Elon Musk Passed Bill Gates as Second Richest in the World

Elon Musk is close to passing passed Bill Gates to become the second richest person in the world. As of Sunday, Elon trailed Bill Gates by about $7 Billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaire index. Tesla stock is up to $530 in after-hours trading. The Tesla gains today added about $6.9 billion to Elon Musks net worth.

Jeff Bezos has $55 billion more than either Musk or Gates.

Tesla will need a share price of about $900 for Elon Musk to pass Jeff Bezos. This assumes Tesla has a share price surge in the next few months. The ratio of Amazon shares to Tesla shares is now 5.8 Tesla shares for one Amazon share. If Tesla reached a ratio of 3.5 Tesla shares to one Amazon share then Elon Musk would pass Bezos to become the richest person in the world.

SOURCES- Google Finance, Bloomberg Billionaire index
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

67 thoughts on “Elon Musk Passed Bill Gates as Second Richest in the World”

  1. I'm not a *Randroid* libertarian, and no expert, but seem to remember that they were making a point about "the engine of the World" or something, even while hiding in self defense. A great read.

  2. I meant exactly that. He is an Atlas, who has still not Shrugged. Bill Gates, Henry Ford etc. being others who have carried the world on their shoulders.

  3. I wouldn't have called it a "strike" myself.
    I would have interpreted a strike as withholding labour until demands are met. In that book there were no demands, they actually kept themselves secret.
    Not like going on strike, much more like quitting the job and going off on your own.

  4. Nobody mentioned terraforming. Where did this terraforming come from? Is there some newspaper or TV show somewhere that said Musk's plan includes terraforming?

  5. You appear to have misunderstood a couple of things. No great surprise if you've been following this subject in the Mainstream media, which can't deal with any subject more complex than "football celebrity catches ball"
    1) No terraforming. Musk isn't trying to terraform Mars. That isn't the plan. Whoever you saw talking about "terraforming" was confusing real life with a series of books written by Kim Stanley Robinson a couple of decades ago.
    2) That whole solar wind thing is a gross exaggeration anyway. Yes, solar wind stripped the atmosphere off Mars, and the current best guess is that it took half a billion years. Half a billion. Any human project to put an atmosphere on Mars is going to be able to add a bit more every hundred million years or so.
    3) Is Musk personally a nice guy? No idea, and I don't see how it's relevant. I think any attempt to diagnose someone with psychiatric issues based on media reports (the same media that reported this terraforming and solar wind thing?) is equally deluded and hubristic.

  6. "is the surface of a planet the right place for an expanding tech civilization?" "you need energy generation, smelting, printing/manufacturing, life support systems, repair facilities " all of which are clearly and obviously better done in Space. I suggest bringing some polar rego to the ISS with Starship cargo and start experimenting. Then tow or replicate or expand equipment to Gateway Halo, for better lunar delivery to and from, to build mass driver. L5, the works. Why try to live on Moon? Why on Earth try to do industry there??

  7. Except for new science about humans, which go back to ~7 million years ago, I agree with most of what you say. But the things you mention are superficial manifestations of a big problem, repression as Janov describes. Addiction is based upon the ability of the addictive substance, belief or behavior to *help* repress. We were discussing gov, so power addiction comes to mind, but also Musk is *addicted* to Mars ideas. It is the dangerous addictions we should worry about first, and knowing that power addicts can be cured is a good start.

  8. Exactly. What we need is someone responsible and who has pleasant personality. Someone who can appear to lead, not be abrasive, and sound like they know what they're doing. A corporate CEO wearing a suit, who calls meetings and is responsive to the demands of Wall Street. Highly conscious of PR and image.

    Hmm… who might that be? Perhaps, someone like Jeff Immelt, who was able to reign GE for decades, while running it into the ground. Yes, this is the kind of guy that deserves admiration! He would have *never* offended Thai divers.

  9. Individual states are democratic republics. The US is a federation of them (a "federated state") with a republican form of government.

    The republican form of government requires a cohesive, non-dumb societal elite. We are long past that, and it is getting worse, not better with every year, at a faster and faster pace.

    90%+ of the ones currently in charge of the country are members of soulless bureaucracy of various agencies — aka the deep state, aka the swamp — with short-time horizon, and a vision that stretches to, at best a couple decades (at best). Many are hired as diversity hires, to meet the quotas imposed by de facto state religion of Progressivism (a branch of Unitarian Universalism, if you wish to explore the history of Harvard).

