B2 · Upper Intermediate
12 min
businesseconomicstechnologygeopolitics
Richer Than Ninety Countries Put Together
Más rico que noventa países juntos
Yesterday, Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in history when SpaceX went public. Fletcher and Octavio dig into what that number actually means, how we got here, and whether capitalism has a ceiling.
Ayer, Elon Musk se convirtió en el primer trillonario de la historia cuando SpaceX salió a bolsa. Fletcher y Octavio analizan qué significa realmente esa cifra, cómo hemos llegado hasta aquí, y si el capitalismo tiene techo.
5 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| cotizar en bolsa | to be listed on the stock exchange / to go public | SpaceX empezó a cotizar en bolsa ayer y su valoración superó los trescientos mil millones de dólares. |
| billón | trillion (one million million) — false friend: NOT the same as English 'billion' | El patrimonio de Musk superó el billón de dólares, una cifra que nunca antes había alcanzado ninguna persona. |
| patrimonio | net worth / wealth / estate | Su patrimonio está formado principalmente por acciones de SpaceX y Tesla, no por dinero en efectivo. |
| captura del Estado | state capture (when private interests gain undue influence over public institutions) | Algunos analistas hablan de una captura del Estado cuando los gobiernos dependen tanto de una empresa que no pueden regularla. |
| falso amigo | false friend (a word that looks similar in two languages but has a different meaning) | La palabra billón es un falso amigo clásico entre el español y el inglés. |
Yesterday a number crossed a threshold that, until now, has existed only as a thought experiment.
Elon Musk es ahora el primer trillonario del mundo.
Elon Musk is now the world's first trillionaire.
SpaceX debutó en bolsa ayer y el valor de su patrimonio superó el billón de dólares.
SpaceX debuted on the stock market yesterday and the value of his net worth crossed a trillion dollars.
A trillion dollars.
I've been trying to find a way to make that land and I keep failing.
The GDP of Spain is what, around one point six trillion?
Sí.
Yes.
España tiene sesenta millones de personas trabajando, exportando, consumiendo, durante un año entero, y Musk, solo, vale casi lo mismo.
Spain has sixty million people working, exporting, consuming, for an entire year, and Musk, alone, is worth almost the same.
Right.
And the way this happened matters.
SpaceX wasn't trading publicly before.
This wasn't a slow climb on the Nasdaq.
It was one IPO and suddenly the number exists.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
SpaceX fue valorada en más de trescientos mil millones de dólares en el debut.
SpaceX was valued at more than three hundred billion dollars at debut.
Es una de las OPVs más grandes de la historia.
It's one of the largest IPOs in history.
Y eso, combinado con Tesla y sus otras empresas, lo llevó al billón.
And that, combined with Tesla and his other companies, pushed him to a trillion.
For context, when Forbes first published a list of billionaires in 1987, the richest person on earth was Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, a Japanese real estate guy, worth about three billion.
Forty years and we've added three zeroes.
Es una progresión que nadie anticipó.
It's a progression nobody anticipated.
Los economistas que estudiaban la desigualdad en los años noventa no tenían modelos para esto.
The economists studying inequality in the nineties had no models for this.
Hablaban de millonarios, luego de multimillonarios...
They talked about millionaires, then multi-billionaires...
y ahora necesitamos una palabra nueva.
and now we need a new word.
So let's back up and understand what SpaceX actually is at this point, because I think a lot of people still picture it as a rocket company and it's become something much stranger than that.
SpaceX tiene tres negocios principales.
SpaceX has three main businesses.
Primero, el transporte espacial, que incluye los contratos con la NASA y los lanzamientos comerciales.
First, space transport, which includes the NASA contracts and commercial launches.
Segundo, Starlink, que es ya la red de internet satelital más grande del mundo.
Second, Starlink, which is already the world's largest satellite internet network.
Y tercero, los planes para colonizar Marte con Starship.
And third, the plans to colonize Mars with Starship.
