Posted by It is well-known that it’s expensive to be poor, but a corollary is that it’s very cheap to be rich. For instance if you or I wanted to live in an 8,000-square-foot lakefront mansion, we would probably have to buy it or pay rent or something; it would cost us money. But if you’re the richest person in the world you are pretty much assured a warm welcome at any lakefront mansion you care to sleep at. I suppose it helps if the mansion is owned by one of your buddies from your PayPal days but honestly I doubt that’s a requirement; I just don’t think a lot of mansion owners are going to turn away Elon Musk. Anyway:
“My primary home is literally a ~50k house in Boca Chica/Starbase that I rent from SpaceX,” he tweeted this June, referring to a Texas town near the Mexican border near SpaceX’s rocket-launch facility. “It’s kinda awesome though.”
What Mr. Musk hasn’t said, and what few people know, is that for roughly a year he has also been living in a waterfront estate in Austin owned by a rich friend nicknamed “Kenny,” people familiar with the matter say—a home so extravagant that it was the most expensive listed in the Texas capital when it was sold just a few years ago. …
The Austin home where Mr. Musk stays is owned by Ken Howery, a billionaire in his own right who has known Mr. Musk for decades. … Mr. Howery co-founded PayPal Holdings Inc. —where Mr. Musk was an executive early in his career—and later, with famed investor Peter Thiel, co-founded Founders Fund, the venture-capital fund that has backed several of Mr. Musk’s companies.
This seems somehow related to the Elon Markets Hypothesis, the notion that value in financial markets in 2021 comes not from cash flow but from proximity to Elon Musk. If Elon Musk spends a night in your house, that makes your house more valuable. You should pay him rent.
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