News, Reviewed
June, 2026
What should we do with trillionaires?
In June, Space X went public— which resulted in founder and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk officially crossing the threshold from billionaire to trillionaire. When I think of that number, I kind of just have a blank screen in my mind. It’s hard to conceive of what that level of wealth actually is. However, I have a pretty good idea of what it isn’t, and since most of the outrage is based on an incorrect conception of wealth, it bears clearing up. Most of the left-wing activists who are outraged at the existence of the ultra-wealthy make one principal error: they believe that all the wealth in the world is a fixed pie.
According to this view, if one person has a lot of money, it follows that other people have less, and that there is therefore something inherently exploitative about wealth inequality. This is the reason many progressives harbor personal animus toward the ultra-wealthy; according to the fixed-pie paradigm, their wealth is making others poorer, and they became wealthy by taking money from others. (One exception is progressive politicians, who enjoy Congressional salaries and insider trading benefits while harping about citizen millionaires, apparently unfazed by the cognitive dissonance.)
But the fixed-pie paradigm is incorrect. It isn’t how wealth works. In a free market, capitalist system, wealth is a dynamic variable. It can be created and it can be multiplied — which is precisely how most millionaires in America become wealthy. Elon is pretty standard in his path to outsized wealth — he just happened to have an even more lucrative idea than most. Another faulty notion that needs correcting is that all wealth is liquid. Many people seem to think that Elon is sitting on a pile of one trillion dollar bills, like Smaug in his lair, or that he has one trillion dollars sitting in a bank, which he could easily withdraw and send to Gaza. Elon’s worth, like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, is not the same as liquid cash. It’s tied up in the equity he holds in his companies, which means it’s subject to dramatic fluctuation. If customers and investors no longer judge his companies’ products as valuable, then their stock and Elon’s worth could be zeroed out tomorrow. Many people don’t understand the inherent risk attached to these levels of net worth. Illustratively, at the of time of writing this, the value of SpaceX has fallen below initial IPO pricing in public markets, and Elon is no longer a trillionaire. Is he now marginally less evil?
