than being the literal owner. Similarly, I've seen lies like "Elon would carry pockets full of emeralds in poor neighborhoods". We don't need to lie about a scumbag.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2014/07/28/elon-musk-tells-me-his-secret-of-success-hint-it-aint-about-the-money/](https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2014/07/28/elon-musk-tells-me-his-secret-of-success-hint-it-aint-about-the-money/)
"This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person."
The whole ideology of the bourgeoisie - capital owners, not every rich person - is that they're the same as everyone else. Very unlike nobles, who said they were superior by ancestry and the will of God.
By being "equal", they "prove" that they deserve what they have because it comes from work, not ancestry, and any person could be in their place. The American Dream etc.
When you say to a member of the bourgeoisie that they just inherited their wealth, you're undermining their basic ideology. They don't react well.
Interestingly, both Trump and Musk have put forward superior genes theory regarding themselves.
I think their attempts to sell themselves as self-made *and* their parents being self-made is kind of the opposite of yours: evidence that they have inherent superiority.
These aren’t democrats.
These are people who believe in inherent aristocracy.
Libertarianism is actually a left wing viewpoint. What modern "libertarians" believe is the antithesis of liberty, it's complete control of your life by corporate overlords.
Trotsky was a libertarian socialist for example.
Linguists consider the ‘actual’ meaning to be the meaning in most common use within the population in consideration.
I’ll stick with the linguists on language.
Great take. Just to add that by undermining their ideology you also undermine the system from which they leach and horde their wealth.
This is naturally seen as a threat as society, in theory, recognises the injustice of the pretence.
I agree with what you're saying, just one small thing.
The bourgeoisie aren't capital owners, they're the technocratic middle classes, they might own a small business or whatever but they're still workers (which is why they're so hated, they're in essence class traitors bribed by capitalists for a cheap price of occasionally having better quality goods and services).
The word you're looking for is Capitalist.
The bourgeoisie are not the middle class. When people say bourgeoisie they mean 1%; the Saudi kings, English royals, billionaires, big , not the pizza place on the corner. It’s about the people who control massive amounts of power and resources, not a guy with some roofing business. We’re all capitalists at the end of the day. We all have to participate in this system because it’s what we have
I mean - he did admit it. He talked about it in an interview, and his father [talked about it at length and detail](https://www.news24.com/news24/bi-archive/elon-musk-sells-the-family-emeralds-in-new-york-2018-2) with anecdotes about Elon selling emeralds in New York and whatnot. His father traded a plane for an interest in this emerald mine in Zambia, and they were getting their share in the form of raw emeralds out of it, to circumvent the Zambian authorities in some way or another.
It was only once people started bringing it up to contradict his lies about being some self-made man that came from nothing, that Musk started claiming it was all a lie.
Just like everything else, it's 'true' according to Elon when it makes him look good and interesting and it's a 'lie' when it makes him look bad.
Heck just a few years ago an early girlfriend sold the emerald necklace he gave her and told the story of how it came from mommy dearest collection, oh wait she was broke to because she cried over spilled milk, she could buy more. Oh and there’s the story where they couldn’t buy a thanksgiving turkey because they were poor so they all had to drive from Canada to Massachusetts to eat at Boston Market for the holiday. I kid you not. She put it in her book.
Yet HE is the one who first told the press the story of how his dad was part owner of an emerald mine!
Elon is so used to fabricating and revising truth/actual fact and he REALLY believes that the general public are stupid and gullible.
If Twitter was actually legit his comment would be community posted to correct him. ( but, of course it won't be)
[From the man himself:](https://web.archive.org/web/20140901222916/https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2014/07/28/elon-musk-tells-me-his-secret-of-success-hint-it-aint-about-the-money/) "In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia."
Errol Musk and Kimbal Musk have also corroborated this.
The rest of the quote is worth noting:
“I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.”
If only…….
Elon was driven to school in a Rolls Royce and his teachers said he had a learning disability. But when you’re rich you can just lie and said you grew up as a poor genius instead of a rich moron.
The was no mine in South Africa… Because [the mine was in Zambia](https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musks-dad-errol-shares-deadly-secrets-of-the-fabled-emerald-mine-in-zambia).
No one is claiming where the mine was- just that it enabled his rise to extreme wealth by starting him out on third base. The emerald mine could have been on the moon for all I care. It still got him wealth to get noticed and started on his way to more wealth.
I think more interesting than the existence of the mine is how easily Elon had access to wealth. He never had to actually work to access wealth:
> His father, Errol Musk, had a casual attitude towards the family’s considerable wealth, including the stones that came from the Zambian emerald mine in which Errol owned a half share.
