Introducing Lucky Bastards

This week they crowned the first trillionaire. The story we're being sold about how he got there — that he's a singular genius who saw a future the rest of us couldn't — is a con. So I want to put something in your hands.

In anticipation of the SpaceX IPO, and the massive con job that Silicon Valley and Wall Street are running on the American people and the world, I wrote a short book about the truth of Elon Musk's career: how much of it was funded by the US government, and how much was just dumb luck.

I think it matters that Americans understand this. The billionaires and oligarchs who own our economy do not deserve to be treated like gods. In most cases they don't even deserve to be treated like good managers, inventors, or engineers. That is most definitely true in the case of Elon Musk.

I know that's hard to believe about someone who has met with so much success. That's exactly why I wrote this book. Short, sweet, and to the point in 65 pages, it lays out the specifics of just how much of Musk's companies and his fortune were funded directly by the US government. The government often dragged him kicking and screaming to success. It is one of the greatest self-owns by any government in history.

I think it's a pretty good read, too — but you can tell me, and point out any problems. This is a preview review copy, so if you catch something, let me know.

So please check it out. You can download it for free and put it on your Kindle, read it on your phone, or print it out and flip through it with your actual hands. We're going to start printing paper copies too, and we'll let you know when those are ready.

Lucky Bastards

This is the first in a series we're calling Lucky Bastards — short books that take apart the founder myth: the story that says our richest men got rich because they saw a future the rest of us couldn't. Read the contemporaneous record and a different picture emerges: men who were wrong about most things, lucky at the right moments, and ruthless enough to turn luck into permanent advantage.

Musk is book one. Many more lucky bastards to come.

You can find the book, and everything else we publish, at New Consensus Press.