lol - no he is not. Howard Hughes was mentally ill, didnt leave his house or shower (was a germaphobe), was super secretive (didnt meet people in person for years), never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane) and inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams.

Musk is none of those things.

> Howard Hughes was mentally ill

Not his entire career, his later decline became famous due to the scope of wealth and influence that allowed him to indulge in some truly eccentric behavior, but he didn't build said wealth & influence peeing in jars.

> never built anything important (although had a shitload of failures, like the wooden airplane)

Never built anything? How about Las Vegas? Or the several companies he founded and ran successfully across wildly divergent fields? The man designed, built and flew an aircraft that broke world speed records at the time.

> inherited a lot of his initial money and revenue streams

Seriously? Do you not know Musk's family background?

Actually the more I think about it the more I think mint2's comparison was apt, Musk really is a Hughes-like figure, quite brilliant in ways, but with a powerful thirst for publicity and corresponding need to control his image. I could see his paranoid tendencies tending to dominate in the years to come, especially if his halo fully disintegrates

Musk father was a pretty successful engineer. The twitter claim that his family is some amazing african slave owning dimond royalty is delusional.

Musk far more helpful gift was the fact that his mother was Canadian.

His father didnt want him to be in the Canada/US and didnt pay for most of it.

Musk certainly has no inhereted wealth, his father is alive.

How much did musk inherit? All I know is from the Ashley Vance book - he started zip2 in poverty then rolled that into x.com.

A couple thousand when he left South Africa for Canada as a teenager. And then about $20,000 (10% of a $200,000 seed round) when starting Zip2. That's the extent of money given to him by his parents that wasn't spent for him during when he was being reared as a child.

How do you inherit money from a dead father who is still alive?

What a brain-buster!

> Seriously? Do you not know Musk's family background?

Musk hasn't inherited hardly any money at all (a couple thousand when he left SA and a bit more later when he started his first company). I think you're the one who doesn't know Musk's background.

Shocking lack of research on your part. His mother was a supermodel and his father was/is a fairly sketchy businessman. Despite knowing his father had a dark side, he still chose to be with him after their parents divorce, signaling where his true emotions lay:

"After Maye and Errol divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna."[0]

He has had a charmed existence his entire life.

[0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-o...

Too much TV, friend.

Musk tweets accuses random people of being pedophiles on Twitter and is legally not supposed to tweet anymore about certain topics without getting prior approval. He also exhibits paranoia and often a lack of being grounded in reality.

I didn’t say he is Howard 2.0 Hugh’s, I said he’s teetering on the edge of it. If in a few years he goes full Hughes would anyone actually be surprised?

He takes a shit ton of stimulants. It should come as no surprise that he's behaving erratically.

I read somewhere that his (now ex) girlfriend Grimes once chewed him out for going on twitter whilst tripping on acid.

> inherited a lot of his initial money

Elon Musk is literally the child of an apartheid emerald mine owner.

Citation please. I've seen no actual concrete evidence that Elon inherited any significant sum of money from an "emerald mine." This seems to be one of those internet myths which lives on in forums despite no credible evidence.

What a lazy argument... Elon's father is a fairly sketchy individual, and his wealth had an obvious boost to Elon's life and upbringing.

"After Maye and Errol divorced in 1980, Elon mostly lived with his father, who says he owned thoroughbred horses, a yacht, several houses and a Cessna"[0]

"Errol returned to South Africa with a half-share in a Zambian emerald mine, which would help to fund his family's lavish lifestyle of yachts, skiing holidays, and expensive computers." [2]

[0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/04/10/2014-rocket-man-the-o...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/world/africa/elon-musk-so...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20211122143742/https://www.busin...

Nobody denies that Musk family was wealth. They were wealthy because his father was a successful engineer.

And at one point his father made a small investment in a mine. And even that is grounded on shaky evidence.

This mine investment might have been profitable (we dont know) but the idea that his family had some waste emrald mines is nonsense and that investment certainly didnt make the family rich.

And given their bad relationship, Elon lost support from his father when he came to US/Canada.

So your source is businessinsider? Elon himself says the story is bogus and when he came to the US, he came with nothing and ended up with 100k in student loan debt. And from where he lived and what he did, Elon was certainly not living some "rich man" lifestyle before the Zip2 and PayPal days, and no one who knew him in those days has shown any proof that Elon arrived in the US with any sort of wealth.

Rich man from rich family denies that his family riches contributed to his success, more at 11.

Zambia didn't have apartheid.

His dad is still alive, he hasn't "inherited" it yet.

No he isn't. His father was an engineer. Not a major mine owner.