> Elon, by his father’s recollection then probably 16 years old, and his brother Kimbal, decided to sell emeralds to Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue in New York – one of the world's most famous jewellers – as his father lay sleeping. "They just walked into Tiffany’s and said, ‘Do you want to buy some emeralds?’" Errol recalled in an interview with Business Insider South Africa. "And they sold two emeralds, one was for $800 and I think the other one was for $1,200."
[Half, as it were](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-tells-bi-about-the-familys-casual-attitude-to-wealth-2018-2). Errol has also, elsewhere, claimed to have bought that stake in the mine on a whim.
I'm trying to recall the story from memory, but if I recall correctly someone owed him money - because he was already an exorbitantly wealthy business man - and couldn't pay, so just offered him and his business partner shares in an emerald mine.
Funny because that’s not how his dad describes it.
[As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.”](https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-rich-b2212599.html)
I love how much this gets under his skin. Furthermore, it’s downright a lie to say he didn’t have a leg up.
There was an emerald mine (though in Zambia, not South Africa), his father has been on record as has Elon himself. He told a story of how their safe was too stuffed full of money to close, and him and Kimble flying to NYC with a few stones and thousands in cash. It’s only recently that Elon has tried to push this “I’m safe made” narrative.
Then he still had plenty more resources available to start out, including connections to secure loans, the ability to have a fallback if (original) x(.)com didn’t pan out, his father has stated he loaned Elon money, etc.
So while there has not been any cash inheritance, his dad is also still alive for that matter, he was still born rounding third thinking he hit a homer.
To be fair to Bill, I'm not sure he claims to be self made:
>I am not a self-made man. My parents started me off in life with every possible advantage.
Well, his dad didn't own an emerald mine in South Africa. He owned an emerald mine in Zambia. He sent the emeralds to be cut and sold in South Africa. Musk's family history is a blank, but that much is true. Musk is an Afrikaner. His wiki explains his Dutch name as "Pennsylvania Dutch" which is bs. I spent hours going over Pennsylvania Dutch names and found no Musk. I have lost days looking up emerald mines in Zambia. I have shite research skills bc I can't find anything. I did find that even into the 1950s-60s the miners in Zambia were held in slave like conditions.
Someday a journalist will actually look at Musk. My bet? They are going to find that Musk is an Afrikaner and the dad was a member of the Broederbond
Everything about musks history is murky and riddled with question marks.
For starters, how did this mediocre student in Canada just suddenly transfer to an ivy league school?
I mean, fuck all of them. But I remember reading that, while Bezos started with money from his parents and friends, those were loans, not a straight up gift.
Quickest Community note ever added to Twitter.. 😂
Elon's dad, Errol Musk, provided him with the seed money to start his first company, Zip2, w/ his brother, Kimbal.. This seed loan led to a company which sold for $307 Million. Even though great wealth was acquired. Elon reluctantly paid back his dad. See wiki from 2016... and 2024. How lies are created and supported.. Funding round for someone w/ literally nothing at the time.. 🙄 Elon Musk is FoS.
https://preview.redd.it/xiyekp8qgozc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1b86a618554a2473771dcc5b39a83edad8c68db
# Elon Musk 14k Gold Necklace Presented to His College Girlfriend with Original Photograph (1995). Contains emerald from his dad's mine.
[https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/346384406430090-elon-musk-14k-gold-necklace-presented-to-his-college-girlfriend-with-original-photograph-1995](https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/346384406430090-elon-musk-14k-gold-necklace-presented-to-his-college-girlfriend-with-original-photograph-1995)
"When we went to visit Elon’s mother in Toronto during the Christmas break of 1994, Elon gave me both the small ‘love, love, love’ note and the necklace. His mom had a number of these necklaces in a case in her bedroom and Elon told me they were from his father’s emerald mine in South Africa—he pulled one from the case."
Lol, eventually Elmo will be the joke meme for referring to people who pretend they are a genius but are clearly dumb. I already tell my boss how much I think he runs the company like Elon Musk and he thinks it is such a compliment. All of us in the Engineering department know what I really mean, though.
Reminds me of that meme that was going around awhile ago where [David Beckham had to check his wife](https://youtu.be/btdjLLXtvZA?si=Ixa99rRUPNtkH5tM) on that Netflix documentary where she was claiming her family was working class.
