The Rise:
In 1324, during his legendary pilgrimage to Mecca, Mansa Musa showed the world he was, at least, the wealthiest man of his time. In the modern day, we understand him to be the richest person to have ever lived, with most modern estimates of his wealth being around $400 billion according to CelebrityNetworth.
On December 17th, 2024, Elon Musk surpassed this estimate at his peak, his net worth reached a staggering $464 billion according to Forbes. If his net worth were a country, it would have the 35th highest GDP in the world, according to Worldpopulationreview. John D. Rockefeller was worth 1.5% of the US GDP, according to the Harvard Business School. Elon Musk’s wealth accounted for 1.6% of the US GDP (.3% is spent on Foreign aid, according to Brookings). Forbes described him as “the wealthiest entrepreneur in modern history,”.
Musk’s power extended beyond business, influencing the structure of the US government as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Elon Musk, with the backing of the president, fired government workers, gained access to sensitive government data, and even attempted to eliminate all agencies from the government, according to Harvard Kennedy School.
While the industrial titans of the Gilded Age (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt) built vast monopolies and consolidated massive amounts of power, Musk’s reach in the modern era is arguably more significant. He doesn’t just hold near-incomprehensible wealth; he shapes public policy, owns one of the most used social media sites on earth, and can shift the financial market with a single tweet. Unlike the Gilded Age “robber barons” of the 19th century, whose power relied on their control of physical industry, Musk’s influence extends into the abstract economy of the modern day.
Elon Musk’s financial dominance was unopposed; Musk’s wealth eclipsed that of the second richest person alive, Jeff Bezos, by more than double. Tesla’s rapid rise catalyzed Musk’s fortune. In 2024, Tesla’s stock hit $480 per share, giving it a market cap of $1.6 trillion, more than the entire value of Meta (formerly Facebook). If Tesla were a country, its market capitalization would rank it as the 16th largest economy in the world, surpassing Indonesia’s GDP by $120 billion. To put his wealth into perspective, earning $1 per second nonstop would take 14,713 years to match Musk’s fortune and 50,735 years to reach Tesla’s valuation, which is longer than recorded history.
The Fall:
When it comes to public opinion, Elon Musk and Tesla might as well mean the same thing, and even though this was good when people called Elon the real-life Iron Man, this is a risky strategy because if people stop liking Elon, Tesla stock will tank. According to Pew Research, 54% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Elon Musk, with 36% having a very unfavorable view of him. This fall in popularity could be because of several issues people may have with him, from his alliance with the far right to his cheating in video games, though the primary factor is the former.
A new partisan divide formed in the late 2000s and early 2010s; people on the right widely stopped believing in climate change, according to NPR. This means people who prioritize climate change tend to be liberals or leftists, and since electric cars appeal to this demographic, most of Tesla’s cars are sold to liberals and leftists. By aligning himself with the far right, Elon Musk alienated Tesla’s largest customer base, jeopardizing the company’s market dominance. Worse, Tesla is no longer the only option for EVs. For example, Tesla’s competitor, BYD, recently released an electric car that can fully charge in five minutes, a third of the fastest charge time of any Tesla, according to Futurism.com.
All of this happening at the same time would be catastrophic for Elon’s wealth and Tesla stock prices, and it is. Tesla’s stock price dropped 53% from its December highs, which is a loss of around $800 billion which is like if Ford, Subaru, Mazda, Toyota, Nissan, Rivian, Honda, Ferrari, Porsche Mercedes-Benz, Aston Martin, Hyundai, Kia, VW, GM, and BMW combined went to zero. Tesla’s stock price fell so much that Elon Musk’s Tesla holdings aren’t even the majority of his wealth anymore; his most valuable asset is now his shares in SpaceX, according to The Daily Beast. On the topic of Elon’s wealth, he lost $121 billion, which is equivalent to the total net worth of Bill Gates. This unprecedented loss set a world record for the worst loss of fortune in history, according to CBS.
This loss may be shocking, but it was far from unexpected. Tesla is a massively overvalued company, with a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 115, far exceeding the industry norm, where the sector median is around 15. The P/E ratio is used to compare company valuations within the same industry; a significantly higher ratio often indicates that the market expects strong future growth or that the stock is overvalued. Tesla does not and has not shown strong enough signs of growth to justify its current valuation. During the fourth quarter of 2024, when the stock price was its highest, Tesla made less than $4 billion in profit while being valued at $1.6 trillion according to the New York Times.
