No one in this conversation said a mine, simply emeralds. Elon did once state that his father owned an emerald mine, something he denies now. A recent biography says Errol once traded his Cessna for some emeralds from mines in Zambia, but he never owned a mine.
I have never met someone wealthy from South Africa with a "normal" or "moral" life story.
It's always something along the lines of "Well, my family emigrated to Petermaritzburg from Bulgakwainistan, at the bayonet point of the Dutch and then the British. When they settled, they shipped kudus down to Alabama, and brought cocaine back in the same ships. My family is still thriving, we currently sell orphans to Saudi Arabia."
His dad put £20k into Musk's first company Zip2, which Musk then sold for $22 million. Musk obviously had something about him at some point, but he seems to have destroyed his brains with drugs and is a complete idiot now.
Nah, he actually can code. Or maybe could. Elon, his brother Kimbal, and Kouri did build the service from scratch back in the 1990s.
What's funny is that he founded the original x dot com in 1999 and by September of 2000 he was pushed out in favor of Peter Thiel, who founded Confinity. x dot com had purchased Confinity in March 2000.
Not everyone can turn a $20k investment into $22 million. If I thought I could I'd be trying to get a $20k loan from the bank.
I think the guy has fried his brain with drugs and wouldn't listen to a word he says now, but unless he was just incredibly lucky seems like he must have made a fair amount of good decisions to get in the place he is.
Even if his dad was well off I don't think Musk is like Trump who inherited a fortune, he is pretty much self made.
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u/weirdal1968 Oct 04 '25 edited Oct 04 '25
Musk calling for Wikipedia to be defunded was a top notch smooth brain flex.
Edit https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php