Trillions worth, shares are not given to children... why do so many people hate Musk?
What is it like to get a “trillion dollar” pregnancy experience voucher as soon as you were born?
According to common sense, this should be a “lie back and win” life at the top of human society. But if you're Elon Musk's kid, sorry, this script might be difficult.
With SpaceX successfully completing the “largest IPO in human history,” Musk officially became the world's first “trillionaire.”
He is worth more than the sum of the wealth of the four richest people behind him — Larry Page, Sergei Brin, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison — and is even close to surpassing Bitcoin's total market capitalization.
Along with his wealth, there is also his huge family map — up to now, Musk has revealed that the number of children Musk has publicly reached 14.
14 kids, worth a trillion dollars. While the entire internet was trying to figure out how his kids would split this account, Musk himself publicly spilled a pot of cold water.
In an interview with the “Wall Street Journal” CEO Council summit on the eve of the IPO, he said that he does not support the practice of children automatically inheriting control or shares of the company: “I would never take the initiative to give children shares in the company. If they have no interest or ability to manage, pass on the company to themIt was a “huge mistake”.”
This kind of operation, which pursues extreme efficiency in business and also puts performance first in private, is very “Musk.”
A “tyrant” in the workplace?
Here are a few numbers first:
On the eve of SpaceX's IPO, the Wall Street Journal estimated how fast Musk was making money. In the 31 years since starting his business in 1995, he has earned an average of $992 per second — converted to $3.6 million an hour, or $85.7 million a day.
An American family with a median income of $8,3,730 in 2024 would need to work for more than 11 million years without eating or drinking to save the same amount of wealth.
His personal net worth already exceeds the annual GDP of 125 countries around the world, including Norway, Thailand, Argentina, and South Africa, accounting for about 3% of the US GDP.
If Musk keeps working 70 hours a week at high intensity and never takes a vacation until he is 75, his actual perceived hourly wage during his career is about $4.2 million.
In reality, his pace is even crazier — after buying Twitter, his working hours soared from around 80 hours to over 120 hours a week.
Musk follows a work culture he called “Extremely Hardcore” (Extremely Hardcore). After buying Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, he cut the total number of employees from 7,500 to 1,500 within six months — laying off about 80% of the workforce. The remaining employees received an email from all employees with the subject “A Fork in the Road”: either accept “intense long hours of work” or leave with three months' severance pay.
He is extremely repulsive of the bureaucratic hierarchy and is used to going beyond his supervisor to give direct instructions to engineers. During Tesla's most difficult period, he used the factory as his main residence for three consecutive years. “For a while, he slept under his desk, and it was an open desk, placed right in the middle of the workshop.” His reason is straightforward — let employees see for themselves that leadership is under pressure just like them.
However, Musk's management style has created both an avid following and serious career burnout.
The turnover rate of his company's executives is extremely high, “violent dismissals” occur from time to time, and employees need to survive in an extremely unstable pace.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a former SpaceX employee once described it this way: Most of the people left behind had a strong sense of identity with Musk's mission and were willing to bear extreme pressure, while those who left were often engulfed by the unpredictable intense pace and intense consumption.
In an interview with the Financial Times, a former Tesla engineer recalled that he had received a text message from Musk at 3 a.m. on Sunday and was asked to respond within 15 minutes. Another former executive put it bluntly: “He's very ruthless and extremely involved in every decision you make — he has little fear of failure.”
When an idealist is a “Sheda”
Musk is indeed seriously anxious about some grand things: Mars, AI, the survival of civilization。However, the blind spot of this idealism is that it often only aims to save the macroeconomic “future of humanity,” yet it is extremely lacking in feeling about specific individuals.
The collapse created by others was an acknowledged turning point — Thailand's “Sleeping Beauty Cave” junior soccer team rescue incident in 2018.