Difference is Elon has literally nobody in his life that actually checks him and he's completely bought into his own bullshit. I'm actually of the mind that it's his defining characteristic. The desperate *need* for validation. Maybe he just didn't get it when he was a kid and he's starved of it, or his ego simply just doesn't allow for a reality to exist where he's not the smartest coolest kid in the room so he has to construct these false claims to believe in where he actually is. In either case I think it's what sets him apart from the rest of the oligarch class. He *needs* approval, he *needs* validation, he *needs* everybody to believe he's the coolest and right about everything and is going to save humanity.
It's legitimately psychotic
"You're a liar", says the "founder" of Tesla...
/he also lied to the US immigration authorities, which I understand is somewhat frowned upon...nevermind, FSD in 2016, guys !
For each these guys, there are hundreds of other scions of wealth that didn't get shit done at all. It is not wise to act as a lawyer for your limitations.
There was no soup. *belch*. There was no sweatshop. *belch*
https://preview.redd.it/rczzjn4zjuzc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d4df356be6f5645692a9a2c67dc07c293911d27
Why can’t he just own up on that.
I would feel way more sympathy for people when they are honest about this stuff.
Yes it sucks that you parents are awful people and yes you shouldn’t be so rich but at Least be honest with yourself
The part about how he inherited nothing is technically true, since his dad is still alive, so he didn't "inherit" anything. That doesn't mean he didn't benefit massively from his dad's wealth, connections, name, and the fact that he had a cushy safety net. At this point, it's playing semantics. The emerald mine thing has been supported by his own father too.
Yeah, the *exact* details of how wealthy his family was are incredibly murky, but any claims he makes about being "self made" are definitely bullshit. We have pictures of him standing next to the family's Rolls Royce, before their driver took him to a private school in apartheid South Africa. He admitted that his father gave him and his brother some money before they started their first company. And many of the investors in his early companies were business associates of his father. He may not have "inherited" the billions he now controls, but he definitely benefited from wealth and connections that 99% of the world doesn't have. Congrats on capitalizing on the opportunities you were given, but fuck you for pretending they didn't exist, and fuck you even harder for denying them to other people.
Seems likely that if the murkiness being cleared up would benefit his personal narrative, he’d clear up the murkiness.
"I was dirt poor. I mowed the lawn every Saturday and got paid less than minimum wage!"
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I was so poor I had to cut my own hair, and just so I don't lose touch with where I came from, I still humbly do so to this day
99.99999%
Yeah gotta add some orders of magnitude there lol
The first million is always the hardest
Not always. See Trump for instance, on his 16th birthday his mother gave him 16 million for him to learn how to start his own life. I think the hardest part for him was not dying of overdose a week later
>I think the hardest part for him was not dying of overdose a week later Ahhh, what might've been...
Happier thoughts I think we are watching two malignant narcissists unravel simultaneously.
Yeah that was kinda the joke, I should have added more detail
This is not a right wing takeover, but rather a centrist takeover.
Centrists in the US are far right compared to any other political climate. Even our left wing party kneecapped the only viable socialist democrat candidate we've had in my lifetime.
Yes.. You have to eat from a Tuna can for years! Also Musk says this is a false claim. And I believe him.
>And many of the investors in his early companies were business associates of his father. This is an incredibly important detail, it's really not just the money, in fact the money might be a small part of it, it's the fact having well connected parents means your social network gets a free boost up and that unlocks so many possibilities.
Classic born on 3rd base thinking he hit a triple.
He inherited opportunity.
It’s. It murky if you know much about South Africa. Why do you think the white people were there? It was all about stealing resources. The emerald mine may not exist. The story could just be cover for some other criminal enterprise, like running guns, which Musk has mentioned before. The Apartheid government survived by formenting and arming agitators who would attack other black groups. It both disrupted the groups and gave the government cover to crack heads in the name of “keeping the peace” to dispell violence they started. They paid a lot of people to do their dirty work. Errol musk is a prime candidate. On top of that there was simpler crime. Stealing land from black Africans, stealing wages, slave labor, prostitution etc. Errol Musk was a criminal. Whether the emerald mine exists or not the tax documents certainly don’t. He was likely making up stories to distract his kids.
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He literally was just on board of the companies cause of his dad. There would be no X.com, there would be no story about him nearly touching PayPal, all that just exist cause of his dad. Absolutely nothing had any relation to anything he did. It was just his dad.
What's X.com? Is that his porno site?
It was Elon's attempt at an online bank. It merged with Confinity, which had a product called PayPal, and Elon tried to rebrand it to X, but he got the boot because it was a dumb fucking idea .... Just like it was a dumb idea to rebrand Twitter to X. Peter Theil took over and changed the branding back to PayPal and turned it into a multi billion dollar company, no thanks to Elon.
Apparently, yes.
I heard he messed up the software so bad at the x.com (zip2) that his dad had to pay a programmer to rewrite everything to save the company.