The primary reason investors are so bullish on Tesla is that Elon Musk claims autonomous vehicles are just a year away, but he has been saying this since 2014, according to Jalopnik. This is a problem because if Tesla isn’t the first to figure out autonomous vehicles, the company might as well be worthless. Elon Musk even admitted this in an interview, saying that without full self-driving, Tesla is “worth basically zero.” Though the current leader in self-driving cars is not Tesla, but Waymo, according to IoT World Today.
Elon Musk is aware that things are bleak, and he has been aggressively trying to boost Tesla stock. Claiming in response to a Jon Erlichman tweet that he thinks there is a way for Tesla’s value to increase 1000% in the next five years, saying, “It will require outstanding execution, but I think more like 1000% gain for Tesla in 5 years is possible”. Elon has asked Tesla employees to hold their stocks as prices drop, telling them to “hang onto your stock”. The CEO has even enlisted the help of the president of the United States, with Donald Trump buying a Tesla on national television; the president even had notes of what to say.
At this year’s Tesla Live, Elon claimed that we are headed toward a future where everyone can have anything they want and that the “key to that is robotics and AI”. Elon Musk continued with similar claims, asserting that he believes that the Tesla robot, Optimus, will become the biggest product ever, claiming it will be 10 times larger than the second-biggest product ever created. Elon has always made bold claims about Tesla, but never before has he talked about the company’s stock price so bluntly.
In the most recent April earnings call, it was revealed that Tesla is down 71% in profit. He also once again brought up a possible path to Tesla being the biggest company in the world and being worth the five next biggest combined. He also promised full self-driving in major cities next year for the first time since the last time. Normally, after this, you would see major excitement and a massive increase in stock price, and though the stock price is up over the past 5 days year to date, it’s down. Not only are earrings down, not only is public opinion down, not only are they no longer the only EV game in town, but the company isn’t even the leader in self-driving cars anymore.
Lastly, Elon’s personal life has been disastrous. One of his many baby mamas publicly said that she has been trying to get a hold of him privately, but couldn’t, so she had to make a post on Twitter (X) begging him to help her give their child the medical care he needs. In a “recent” stream of his in which he played Path of Exile, a game he claims to be one of the best in the world at, his chat was filled with trolls claiming to be the mother of his children, begging him to talk to them, or telling him to kill himself. He then died to the tutorial boss and ended the stream. Even more recently, he has said he will start to step away from government, claiming that he wants to focus on Tesla, though many speculate that it is because of the negative comments he gets.
School Opinion:
Professor Cohen, who believes there should not be billionaires, argues that once money gets to the huge numbers talked about in this article, it becomes odd to think about wealth. Elon Musk describes himself as “cash-poor”. He argues that if Elon Musk attempts to use the unbelieve amount of money he should have access to he would need to sell his stocks, this would cause anyone paying attention to the stock market to notice the drop and then sell those stocks causing a kind of domino effect which would lead to a incredible lose of wealth for Elon since most of his money is held up almost entirely in stocks.
Ethan Hsu, a year-two student at Bard, believes that Elon Musk represents much of what is wrong with the US government. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get our current president elected, and he is abusing his power in DOGE by conducting mass firings. Worse, he does not get congressional approval for his actions, disregarding the Constitution. He is an unelected official acting seemingly without limits. In summary, Ethan believes that Elon Musk is a Dangerous man.
Professor Meskill thinks there are two possible reasons Tesla’s stock is going down. The first reason this is happening could be because the quality of Tesla products is not high enough, such as the disaster of the Cyber Truck release, and worse than that is the fact that Tesla is being outdone by other companies. A possible second reason for the decline is the fact that public opinion of Elon is very low, and people’s view of Tesla might as well be the same as people’s view of Elon Musk, and because of this fact as people’s view on Elon Musk worsens less people will buy Tesla leading to a decline in stock price.
Aeryn, a year one, finds it irritating the role Elon Musk is taking in government, saying that no one wants him there and they think that if he remains unchecked, things could go poorly for the country.