And Starlink alone is a story that doesn't get enough attention.
When I was in Kampala during the Ebola coverage in 2018, getting a reliable satellite uplink was a genuine logistical problem.
Now a shepherd in Patagonia can stream video.
Starlink tiene ya más de cuatro millones de suscriptores activos en todo el mundo.
Starlink already has more than four million active subscribers worldwide.
En zonas rurales de América Latina, en partes de África, es literalmente la única conexión a internet disponible.
In rural areas of Latin America, in parts of Africa, it's literally the only internet connection available.
Eso es un poder inmenso.
That is an immense amount of power.
Which is the thing that keeps nagging at me.
This isn't just wealth.
A man who controls the infrastructure of internet access for remote communities, who has military launch contracts, who is building the only viable heavy rocket system on earth, that's not a businessman anymore.
En España tenemos una palabra para eso: oligarca.
In Spain we have a word for that: oligarch.
Pero cuando lo decimos de los rusos, nos parece obvio.
But when we say it about Russians, it seems obvious.
Cuando pasa en Estados Unidos, la gente lo llama innovador.
When it happens in the United States, people call it innovation.
That's a fair point and I'm not going to argue with it.
There's a long tradition in American culture of treating extreme wealth as proof of virtue, and that framing does a lot of ideological work.
Mira, yo no digo que SpaceX no haya logrado cosas extraordinarias.
Look, I'm not saying SpaceX hasn't achieved extraordinary things.
El cohete reutilizable fue un cambio real.
The reusable rocket was a real change.
Pero hay una diferencia entre innovar y acumular tanto poder que ningún gobierno puede regularte con eficacia.
But there's a difference between innovating and accumulating so much power that no government can regulate you effectively.
Let's talk about how we got here, because the SpaceX story is actually inseparable from a very specific moment in American history: the decision by NASA, under budget pressure after the Space Shuttle program ended, to outsource launch capability to the private sector.
Exacto.
Exactly.
SpaceX no nació en el mercado libre puro.
SpaceX wasn't born in a pure free market.
Nació gracias a contratos públicos masivos.
It was born thanks to massive public contracts.
La NASA le dio a SpaceX sus primeros grandes contratos cuando la empresa todavía no había lanzado nada con éxito.
NASA gave SpaceX its first big contracts when the company still hadn't successfully launched anything.
Es el Estado quien hizo posible este billón.
It's the state that made this trillion possible.
And not just NASA.
The Department of Defense.
The Air Force.
Starlink got contract money from the FCC for rural broadband deployment.
There's a version of this story where Musk is the world's most successful government contractor.
Es que esa paradoja es fascinante.
That paradox is fascinating.
La misma persona que critica al Estado constantemente, que habla de libertad y de mercados libres, ha construido su fortuna sobre contratos públicos.
The same person who constantly criticizes the state, who talks about freedom and free markets, has built his fortune on public contracts.
No es una contradicción pequeña.
That's not a small contradiction.
Now, his defenders would say the risk was real.
SpaceX nearly went bankrupt in 2008.
Three rockets blew up before Falcon 1 finally worked.
The fourth launch was funded with money Musk had personally borrowed.
That's not nothing.
Totalmente.
Totally.
Y ahí está la parte que me resulta más difícil de descartar.
And that's the part I find hardest to dismiss.
Hay una audacia real en su historia.
There's real audacity in his story.
Pero el problema no es Musk en concreto, es el sistema que permite que una sola persona acumule tanto.
But the problem isn't Musk specifically, it's the system that allows one single person to accumulate this much.
Here's what I keep coming back to.
The first billionaire, in real terms, was probably John D.
Rockefeller, around 1916.
It took humanity another seventy years to produce a hundred of them.
We now have over three thousand.
The acceleration is the story.
Y la aceleración se explica en parte por algo que los economistas llaman el efecto de la plataforma.
And the acceleration is explained in part by something economists call the platform effect.