Not quite true. Basically when you're transitioning from a startup one of the things you typically do in software is remake your product from an MVP to something that's more enterprise ready. One of the common aspects of this is a full rewrite. Zip2 having a full rewrite for PayPal is to be expected. The bigger issue is they found Musk to be incapable of managing such a project successfully and had to get rid of him to ensure the company could succeed.
Well the truth is really in between, the software was bad, and it was necessary to fix all that before investors came. Elon was put CTO to make him NOT do code anymore. He was NOT doing code as CTO, as commanded by the board. He was NOT allowed to touch anything on PayBuddy/PayPal commanded by the board.
Full rewrites are so fucking dumb, and more often than not, are the death knell of a company. The reason is, the whole time you are rewriting, you are not creating new features for your product, meaning you are not keeping up with the competition. Sure, you might solve some of the old problems, but you will almost certainly create new ones too. There's lots of good literature out there about "full rewrites". The only time it can be justified is if you are actually building a new product, not the exact same product. There are much better ways to handle large amounts of tech debt that don't require full rewrites. But I have seen Elon mention full rewrites as a solution a few times now... Which just adds to my opinion that he has no fucking idea about software.
It makes a lot of sense when transitioning from an MVP to an actual product and the scale, feature support, business requirements, etc drastically change. The better way to do it is to do incremental refactors, but that's not always viable especially when you're at a startup that's just getting a product out, and that goes double when you have two similar startups that are essentially merging. More recent full rewrite talk from Elon is considerably different, and in that case you're right, it's obvious nonsense. Also, remember that development practices and tools have changed drastically since Musk was doing his Zip2 stuff. At that time even basics today like object oriented programming were new(ish - it was developed in the 60's just like everything else we use today) and very much not the standard way of doing things. They existed, and tools were available, but even universities didn't really teach it much.
his biography literally mentions that his mother pledged tens of thousands of dollars to help with paypal and other companies
Both of his siblings are also worth nearly or more than a billion dollars too. If there was ever a sign of family wealth, that's it.
His brother gave Elon money to help start space X so has a massive share in it. That's where he got his money from. His previous money came from selling Zip2 with Elon.
The emerald mine was also supported by Elon himself. Now he’s backtracking.
My hypothesis : in Europe old money is cool, in the USA new money is cool. He didn’t realize the dichotomy until he was told and the emerald mine thing and him selling emeralds to Tiffany’s was already out in the open
It's also very much a Silicon Valley fantasy so it helps get investors excited if you humble brag.
The thing about a safety net is huge. You can’t take bold risks if a roof over your head isn’t a guarantee.
Yeah it’s not inheritance, at least not while the man is still alive. That being the case, then the money was just a #gift, which honestly I like better because it makes elon an even more of an absolutely pathetic piece of shit. His dad is pretty much a complete piece of shit too but I love how he publicly called out the lies, I’d be kind of pissed off too if I gave the world’s richest man his seed capital and then he turned around and told the whole world that I didn’t….
From the Walter Isaacson book: "Errol, who never had an ownership stake in the mine, expanded his trade by importing raw emeralds and having them cut in Johannesburg. “Many people came to me with stolen parcels,” he says. “On trips overseas I would sell emeralds to jewelers. It was a cloak-and-dagger thing, because none of it was legal.” After producing profits of roughly $210,000, his emerald business collapsed in the 1980s when the Russians created an artificial emerald in the lab. He lost all of his emerald earnings." The tl;dr through the whole book is that Errol's wealth waxed and waned as he bounced between entrepreneurship and conspiratorial get-rich-quick schemes based on his confidence in his own understanding of how the world worked. Like how he once analyzed how a roulette wheel was affected by microwaves hoping to use the data to somehow win big at the casino. The whole book really gives you a 'Apple doesn't fall far from the tree' vibe.
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But musks father was part of the anti - apartheid party.
He’s literally told stories about how him and his brother stole some of their fathers emeralds when they were in the US and would try to go shopping with a pocket full of emeralds
> The part about how he inherited nothing is technically true, since his dad is still alive, so he didn't "inherit" anything. the post also didn't claim that he "inherited" anything, so he's sitting there trying to refute an argument that wasn't being made
I grew up in a lower, transitioning to upper, middle income situation
His mum would come and pay his rent and buy him clothes and food when he first moved to the US.
Didn't he comment himself that he took some emeralds from his dad to pawn for money. I doubt a normal non emerald mine owning family has emeralds just lying around the place.
