alt Hacker NewsThere’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the mechanics & incentive structure here:
Take Mr. World’s First Trillionaire, Elon Musk. He doesn’t have a dragon’s horde, his money is almost entirely invested in SpaceX and Tesla, building things he wants to build. SpaceX didn’t IPO so he could have bragging rights with his Forbes list peers, it IPO’d because it was the most efficient way to get more capital to grow and achieve its various strategic aims—largely set by Elon and its other preexisting owners.
You can take that away either proactively by making such ownership structures impossible or retroactively through taxation forcing current ownership to sell, but the end result is the same: No incentive for folks like Musk or Bezos to use their skills on big, ambitious, capital-intensive enterprises. Control is what matters, not $.
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Even if only 5% of his NW is in cash, that'd be $50billion dollars in actual liquid cash. Even if it's 1% or less, he almost certainly has over $1bn in cash or practically liquid cash. That's already a dragon's hoard.
It's possible to have more than one reason for getting $75 billion from public markets. Paying off $20 billion of loans from people you don't want to owe money to (who, as far as I could tell, SpaceX borrowed money from to pay off people you really don't want to owe money to) and getting a really big number associated with your name are not mutually exclusive, and from Musk's previous actions (getting large compensation packages approved by conflicted boards) he obviously does want that number.