You forgot third: He delivers results often enough to keep the believers believing. Tesla really is an electric car company that builds actual cars. SpaceX is actually flying rockets, and has achieved reusability, opening the door for dramatically cheaper space access.

Little of that is his own genius, but he does seem to have a knack for getting actually smart people working on visionary stuff.

I wonder if all these tech-bros (tech-brahs?) spend a large amount of time getting their egos stroked by AI chatbots.

Don't want to hear any gainsays to your wisdom and business savvy, just chat with your AI pal.

Rich people don't liquidate assets when they want to buy something.

They get a loan against their assets. At extremely good rates. And no, they never pay them back. The strategy is called "buy, borrow, die".

First, you need to understand that if the stock price goes up more than their (low) interest rate, they're still making money.

Second, the whole thing is rolled up only when the ultra-rich person dies. The assets are revalued to their current market price at the time of death, wiping out decades of built-in capital gains tax liability. The estate can then sell a portion of the tax-free assets to pay off the outstanding loans.

tl;dr: They don't liquidate assets, if they did they'd have to pay taxes.

The reason for that isn't socialism, though. It's incompetence and corruption. Politics attracts the most incompetent and the most corrupt of people, always has and always will. Basically: If you're shit at everything else, you can always try making a career of telling other people what to do.

In theory. In reality, that has always been bullshit. The various bubbles, crashes and other events prove that. Valuations on the stock market are based on expectations, and expectations always include an element that is not rational.

True, though both of these companies do have an actual business and actual assets. There's plenty of companies on the stock market whose entire business can just pack up and leave tomorrow. Many of those are extremely highly valued. All the middle-men companies (ride sharing, food delivery, etc.) all work on the principle of outsourcing EVERYTHING. They hold no actual assets and their entire business model can be copied in a lazy weekend. Each and every one of them survives due to brand recognition, habit and by being just a little bit better in some way than alternatives. All of which can disappear in a week.

Tesla and SpaceX are overvalued. But they have factories and a workforce and produce things.Their value is not entirely made up.

“The Chinese,” bellowed a drunken Australian, “Chinese bloody invented nerve-splicing. Give me the mainland for a nerve job any day. Fix you right, mate”

When I was in training to be a medic (late 1980s) at a USAF hospital that also treated veterans, I asked a doc what he thought of socialized medicine.

"Look around you. That's what this is."

Een Soviet Roosha windows throw 1-in-10 peepols out, to land on a bunch of boolits 9 stories below.

While having a haart attack-ack-ack-ack.

And drinking a delightful cup of polonium tea.

Just make it so folks can purchase online gift cards and then print up their own physical version to toss in sock or stocking or something.

"Well fuck that! What is this thing? I mean, it serves no useful purpose for there to be a bunch of AI hallucinations in the middle of a financial transaction. No, I mean we shouldn't have to do this, it makes no logical sense, why is it here?"

Spin up a *nix and run M$ Apps in containers?

"Iceberg! Right Ahead!"

An newer version of me
Is she corrupted like me?
Would she go down on you in a presentation?
Does she sneak in quietly?
And would she have your system privilages?
I'm sure she'd make a really excellent doorstop.

Meeting middle-mangement scheduling goals looks good on your yearly performance review.

Gotta score that 4% raise!

Or widdershins?!!