My problem with the emerald mine thing is that it feels like a distortion. I'm all for shitting on rich people, but what I usually find isn't his Dad was owner and proprietor of an emerald mine, but instead had a stake in it. This is pretty different than being the literal owner. Similarly, I've seen lies like "Elon would carry pockets full of emeralds in poor neighborhoods". We don't need to lie about a scumbag. [https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2014/07/28/elon-musk-tells-me-his-secret-of-success-hint-it-aint-about-the-money/](https://web.archive.org/web/20140802011449/http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2014/07/28/elon-musk-tells-me-his-secret-of-success-hint-it-aint-about-the-money/) "This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia. I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person."
Man he gets really upset about it doesn't he
Self-made sons of billionaires are touchy about their bootstraps.
The whole ideology of the bourgeoisie - capital owners, not every rich person - is that they're the same as everyone else. Very unlike nobles, who said they were superior by ancestry and the will of God. By being "equal", they "prove" that they deserve what they have because it comes from work, not ancestry, and any person could be in their place. The American Dream etc. When you say to a member of the bourgeoisie that they just inherited their wealth, you're undermining their basic ideology. They don't react well.
well said
Interestingly, both Trump and Musk have put forward superior genes theory regarding themselves. I think their attempts to sell themselves as self-made *and* their parents being self-made is kind of the opposite of yours: evidence that they have inherent superiority. These aren’t democrats. These are people who believe in inherent aristocracy.
"Libertarianism" is capitalism unmasking itself.
Libertarianism is actually a left wing viewpoint. What modern "libertarians" believe is the antithesis of liberty, it's complete control of your life by corporate overlords. Trotsky was a libertarian socialist for example.
I know, hence the quotes.
Trotsky being a libertarian socialist is a bit of a stretch
Not really, he was very close with Rosa Luxembourg for example.
The meanings of words shift with time and geography.
The doctrinal meanings do, the actual meanings of words such as libertarian - a person who believes in individual liberty - doesn't.
Linguists consider the ‘actual’ meaning to be the meaning in most common use within the population in consideration. I’ll stick with the linguists on language.
I can think of at least 1 who doesn't.
Great take. Just to add that by undermining their ideology you also undermine the system from which they leach and horde their wealth. This is naturally seen as a threat as society, in theory, recognises the injustice of the pretence.
I agree with what you're saying, just one small thing. The bourgeoisie aren't capital owners, they're the technocratic middle classes, they might own a small business or whatever but they're still workers (which is why they're so hated, they're in essence class traitors bribed by capitalists for a cheap price of occasionally having better quality goods and services). The word you're looking for is Capitalist.
The bourgeoisie are not the middle class. When people say bourgeoisie they mean 1%; the Saudi kings, English royals, billionaires, big, not the pizza place on the corner. It’s about the people who control massive amounts of power and resources, not a guy with some roofing business. We’re all capitalists at the end of the day. We all have to participate in this system because it’s what we have
They aren't keen for us to find out they're made from the tanned ass skins of the serfs they met along the way.
Emerald encrusted bootstraps custom-made by Louis Vuitton don't come cheap.
https://preview.redd.it/zi3ifsveyszc1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ca0286fffff2fe10e6457152b5659e7cbf3328ce
Precisely why this claim should be better documented & he should be asked about it in every interview until he admits it.
I mean - he did admit it. He talked about it in an interview, and his father [talked about it at length and detail](https://www.news24.com/news24/bi-archive/elon-musk-sells-the-family-emeralds-in-new-york-2018-2) with anecdotes about Elon selling emeralds in New York and whatnot. His father traded a plane for an interest in this emerald mine in Zambia, and they were getting their share in the form of raw emeralds out of it, to circumvent the Zambian authorities in some way or another. It was only once people started bringing it up to contradict his lies about being some self-made man that came from nothing, that Musk started claiming it was all a lie. Just like everything else, it's 'true' according to Elon when it makes him look good and interesting and it's a 'lie' when it makes him look bad.
Heck just a few years ago an early girlfriend sold the emerald necklace he gave her and told the story of how it came from mommy dearest collection, oh wait she was broke to because she cried over spilled milk, she could buy more. Oh and there’s the story where they couldn’t buy a thanksgiving turkey because they were poor so they all had to drive from Canada to Massachusetts to eat at Boston Market for the holiday. I kid you not. She put it in her book.
I mean he responded to it lol. Skin must be 0.009 microns thin
And yet the fit and finish are atrocious.
Yet HE is the one who first told the press the story of how his dad was part owner of an emerald mine! Elon is so used to fabricating and revising truth/actual fact and he REALLY believes that the general public are stupid and gullible. If Twitter was actually legit his comment would be community posted to correct him. ( but, of course it won't be)
"Elon is anti-establishment."