    It is time to switch to monarchical form, even if implicit, while preserving quasi independence of states in the federation and capitalism. It is also important to dethrone the religion of Progressivism and its tentacles in HR departments and various academic institutions and "think-tanks." A new — state religion — if you will. The tough task is figuring out who truly is worthy of being a dictator/de facto King.

    Being a libertarian in the current environment is akin to being an ostrich. At best, useless. At worst, life-threatening. The current Constitution is being used like toilet paper by people who are supposed to respect and abide by it — and expecting them to play by the rules is no longer wise.

  10. It will be several decades before space industrialization can happen. Moon industrialization will come first. Simply because it is much easier and faster to co-locate things together, instead of stretching and distributing the supply chain. Mining requires human presence (at least, initially), then you need energy generation, smelting, printing/manufacturing, life support systems, repair facilities etc. Once mass-driver tech and space robotics are perfected, it will then be possible to truly industrialize space and build O'Neill's cylinders etc. But Moon comes first.

  11. Musk is a deluded narcissistic man-child. His jealous attacks on the divers that rescued the Thai cave children proved that.

    I'm a huge sci-fi fan, and while I love the idea of advanced space exploration technology, it's pretty widely accepted that you can't terraform Mars with even unbelievably advanced technology as the solar wind will blow any atmosphere away, and who wants to live on a sterile rock? Maybe Elon just wants to be King of Mars.

    It would be hugely more feasible to repair the problems that we have on Earth than terraform a whole new planet anyway.

    My thoughts are that Musk will probably be going after mining resources that are abundant in space but rare on Earth, and that a permanent large Mars colony will remain science fiction for the forseeable future.

  12. Check out Henry George, and adjust to be libertarian as needed. You would get "rent" for natural stuff you did not use, but pay for stuff you did, beyond your *share*. Anything you create is yours.

  13. We live in a "limited government constitutional republic", not a democracy, here in the US, or used to. Vote/be libertarian.

  14. Exactly. The primarily telebotic presence on Moon is merely for mining, and may not be needed at all if asteroids are better. The "industrialization" happens in free Space, for OBVIOUS reasons.

  15. You are defining "O'Neill" as Island 3 settlement, yet ISS is also O'Neill. It is CLEARLY easier than Moon or Mars hab. All things are easier in Space than in a gravity prison, esp things in a gravity prison you have to go thru Space to get to. This is easy to see, yet most cannot even ponder it as a possibility. See the comments on the Starship watching site for what I am up against, for over 4 decades. "a whole mining and manufacturing industry from space resources " is exactly the O'Neill plan. In Space! NOW, not after Mars!

  16. I am an uber-capitalist, with skin in the game, so don't get me wrong. If someone invented a cure for all cancer and cornered the pharma market illegally, bought politicians to pass laws preventing any competitors, would we hail the inventor for bringing good to mankind regardless of business and ethical conduct? Gates/Bezos/Musk et al did not invent the cure for cancer. I rather celebrate Jonas Salk who cured polio, tried it on himself first, and gave the invention to humanity. And if he had made money on this, I would still celebrate him. Because he wasn't the kind of person who would hurt others to do good and make a living.

  17. The Tesla valuation is based on folks believing there will be an enormous increase in sales. That is a risky assumption.

  18. Personally, I want to live in a nation where individuals are allowed to keep the majority of wealth created by their own hard work. And what I also would like is a tax system that requires a contribution from everyone, either in the form of a minimum tax payment or in the form of public service work of equal value.

  19. The belief that power concentration is good as long as it helps to bring more progress is only partially correct and tolerated only in the third density realm.
    A 4th density understanding is that power concentration of any kind should be allowed only to the degree and duration that allows to facilitate completion of certain tasks deemed necessary on a regular or a temporal basis accompanied by an efficient distribution of the benefits to the entire population and the disbandment of the control systems when better distributed system are become possible.
    In any task, group participation and involvement should be maximized while that of central control minimized to the reasonable degree possible.
    People with true market orientation, as well as true communists, will be able to agree on this.

  20. How does it make your life worse

    If there exist people who are rich (a comparative term that means "at least 20% more wealthy than me") then they will tend to purchase the limited goods (such as scenic beachside real estate near or in the major cities) and price it out of my reach.

    I want to be the one who purchases the scenic beachside real estate near or in the major cities and price it out of reach of poor people (a term that means people who are at least 20% less wealthy than me).

