• masquenox@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    but I imagine one of these days the top is going to pop on South Africa

    What do you mean by this?

    • HuddaBudda@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The answer is, I do not know.

      People like Elon’s family didn’t get rich in an emerald mine without Tesla’s business ethics. After all, who do you think Elon learned it from?

      And was Elon’s family the only one? Are we sure of that? Corruption like that doesn’t happen in a vacuum and not without support.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They got rich the same way rich people everywhere get rich - by exploiting impoverished and disempowered labor to the max. The only difference with the Apartheid-regime (to whom Elon owes his riches) was that they were pretty overt when it came to who it was that got to be the impoverished and disempowered labor.

        To be clear… that hasn’t really changed all that much in South Africa. But, then again, it hasn’t really changed in the US, either.

      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        He didn’t get rich from the emerald mine. Its a real thing, but he only made around 400k (in 2021 dollars) on his roughly 200k investment. He didn’t own it either.

        Any actual riches were something else.

        Not to say that 200k is nothing, but it’s not the source of any rich level money his father had.

        The whole emerald mine story has been overblown.