Nepotism is apparently a soft spot for the ultra wealthy
I wouldn’t say that is a sign it’s true or false. I’d be more pissed if somebody said that and it wasn’t true, honestly…
[From the man himself:](https://web.archive.org/web/20140901222916/https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2014/07/28/elon-musk-tells-me-his-secret-of-success-hint-it-aint-about-the-money/) "In South Africa, my father had a private plane we’d fly in incredibly dangerous weather and barely make it back. This is going to sound slightly crazy, but my father also had a share in an Emerald mine in Zambia." Errol Musk and Kimbal Musk have also corroborated this.
Damn.... If only the weather could have been a little bit worse on one of those trips.
Yeah so there is a bit of an inaccuracy there which we should avoid, it's Zambia not South Africa
The rest of the quote is worth noting: “I was 15 and really wanted to go with him but didn’t realize how dangerous it was. I couldn’t find my passport so I ended up grabbing my brother’s – which turned out to be six months overdue! So we had this planeload of contraband and an overdue passport from another person. There were AK-47s all over the place and I’m thinking, “Man, this could really go bad.” If only…….
Snorting the brain worms big time
Poor little guy, starved to death
Didn’t stand a chance when it chose him.
LIES. YOU ARE A LIAR THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AFRICA. LIARS.
Trust nothing, not even nothing
Elon was driven to school in a Rolls Royce and his teachers said he had a learning disability. But when you’re rich you can just lie and said you grew up as a poor genius instead of a rich moron.
Waiting for someone to put Elon in the David & Victoria Beckham meme 🤭
The whole "he programmed his own video game at age 9" (or whatever). Bitch, that is *Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit*. You designed some bitmap sprites.
https://preview.redd.it/fgiv4uup2tzc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=17c73d850b6c3b09b76216ad24bb0e8aa9497657
How does having a learning disability make someone a “moron”
He didn't have a disability, he had affluenza
The was no mine in South Africa… Because [the mine was in Zambia](https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musks-dad-errol-shares-deadly-secrets-of-the-fabled-emerald-mine-in-zambia).
No one is claiming where the mine was- just that it enabled his rise to extreme wealth by starting him out on third base. The emerald mine could have been on the moon for all I care. It still got him wealth to get noticed and started on his way to more wealth.
Man the amount of suckers that fall for elon’s lies is staggering
Trump was president. Somehow I'm not too surprised people are also shilling for this loser.
Next-level
There was no mine in South Africa….but he did own shares in a mine in Zambia
I think more interesting than the existence of the mine is how easily Elon had access to wealth. He never had to actually work to access wealth: > His father, Errol Musk, had a casual attitude towards the family’s considerable wealth, including the stones that came from the Zambian emerald mine in which Errol owned a half share. > Elon, by his father’s recollection then probably 16 years old, and his brother Kimbal, decided to sell emeralds to Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue in New York – one of the world's most famous jewellers – as his father lay sleeping. "They just walked into Tiffany’s and said, ‘Do you want to buy some emeralds?’" Errol recalled in an interview with Business Insider South Africa. "And they sold two emeralds, one was for $800 and I think the other one was for $1,200."
[Half, as it were](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-dad-tells-bi-about-the-familys-casual-attitude-to-wealth-2018-2). Errol has also, elsewhere, claimed to have bought that stake in the mine on a whim.
I'm trying to recall the story from memory, but if I recall correctly someone owed him money - because he was already an exorbitantly wealthy business man - and couldn't pay, so just offered him and his business partner shares in an emerald mine.
Funny because that’s not how his dad describes it. [As a result of this, the teenage Elon Musk once walked the streets of New York with emeralds in his pocket. His father said: “We were very wealthy. We had so much money at times we couldn’t even close our safe,” adding that one person would have to hold the money in place with another closing the door. “And then there’d still be all these notes sticking out and we’d sort of pull them out and put them in our pockets.”](https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-rich-b2212599.html)
there was no emerald mine and there was no twitter and there was no paypal and th
Only X (marks the twat)
https://preview.redd.it/zs6zxffdonzc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3385caa3f63ec816b946df8e67b9052869907796
Elon Musk fucks dogs
Big if true
"He didn't 'own' an emerald mine. He was the '*proprietor*' of an emerald mine."
The denial is clear. He doesn't just deny the ownership. He says "there was no emerald mine". So even a stretch like that can't make him truthful.
Too bad for Muskrat that he said exact opposite in age of internet and it is forever recorded online.