At the time, Musk rushed to the scene with a high-profile “mini submarine” built by SpaceX, but was publicly criticized as a “useless PR show” by experienced British professional rescue team member Vernon Unsworth (Vernon Unsworth). This specialty has stung Musk, who is used to being touted all over the internet. In anger, he blatantly abused the frontline rescue hero as a “pedophile (Pedo guy)” on Twitter without any factual basis. In this sensational global defamation lawsuit, for the first time, many people have really seen the other side of this tech icon: paranoia, impulsiveness, and arrogance must be reported, and no one can stand to deny it.
In recent years, Musk has also repeatedly emphasized an opinion in public discourse: humanity is facing a crisis where fertility is collapsing. He quoted fertility data from India, South Korea, Japan, and Italy many times on X, and even moved out of ancient Rome's decline as proof — the Romans also started having fewer children back then.
He doesn't just say, he does. According to public reports, Musk is known to have 14 children, each from four different mothers. He once called this group of kids “army” — a term with strong military overtones.
The Wall Street Journal's 2025 investigation revealed an even more complicated situation. Musk's family office director, Jared Birchall, is responsible for “signing agreements” with each child's mother.
The details of these agreements are broadly as follows: a significant one-time fee plus monthly maintenance. The conditions are: sign a confidentiality agreement, not disclose the identity of the child's biological father, and not make negative comments.
But Beechar's responsibilities go far beyond that. According to court documents disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, he is also responsible for handling the “dispute” between Musk and the child's mother. It's a bit like the legal affairs and HR director of a large company, except for one person.
The most typical case comes from conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair (Ashley St. Clair). She is the mother of Musk's 13th child, and the two later completely fell out.
As soon as the child was born, Bichard sent a financial agreement on behalf of Musk. The format was very similar to the “separation package” when the company laid off employees: a one-time payment of 15 million US dollars, plus a monthly maintenance allowance of 100,000 US dollars.
But the money wasn't for nothing. The conditions are very strict: Musk's name cannot appear on the child's birth certificate; the woman must sign a lifelong confidentiality agreement and can never publicly discuss the matter; the contract also unilaterally restricts the woman and is not allowed to comment negatively on Musk.
Ashley declined. She wants to disclose the child's paternity, and she also wants to determine custody through legal channels. As a result, Musk's “disobedient, cut off supply” method in the business world was directly copied into his private life.
He first withdrew a one-time fee of 15 million and cut monthly support payments from 100,000 to 40,000 — a 60% reduction. It was later learned that the woman was trying to break the news to the media, and it was further reduced to 20,000.
Bichar even warned her on the phone, in a very professional tone: “Taking the legal route against Elon often only ends worse for women.”
In contrast, Shivon Zillis, an executive at Neuralink, is also the mother of Musk's four children. She works 80 to 100 hours a week for Musk's AI product portfolio, remains highly consistent with Musk in her career, and still appears in his business and political activities. Outsiders generally believe that she enjoys a “special status.”
In this “private domain” governance model, good or bad performance — not emotions or relationships — determine the priority of resource allocation.
Perhaps the most shocking thing is Musk's relationship with his oldest daughter Vivienne Jenner Wilson.
Vivian legally changed her name and gender in 2022 and made it clear in court documents that she “does not want any kind of connection with her biological father.” She later told the media that the two had “not spoken for almost five years” and added “thank goodness.”
What was Musk's public response? He denied that he had a daughter, insisted that it was “son Xavier,” and described the other party as being harmed by the “mental awakening virus,” hoping he would “recover his health.” This response is essentially redefining a loved one using his own value scale: people who don't fit my cognitive framework can be removed from my world.
Summarize
Musk is an unquestionably pioneer in the history of business and technology. His fans value his sexy imagination of using starships and brain machines to forcibly push humans into the future.
But when an individual's wealth and energy expand enough to match that of a huge social group, is the socialism he pursues actually the antidote to civilization or is it a ruthless formative experiment?
Author: Seed.eth
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