    Generations ago, the strictly limited goods included all sorts of things, from medical care to food and transport (only enough feed to support X many horses in this area). But most of these problems have been solved these days. That horrible, gaia destroying mass production means that even unskilled labour can afford pizza, generic medicines and a 1990s car. But [nice] real estate is still very limited.

    One other good has gotten even more scarce: The most desirable member of the opposite sex that you've ever seen. When 95% of the population lived in villages of 100 people or so, there were only 10 age appropriate possible life partners you'd ever meet. You had a 10% chance of getting the golden prize! These days everyone has seen thousands and thousands of possible mates, and video of thousands more, including hundreds selected from being the top choice out of millions. Sometimes explicitly so. Good luck with that.

  21. "Iran has enriched 12x times the uranium it had in 2016."

    Still a drop in the bucket compared to what Israel has. Perhaps they will share some with their soon to be Arab allies.

    Perhaps 'Drumpf' will bomb their centrifuges back to the stone age on his way out."

  22. Pedantic nitpick, Ayn Rand's "Atlas" was the exact opposite.

    That story was about when all the rich tech entrepreneurs decided to stop doing commercial tech development and went away to hide while leaving everything up to the government agencies.

  23. It is because many people naively associate — no, truly believe — the "democratically-elected/representative government" with "we, the people." But, in practice, the two are different.

  24. Yes. First, humanity needs to fully industrialize the Moon. Then we can implement O'Neill's ideas. In fact, I suspect — but cannot prove — that colonizing Mars for multi-generational settlement will prove fruitless, in the long-term, due to lack of proper gravity, albeit I'm sure we will derive benefits from industrializing Mars's moons, and maybe Mars itself.

    But all this industrialization will have to utilize robotics, predominantly. Humans will be there, too, but in bare minimum numbers, to be able to achieve the aforementioned milestones.

  25. Threatening to move millions to Mars?

    Did you mean promising to move millions to Mars? A threat implies this is a bad thing.

  26. Musk will be able to spend all that money in colonizing Mars as his private profitless venture before Blue Origin launches New Glenn.

    My son will be living on Elonpolis on Titan before New Armstrong lifts off.

  27. I'd say the biggest asset Tesla has at this point is the intellectual property they've amassed in their self-driving software. It's hard to quantify, but when I look at the dashboard image of the car driving itself I am amazed, as a software developer myself. It's easy to conceptualize these things, but it's another thing to actually build it. I would wager a guess that it's at least half of the valuation of the company.

  28. If they were just taking from everyone else and not building/leaving anything (new technologies, systems etc.) for the rest of us you might have had a point. That is the point of capitalism after all, as opposed to government controlling resources for the rulers simple self aggrandizement. If we were not making a conscious choice to buy their products and services for our own needs, they would not be rich. There is nobody forcing us to buy, so obviously they are bringing something to the table we need or want.

  29. I really like O'Neill's ideas, really, but for the moment (the next few decades) the numbers don't add up.

    Even at $100 USD per kg to LEO, any O'Neill habitat will still cost trillions.

    We could get far, far more built on a planet or the Moon for that money.

    The numbers can add up later, though. When we have built a whole mining and manufacturing industry from space resources (O'Neill himself saw this), the automation required for it, and the methods to launch them cheaply and easily to space again.

    That will take take time, several decades, to happen.

    Therefore SpaceX, BO et al will need to take shorter steps. Do small term investments that produce them gains in order to continue investing. And that's focusing on launches, ships and habs on LEO, MEO, the Moon and Mars, in that order (that's just physics and travel times).

  30. What about Space X and Starlink? Musk owns a big chunk of these two companies. They do get valued for private security sales. I would say Musk is well on his way to number 1.

  31. For me riches are never a problem. Lack of them is.

    The billionaires are just human. They will get old and die as everyone else. And they won't take their billions with them. Their riches remain on this world (even if they aren't on this same planet).

    Also, these people don't just hoard money under a huge mattress. They own companies, create jobs and are a source of wealth for thousands, often more. They are walking public assets.

    People hating on some individuals because they can gather a lot more wealth than the rest, tend to forget the social benefits having these peaks of wealth has. The more there are in any country, the better.

    And with that kind of wealth, they can be civilization movers, if they so choose.

  32. It depends on whether you need or like *control*. Which is not always a good thing without effort and understanding!

  33. I'm Linux user since Java came out, but not expert. About 7 years ago, my boss would call IIS "Inherently Insecure Server". We would use Active Directory, tho.

