The question is whether the damage these people made while accumulating wealth gets compensated by the good they did later. With Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller I don’t think so. With Gates I am not sure. Musk actually looks better. He has shaken up two industries that needed a good shake.
> With Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller I don’t think so. With Gates I am not sure
All 3 of them took wealth away from paper-millionaire shareholders of competing companies (eg. Netscape) and delivered superior quality of life to the consumer. Nobody sheds a tear for the paper-millionaires, rightfully so. It's only their greed which didn't make them cashout before Standard Oil/Microsoft eventually outcompeted them delivering a better product to the consumer.
Same with Facebook v. Myspace and Google v. Yahoo. Nobody sheds a tear for the shareholders of Myspace and Yahoo. Rightfully so.
Musk is robbing taxpayers in the form of subsidies and tax credits for luxury vehicles which all end up parked in front of Bel Air mansions and 5th Avenue shops.
On top of that he already said that he'll never do philantropy
> All 3 of them took wealth away from paper-millionaire shareholders of competing companies (eg. Netscape) and delivered superior quality of life to the consumer. Nobody sheds a tear for the paper-millionaires, rightfully so.
Well actually... Microsoft was almost broken up by the government for what it did to Netscape, until there was a change of US Presidential administration, after which Microsoft was given a wrist slap, and then 9/11 immediately hit, which made the issue disappear from public consciousness.
I'm not exaggerating here: the Department of Justice announced it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft in September 2001. See this article from the WSJ literally the day before 9/11: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000076767888491506
> Microsoft was almost broken up by the government for what it did to Netscape
It should have been given the medal of freedom instead...those crackpots at netscape wanted to charge people money for the browser.
Only former netscape shareholders could possibly defend Netscape.
Microsoft I will always defend, the decision by Gates and Ballmer to allow piracy enabled me and my family to always have the latest version of Windows/Word/Encarta/IE even though we were poor.
“All 3 of them took wealth away from paper-millionaire shareholders of competing companies (eg. Netscape) and delivered superior quality of life to the consumer”
Especially Carnegie made life miserable for tens of thousands of his workers. No amount of charity can make up for the amount of suffering he caused.
