Comment by andrei_says_
4 hours ago
I sometimes wonder, what does one need a second 500 billion that the first 500 billion is not enough for?
4 hours ago
I sometimes wonder, what does one need a second 500 billion that the first 500 billion is not enough for?
Interestingly, during the trial he promised to donate any potential financial winnings to OpenAI's charity.
A move that surprisingly didn't get much press.
I think you are referring to a tweet on March 16th where he said "Btw, the proceeds of any legal victory in the OpenAI case will be donated to charity. I will in no way enrich myself." Not during the trial, not a donation to OpenAI's charity, and obviously not meaningful given his track record of not following through on public statements.
Elon Musk promises a lot of things that never come to fruition.
Have we colonized Mars yet? Asking for a friend.
Getting to Mars, it would seem.
I agree we'd all be better off if SpaceX figured out how to send Musk to Mars ASAP.
Does anyone seriously still believe this? I thought as a society we had realized Musk is simply BSing whatever he feels like until it becomes untenable.
> Does anyone seriously still believe this?
I do. It’s not his singular focus. But he continues to personally invest himself in pushing the boundaries of human spacefaring capability. That goal seems more meaningful to him that it does to e.g. Bezos, who seems to have a rocket company to look cool.
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Oh, you mean like:
Solar Roof: https://electrek.co/2026/05/14/tesla-solar-roof-promise-vs-r...
Tesla Full Self Driving: https://electrek.co/2026/05/18/musk-unsupervised-fsd-widespr...
Hyperloop / Boring Company mass-transit vision
Mars settlement timelines
X as an everything app
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To build more cool stuff. Would be great if he did neurolink for cancer
Every <unit of currency> not in your pocket is in someone else’s. Greedy narcissists can’t stand that, they need to have it all. They don’t need the extra 500 billion to spend it, they need it so the number goes up. They need to be number one. At everything. Remember when Musk lied about being one of the top players for some difficult video game, then it turned out he was paying someone else to play for him? It’s just an ego thing, which I agree is baffling.
I mean, yeah. But let's play with this.
Imagine you are a billionaire. As an individual, you can buy almost anything, go almost anywhere, do almost anything.
What do you do? There's a lot of answers here but largely it is about what is meaningful such that you'd bother to keep getting out of bed in the morning.
My point, it isn't easy being - inundated with - green. Queue cliché, wealth doesn't buy happiness.
Take care of your family and friendship circle? Once you've drawn a line around who that is(not easy but not a lifetime task), done!
Crazy things like sexworkers-and-cocaine-parties-every-day will get boring after a while.
What about.... work in a soup kitchen to help the poor in person. But as you are working serving soup you realise that in minutes you've earned more wealth than everyone else in the place has in their life and so maybe to help humanity you could be doing something more big picture...
And so you end up CEOing something else... set it up with some of your money and apply heuristics again along with the levers of your wealth.
At this level of wealth, people can find something meaningful without making money. It's not impossible. They don't draw much media coverage though - boring doesn't sell.
But given there are thousands of billionaires, some of them are going to feel a bit alien or be outright morally repugnant.
Please do even the smallest bit of research so you don't make such a fool of yourself online.
Because he is an addict and one of his addictions is money
Maybe he trying to collect every waifu from every gacha game. That would get expensive in a hurry.
Because money is just a proxy for power, and the goal is not to have cash, it is to have power. Perhaps via being able to make decisions at various businesses, or being able to travel to a different planet, or being able to influence other people, etc.
Could also partly be a curiosity to see what one is capable of, or maybe wanting to be known for helming an organization that accomplishes xyz.
Why did he need a second 250 billion after the first 250 billion? Makes me think of a inverted Zeno's paradox.
Why do you need an extra dollar?
I can answer for myself: New Zealand plans to tax the shit out of anyone that has more[A].
You need a fukton more than median wealth to be able to protect yourself against your own government.
The type of person that enjoys chasing money doesn't stop.
[A] via capital gains taxes and wealth taxes. Also one needs an excessive amount more to handle progressive taxation and means testing.
I want extra money so I can pay for simple things like food and pay my mortgage and send my kid to a school, and help family members out.
Realistically I probably need $5m and I'd be set for life.
If I had $10m instead of $5m I don't see how my life would meaningfully change.
That's the difference between builders and consumers. People who are mostly consumers have a realistic number where they could stop contributing to society. Smalltime builders can imagine a lot of wealth, but at a certain point don't want to get too big. Big Dreamers are only limited by what they can imagine and make happen, and only infinite capital, labor, and time could achieve their dreams. Once you surround yourself with people dreaming of humans as multiplanetary, earthly levels of labor and wealth are obviously not going to make it happen.
> I can answer for myself: New Zealand plans to tax the shit out of anyone that has more[A].
New Zeeland is an outlier in that it doesn't have capital gains tax.
Its not the end of the world to have captial gains tax.
CGT is fine.
I wasn't trolling, but I have unfortunately deviated from the topic.
What isn't fine is my belief that I'm going to be rug-pulled by my government. From multiple sources I believe New Zealand will tax most savings to smithereens. The lie is that I should save for retirement; when any savings will be taken from me over time via a variety of mechanisms including taxes.
Both our Labour (leftish) and National parties will screw me.
The underlying issue is that our demographics leave little choice to the government. The majority of voters are naturally happy to take everything from everyone who has more than them. Voters are selfish.
Attacking the successful is called the tall-poppy syndrome down here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome (I'm nowhere near successful enough for much backlash - but I do fear it).
I was trying to make a argument based on marginal economics. NZ should be encouraging me to increase my income from export earnings: instead it drastically discourages me. I helped found a startup, so I deeply understand the multiple ways our government discourages us from earning export income. My marginal utility from an extra dollar is already drastically diminished because I already have enough to enjoy my life. The >40% taxation on top (incl GST) reduces my motivation to earn money for NZ to nearly zero. I am not a money chaser and I dislike investing.
After some threshold, money as a marginal value becomes meaningless because other non-monetary factors like politics dominate. It seems like nobody cares how much society profits from you - they only care about their own selfish goals.
It’s also not the end of the world to not have capital gains tax.
"Why did he need a second 250 billion after the first 250 billion"
because thats another 250 billion less for a competitor to use against you.
That is zero-sum thinking.
I'm not sure how one can learn to see the world in a more positive light...
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Why did you turn that into a whine about a tax that exists in 31 of 38 OECD economies?
Go to Australia where you pay a stamp duty for buying (to pay for infra) and a CGT for selling
Edit: Changed stamp tax to stamp duty
Yeah, no, this is bullshit.
You can't just apply One Simple Rule like this ("more money is always better" / "more money never makes a difference"). There is, objectively, an amount of money above which another dollar, or another billion, will never make a meaningful difference in your overall lifestyle[0].
The amount isn't a single bright line, but like with so many things, there's an area below it where extra money unquestionably improves your quality of life, and an area above it where it unquestionably doesn't.
[0] unless "your lifestyle" involves manipulating major governments and controlling the way people the world over think, which I wouldn't consider a legitimate part of "lifestyle"
> Why did he need a second 250 billion after the first 250 billion?
Because billionaires are mentally unwell.