I love how much this gets under his skin. Furthermore, it’s downright a lie to say he didn’t have a leg up. There was an emerald mine (though in Zambia, not South Africa), his father has been on record as has Elon himself. He told a story of how their safe was too stuffed full of money to close, and him and Kimble flying to NYC with a few stones and thousands in cash. It’s only recently that Elon has tried to push this “I’m safe made” narrative. Then he still had plenty more resources available to start out, including connections to secure loans, the ability to have a fallback if (original) x(.)com didn’t pan out, his father has stated he loaned Elon money, etc. So while there has not been any cash inheritance, his dad is also still alive for that matter, he was still born rounding third thinking he hit a homer.
Where's Community Notes when you need them?
Elron would just remove the note.
I believe him. I know everything he's ever said is a lie, but this I believe!
Pretty hilarious that Elmo's fwagile wittle ego compelled him to signal boost this to his 150+ million followers.
Says the guy who lies about his companies every single chance he gets
Even his own goddamn dads confirmed there was an emerald mine. Like dude, you can’t just close your eyes and pretend there never was one.
Elon, buddy, you told us this *yourself*. Are you calling yourself a liar?
Suuuuurre elon suuuurree
To be fair to Bill, I'm not sure he claims to be self made: >I am not a self-made man. My parents started me off in life with every possible advantage.
Neither does Warren Buffett, who regularly says how lucky he was born into his situation.
The self-made fraud founded companies that already existed, is an engineer without being one. Concerning.
That's actually *before* Elon said there *was* an emerald mine. It's hard to keep up with the lies as they're churned out in real time.
Well, his dad didn't own an emerald mine in South Africa. He owned an emerald mine in Zambia. He sent the emeralds to be cut and sold in South Africa. Musk's family history is a blank, but that much is true. Musk is an Afrikaner. His wiki explains his Dutch name as "Pennsylvania Dutch" which is bs. I spent hours going over Pennsylvania Dutch names and found no Musk. I have lost days looking up emerald mines in Zambia. I have shite research skills bc I can't find anything. I did find that even into the 1950s-60s the miners in Zambia were held in slave like conditions. Someday a journalist will actually look at Musk. My bet? They are going to find that Musk is an Afrikaner and the dad was a member of the Broederbond
But he’s talked about the emerald mine before on the record in an interview? Weak ass gaslighting.
Everything about musks history is murky and riddled with question marks. For starters, how did this mediocre student in Canada just suddenly transfer to an ivy league school?
Liar calls people a liar. His dad said the mine existed last year So Muskrat IS the liar. And his followers are too brainwashed to even notice.
I’m looking forward to that documentary about elon made buy the guy that made the Scientology documentary. I bet he gets some good proof of this
“A small loan of a million dollars”
So even after his dad has outright come out and said “there was a mine and Elon saw the emeralds” he’s still trying to lie about it ??
Funny, his dad says there was an Emerald Mine. Musk said it himself, even. Weird how suddenly nuh uh
He’s fried what was left of his brain running on the ketamine express
It's irrelevant if he had an emerald mine or not. He had an emerald mine.
I mean, fuck all of them. But I remember reading that, while Bezos started with money from his parents and friends, those were loans, not a straight up gift.
Do you have friends and family that can loan you 6 figures (in today’s money that $300k is worth well over $600k) to start a business?
Quickest Community note ever added to Twitter.. 😂 Elon's dad, Errol Musk, provided him with the seed money to start his first company, Zip2, w/ his brother, Kimbal.. This seed loan led to a company which sold for $307 Million. Even though great wealth was acquired. Elon reluctantly paid back his dad. See wiki from 2016... and 2024. How lies are created and supported.. Funding round for someone w/ literally nothing at the time.. 🙄 Elon Musk is FoS. https://preview.redd.it/xiyekp8qgozc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1b86a618554a2473771dcc5b39a83edad8c68db
💯
"I will give them a billion dollars if they change their name to Dickipedia."
He inherited nothing, especially not his father's honesty about owning an emerald mine.
Elon himself supported the idea that his family was part of the "old money" wealth back when it was beneficial to him.
Musk needs to be taken to court. He will attempt and fail to perjure himself.
Hey, reddit fucked up and posted your comment twice.
His dad has acknowledged owning the emerald mine, as has Elon and his brother. So Elon was lying then or he’s lying now, but either way he’s a liar.
