Should society curb excessive executive compensation?

Elon Musk is 55 years old. He is already the world’s richest man, with an estimated current net worth of about $480 billion. Contingent on meeting certain performance criteria at Tesla Inc, he could well become the world’s first trillionaire.

- NARAYAN RAMACHANDRAN

Depending on your point of view, Musk is enigmatic, mercurial, brash, unfiltered, hyperactive, intensely competitive and vile—or visionary, charismatic, innovative, strategic and boldly disruptive. As the name Tesla implies, the company co-founded by Musk was a pioneer in creating high-quality electric vehicles (EVs) based on electric motors and power systems invented by the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla. Unlike Musk, the original Tesla, his hero, had sunk all his money on experimentation and died a pauper. Nearly a quarter century ago, Musk also founded SpaceX, the most successful private space company in the world. SpaceX is now the world’s dominant space launch provider, thanks to its reusable Falcon rockets. The company’s Falcon 9 rockets have exited and reentered earth’s orbit nearly 500 times, averaging 1-3 launches a week. Their feature of reusability has let Musk dominate civilian satellite-based internet services through Starlink, a wholly owned subsidiary of SpaceX. With over 7,000 satellites in its constellation and a subscriber base of 8 million, Starlink makes up about 80% of SpaceX’s annual revenue.