Source of this article: Times Weekly Author: Liu Muxuan
Musk was named The 2021 Person of the Year by Time magazine, which caused dissatisfaction among many.
Critics have charged Musk with tax evasion, contempt for the covid-19 pandemic, manipulation of financial markets and other "charges" to prove that he is "unworthy of the position". Warren, the standard-bearer of the liberal democratic party in the United States, also tweeted directly that he hoped that the "Person of the Year" could really pay taxes and stop "stealing money" from others.
However, Musk, who is more social media-savvy and not short of money, quickly punched critics in the face. He said publicly on Dec. 20, "Tell those who are curious that I will pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year."
Musk's tax tweets have slapped critics in the face, but there are still people who question that he paid too little tax in previous years. (Source: Social Media Screenshot)
As the founder of electric car maker Tesla and space rocket maker SpaceX, Musk became the world's richest man earlier this year. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk's personal wealth reached $243 billion, while Tesla was valued at about $1 trillion and SpaceX was valued at about $100 billion.
"If you open your eyes for two seconds, you understand that I'm going to pay more taxes this year than any American in history," Musk said.
The richest internet celebrity who "calls the wind and rain"
The 50-year-old Musk still maintains a childlike curiosity, especially like those imaginative challenge projects.
That's why Musk has dabbled so widely, from cryptocurrencies and robots to electric cars, brain-computer chips and even rocket and satellite launches, and his super mobility and extraordinary diligence have allowed him to achieve in these seemingly unreliable projects.
Musk is undoubtedly the elite of the elite, but he is keen to stand with retail investors and otaku, in tweets, self-exaggerating, expressing love packages, not surprisingly deadly, and sometimes even appear to lack sufficient quality and education. He has said that at least half of his tweets were "done on a ceramic throne" in the toilet.
Such a grounded world richest man, it is difficult not to circle fans. On Weibo alone in China, he has been on at least 74 hot searches this year.
Musk with SpaceX's rockets. (Source: Diplomatic Review)
As of now, Musk has 67.27 million Twitter followers, and his influence has also caused headaches for the US financial industry.
In January, a tweet from Musk became a catalyst for soaring share price at video game retailer GameStop. The troubled company, led by the US retail investor forum Wallstreetbets and Musk, pushed its stock price from $20 to a high of $469.42 in just three weeks, cutting a handful of Leeks from Wall Street capitalists.
So much so that Bloomberg columnist Levin wrote in February that "in today's financial industry, companies are valued not based on their cash flow, but on how close they are to Musk."
Musk has also actively promoted virtual currencies, even including Dogecoin, which was born as a joke. Even though U.S. securities regulators were forced to hand over a $20 million fine and resign as Tesla's chairman after accusing him of using tweets for securities fraud in 2018, Musk continued to irritate the regulator's nerves.
The impact of Musk's tweets on the Dogecoin price index. (Source: Tradingview)
After Musk added the hashtag #Bitcoin to his Twitter profile in January, the price of Bitcoin rose by 11% immediately. Not only that, he also tried to accept customers to pay for Tesla cars with bitcoin this year, but later he repeatedly repented, and each time it caused a shock in the coin market.
Musk's impact on financial markets is a no-brainer, and it can even devalue his wealth.
In order to exercise his stock options that expire in 2022, Musk should partially sell his Tesla shares. This was not a well-known information, but Musk made a big fuss about the matter and publicly launched a vote on Twitter on November 6, claiming to "ask for the consent of Twitter users."
That caused Tesla shares, once at all-time highs, to fall by about a quarter in just a few days, the company's market capitalization evaporated by about $60 billion, and Musk's personal wealth depreciated by almost the same value.
But for Musk, who does not buy a luxury house or a yacht, making money is only a means, not an end. As of Dec. 23, Musk had fulfilled nearly 90 percent of his stock sale pledges and had scraped together $11 billion in taxes.
An industrial giant who works hard
"I'm thinking about quitting my job and being a full-time, influencer," Musk's Dec. 10 tweet sparked renewed buzz. Perhaps only those who have truly worked with him for a long time will understand that many of Musk's controversial tweets are the product of his work to the point of exhaustion.
Musk's work intensity far exceeds that of 996, and he spends 80-90 hours on key projects at Tesla and SpaceX 7 days a week.
Even so, Musk's career is full of setbacks. He founded the American version of Alipay PayPal' predecessor, X.com, but was voted off by the board of directors while out on vacation; when he tried to start the electric car and commercial rocket industry on a zero basis, he was regarded by everyone as a liar.
In 1995, at the age of 24, Musk founded his first company, Zip2. (Source: Time Magazine)
During the 2008 financial crisis, Tesla nearly went bankrupt, and even after the company went public in 2010, it was not completely out of trouble, and faced crises many times. During that time, Musk would often sleep in the factory when production capacity was tight, trying to solve the assembly line problem himself. When Tesla's electric car was successful, Musk lost his position as chairman of Tesla's board of directors in August 2018.
In June 2012, Musk spoke at his Fremont, California, U.S. plant. (Source: Reuters)
Similar to Tesla, SpaceX has also nearly bankrupted Musk many times, its first rocket, the Falcon, failed three times before entering orbit in 2008, and "SpaceX's rocket exploded again" once became a laughing stock.
Today, the autistic South African is able to bring the U.S. government and industry to his ambitions.
Tesla has become an unquestioned pioneer in the global electric vehicle industry, driving a number of traditional car companies to devote themselves to the production of electric vehicles, which is particularly precious in this era when low carbon has become a global consensus. In October, car rental giant Hertz also announced plans to buy 100,000 Tesla vehicles, a large order with a total price of about $4.2 billion that became the largest deal ever for electric vehicles and locked in about 10% of Tesla's annual production capacity.
SpaceX, on the other hand, has almost revived the trough of U.S. spaceflight, and its rocket recovery technology has matured, and it won an exclusive contract from NASA in April to be responsible for the next lunar landing of American astronauts. Compared with other "more playful" plutocrats involved in the space industry, Musk's dream of colonizing Mars seems more real.
Perhaps it is through countless failures that Musk will maintain confidence and enthusiasm for seemingly hopeless careers, and his cosmic ambitions may also make him "disdainful" of being responsible for certain things on Earth.
The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on April 23 for the International Space Station. (Source: European Space Agency)
Musk is still trying to force tesla factories to start during this year's epidemic prevention and control period, and his company that produces solar tiles has also been in business difficulties, and he also warned that SpaceX may go bankrupt. Musk's Starlink program hopes to launch 42,000 satellites, but the project's occupation of low-Earth orbit and space junk problems remains unsolved, and his super underground tunnel project has been pointed out by critics as less efficient and fair than ordinary subways.
Not only that, Musk's support for virtual currency also contradicts his purpose of supporting electric vehicles to reduce carbon, and the mining behavior of virtual currency itself will consume a lot of electricity.
Meanwhile, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has launched an investigation into Tesla's self-driving system, which has caused frequent accidents this year, and Tesla has also been sentenced to compensate a black employee for racism this year for $137 million.
"He was a humanist, not a good man, greedily pursuing the sense of glory that would advance all of humanity," commented Zubrin, an old friend of Musk's and founder of the Mars Society. But in a sense Musk is also wise, he understands that he has limited time, so he does not want to be bound by rules."