  34. the idea of branding Tesla a car company is the problem, its a tech company and battery company that also makes some cars

  35. I do have good things to say about IIS though, even though I'm primarily a Linux admin. If you're running newer versions of Plessis on a Windows box, it's easy to recycle an app pool to get rid of 504 errors LOL. Gotta love them band-aids!

  36. I'm a Linux systems administrator and I started using Linux way before that, back in 2004. If youhave a time-tested distribution like Ubuntu which is used by lots of people as a Windows replacement, you get used to it after the curve. Usually. It can be steep, though.

    What finally won me over for good, was that I had a friend who showed me the difference between Unreal Tournament 2007 <or whatever year it was before UT3> running in Windows versus the Linux port it was shipped with, both on the same PC (mine). And the Linux port absolutely screamed by at full settings while the Windows version on full settings choked, HARD. I was hooked

  37. LOL thanks, I suppose it was intended. xD I agree with Dan Lantz, certainly should have been and should still BE an international emergency priority project.

  38. Note that Musk is making money with cars, Bezos with delivery/sales. Space is the big future, next. Bezos owns Blue Origin outright, I'm sure?, but Musk has other owners in SpaceX. Bezos understands O'Neill, Musk has to be bribed to look away from Mars, a gravity prison. Bezos clearly ahead, given that O'Neill is right.

  39. They "who seem to despise a freemarket system" are usu power addicts, so the *free* (non violent) part of free market is unacceptable. Then, when it comes to Space, they are usu *small world*, which compounds the problem. Ideally, they will not go to Space.

  40. Why is it a problem that Elon Musk is rich? How does it make your life worse, or any other persons life for that matter?

  41. Dark. The Next Big Thing is about celebrating that a few galactically wealthy-power-influential decide our future? Not that this is anything new, human civilization is built on a handful controlling everyone else. But nowadays, when we are supposed to be enlightened, we seem to cheer it on. Rockefeller (his secret path to monopoly), Ford (Society Department), Gates (software bundling), Musk (tax credits), Bezos (price controls), Buffet (BNSF purchase via Obama pipeline block), the list is endless. Power corrupts, nothing new. But it also shifts huge risks (and costs) on everyone else. I suppose our stupid DNA is to press the "like" button when we can kicked in the groin.

  42. What would you prefer – a soviet style centralised decision making system representing the proletariat? Nasa is doing a good job being them. More jobs being their motto.

    Elon Musk is the Atlas of Ayn Rand and leading the creation of the next big future. Be grateful!

  43. You are definitely in a minority. I tried linux a couple of decades ago and it was just a pain. I see no reason to switch to Macbooks as well, but I understand they are a good substitute for some people.

  44. Far better a system that allows people to become a "bit megalomaniac" with billions of dollars through their own entrepreneurial efforts, than what I suspect you call "better options". NASA had become a bureaucracy that strived to garner more pork funding from DC than push the envelope and advance the space race. Never understood folks like yourself who seem to despise a freemarket system that produces so much wealth while pining for a government monopoly to take over all things.

    Space and the dream of the frontier are opening up again thanks to those horrible billionaires like Musk – NOT government.

  45. We don't need that, but if that gets us reusable rockets, cheaper space access and space settlement in this half of the century, I have no problem at all if E. Musk becomes a trillionaire from it.

    Life and its long term survival are way more important than envy. And billionaire space programs are as good a method for propagating life as any other (that work).

    My personal opinion.

  46. So in order to reach Mars and return, we need to create an income inequality in the form of one, a bit megalomaniac person who is threatening to move million of people to the Red planet, worth ten time the size of the annual budget of NASA? I know for a fact that there are better options.

  47. There is a LOT out there of which we could take advantage. I'm sad that companies like Planetary Resources never got off the ground (no pun intended).

  48. As a Space development proponent, having the two richest trying to out perform each other on that very goal is a good thing. Space will soon be the source of riches, not an expensive hobby. edit: Just read a long story about Musk-Bezos rivalry, primarily about Space, and O'Neill was not mentioned. Mars was.

  49. Tesla should be planning to transition to becoming a mobility company. This could lead to a Tesla share price above $5,000.

  50. I wonder too.

    But in general, it seems our fates and daily lives are more tied than ever to whatever happens with these super-rich people.

    Elon Musk in particular, is in a personal crusade to make humans multiplanetary. And that can change history books for everyone.

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