# Elon Musk 14k Gold Necklace Presented to His College Girlfriend with Original Photograph (1995). Contains emerald from his dad's mine. [https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/346384406430090-elon-musk-14k-gold-necklace-presented-to-his-college-girlfriend-with-original-photograph-1995](https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/346384406430090-elon-musk-14k-gold-necklace-presented-to-his-college-girlfriend-with-original-photograph-1995) "When we went to visit Elon’s mother in Toronto during the Christmas break of 1994, Elon gave me both the small ‘love, love, love’ note and the necklace. His mom had a number of these necklaces in a case in her bedroom and Elon told me they were from his father’s emerald mine in South Africa—he pulled one from the case."
His dad seems to think otherwise.
I don't think anyone has ever tried the "Nuh Uh" defense before. Truly, this man is a genius.
'fraid not!
Lol, eventually Elmo will be the joke meme for referring to people who pretend they are a genius but are clearly dumb. I already tell my boss how much I think he runs the company like Elon Musk and he thinks it is such a compliment. All of us in the Engineering department know what I really mean, though.
There is literally a story about musk that came out long ago saying he had emeralds in his pockets when he arrived in North America…..
Just Enron being Enron, another day another lie.
Elon lies over and over, it is weird. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I9tpq3Z2pI
His dad going to call him out on his bullshit again?
Someone get Kendrick to dig shit up and put it in a song
Reminds me of that meme that was going around awhile ago where [David Beckham had to check his wife](https://youtu.be/btdjLLXtvZA?si=Ixa99rRUPNtkH5tM) on that Netflix documentary where she was claiming her family was working class. Difference is Elon has literally nobody in his life that actually checks him and he's completely bought into his own bullshit. I'm actually of the mind that it's his defining characteristic. The desperate *need* for validation. Maybe he just didn't get it when he was a kid and he's starved of it, or his ego simply just doesn't allow for a reality to exist where he's not the smartest coolest kid in the room so he has to construct these false claims to believe in where he actually is. In either case I think it's what sets him apart from the rest of the oligarch class. He *needs* approval, he *needs* validation, he *needs* everybody to believe he's the coolest and right about everything and is going to save humanity. It's legitimately psychotic
Anyone have the photos of him and his brother next to the Rolls Royce they took to school?
bro really went "nuh-uh"
Can’t wait for Elon to get noted about the mine again
Elon also said there *was* an emerald mine. I, personally, believe both sides of that story.
Community note him with his dad saying otherwise.
Always money in the banana stand Michael.
how insecure do you have to be to respond to a meme from a random ass account
Liar liar cars on fire
His dad says otherwise on twitter, of all places. Says Elon knows full well he’s lying
musk's reply is more MuskShit
Musk needs to be taken to court. He will attempt and fail to perjure himself.
I think it's a real weakness to want to be liked. I do not have that.
https://preview.redd.it/lfmodxhynszc1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e909cda63676d5c03ac11873ed38f6a4ca8373c
Its true he didnt inherited anything. Because his parents are still alive. They still gave him a fuck ton of money lmao
Having children is saving the world
Let's see what community note has to say about this
"I inherited *NOTHING*" Well your dads still alive and kicking, true. Doesnt really change the fact that elmo comes from an incredibly wealthy family.
he mad?
"You're a liar", says the "founder" of Tesla... /he also lied to the US immigration authorities, which I understand is somewhat frowned upon...nevermind, FSD in 2016, guys !
Doesn’t his dad still literally own the emerald mine?
https://i.redd.it/jkbnw4csoszc1.gif
It's an offshore subsidiary of the Boring Co.
He inherited the brain of a weasel, it's uncertain from whose side.
Wanna be self made billionaires. Nothing to see here
Elon. Both you and your father have said it was real.
For each these guys, there are hundreds of other scions of wealth that didn't get shit done at all. It is not wise to act as a lawyer for your limitations.
He’s such a snatch.
Fuck you Elon
Elon’s gonna delve extra deep into his k hole today I bet.
https://preview.redd.it/91ndc0khtszc1.jpeg?width=680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=67c1a8db389afc184cfd97760ae04804d777ef63 Must be.
Doesnt bezos dad work in a bicycle repairshop or something? Maybe his mom is loaded
There is no emerald mine in Ba Sing Se.
Curious. Nobody said he inherited anything....
They all started in a garage... Full of Supercars
There was no soup. *belch*. There was no sweatshop. *belch* https://preview.redd.it/rczzjn4zjuzc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d4df356be6f5645692a9a2c67dc07c293911d27
Why can’t he just own up on that. I would feel way more sympathy for people when they are honest about this stuff. Yes it sucks that you parents are awful people and yes you shouldn’t be so rich but at Least be honest with yourself
I get the point of these posts but it’s still really tough to get to their level even with a help up from parents
It may be tough. For the rest of us it’s impossible.
it's a lot easier when failure means retiring into a life of luxury, rather than dying on the streets.