> But like I mentioned above if owning a profitable mine of some type was all it took to be an entrepreneur at Musk's level we would be drowning in them and he wouldn't be such a big deal in the first place.

I don't have an opinion on how big being born wealthy plays in his success. Just curious though -- how many profitable mines do you think are in operation and how many people do you think own them as a percentage of total global population?

What level of profit did the mine bring in? That's the real question that I've never seen an answer to.

You can own a gold mine in the California mountains and come out of it with nothing but debt. It would sound like you're rich in the newspaper stories, though.

> What level of profit did the mine bring in? That's the real question that I've never seen an answer to.

Who has time for ascertaining the facts when there are politically derived narratives to promote.

Mines specifically? No idea. But come from backgrounds if wealth and privilege comparable to what Musk had from his families Emerald mines? A huge number.

Think farms, family businesses, real estate empires, even just well known doctors or other professionals.

Elon Musks family were comfortably upper middle class but really nothing special in terms of wealth. There would be hundreds of thousands of American families as rich alone.

This assumes that everyone who has lots of money and advantages chooses to try to run companies. That's not the case at all. I grew up around ultra-wealthy people and many of them wanted to focus on the arts.

So you have a small sample size - extremely wealthy people. Then you cut that down massively again - those people who also want to run businesses. Then a bunch of other things to narrow the pool lol. But then, finally, you cut it down to "and then the ones who succeed".

I don't think, at that point, the numbers are going to be behind you.

Wow, even being critical of Musk can’t prevent the downvotes if you dare mention some of his accomplishments.