Las empresas tecnológicas tienen costes marginales casi nulos.
Tech companies have nearly zero marginal costs.
Cuando SpaceX lanza un satélite más, el coste adicional es mínimo.
When SpaceX launches one more satellite, the additional cost is minimal.
Pero los ingresos escalan sin límite.
But revenues scale without limit.
Which is fundamentally different from how wealth worked for most of human history.
You want more land, you need more land.
You want more steel, you need more mills.
But if you want more internet subscribers, you just...
have more internet subscribers.
Y por eso los marcos regulatorios del siglo veinte no son suficientes.
And that's why twentieth century regulatory frameworks aren't sufficient.
Las leyes antimonopolio se diseñaron para el acero, para el petróleo, para los ferrocarriles.
Antitrust laws were designed for steel, for oil, for railroads.
No para empresas que controlan infraestructuras espaciales y redes de comunicación globales al mismo tiempo.
Not for companies that control space infrastructure and global communication networks simultaneously.
Europe has tried harder on this than the US.
The Digital Markets Act, the AI Act.
Does Spain actually feel that regulation is doing something, or is it mostly theater?
Es una pregunta honesta.
It's an honest question.
La respuesta es que Europa tiene voluntad política pero no tiene los instrumentos técnicos ni la velocidad.
The answer is that Europe has political will but doesn't have the technical tools or the speed.
Las multas llegan años después del daño.
Fines arrive years after the damage.
Y además, si Europa regula demasiado, las empresas simplemente se van.
And besides, if Europe regulates too much, the companies simply leave.
That's the trap, isn't it.
Any jurisdiction that gets serious about taxing or regulating this kind of wealth just becomes less competitive.
And the guy with a trillion dollars can afford to wait it out.
Hay algo que me parece importante señalar aquí.
There's something I think is important to point out here.
El patrimonio de Musk no es dinero en efectivo.
Musk's net worth is not cash.
Es principalmente en acciones.
It's primarily in stock.
Si SpaceX cae un treinta por ciento mañana, deja de ser trillonario.
If SpaceX drops thirty percent tomorrow, he stops being a trillionaire.
Esta riqueza es, en parte, una construcción financiera.
This wealth is, in part, a financial construction.
That's true and I don't want to minimize it, but I'd push back slightly.
He doesn't need to liquidate to exercise power.
He can borrow against the shares at very low rates, fund political movements, buy media companies.
The trillion functions as power whether or not it's cash.
De acuerdo.
Agreed.
Y ese es quizás el aspecto más inquietante de todo esto.
And that's perhaps the most unsettling aspect of all this.
No es lo que compra, sino lo que influye.
It's not what he buys, but what he influences.
Los gobiernos que dependen de los contratos de SpaceX no pueden regular a SpaceX libremente.
Governments that depend on SpaceX contracts can't freely regulate SpaceX.
Eso es una captura del Estado en cámara lenta.
That's state capture in slow motion.
I spent time covering Buenos Aires in the late nineties, when Argentina was going through its own version of oligarchic capture, different context obviously, but I remember sources telling me the real decisions weren't being made in government buildings.
And I'm not saying we're there.
But I understand the shape of that concern now in a way I didn't before.
Lo que me pregunto es qué pasa dentro de diez años.
What I ask myself is what happens in ten years.
Si un billón es posible hoy, ¿qué impide que alguien llegue a diez billones?
If a trillion is possible today, what stops someone from reaching ten trillion?
No tenemos ningún mecanismo que lo detenga.
We have no mechanism to stop it.
Ni siquiera tenemos una conversación seria al respecto.
We don't even have a serious conversation about it.
And meanwhile SpaceX is, whatever you think of Musk personally, genuinely building things that matter.
The Starship program, if it works at scale, changes the cost of accessing space by an order of magnitude.
That has real implications for science, for climate monitoring, for communications.
Sí.
Yes.
Y eso es lo que hace la conversación difícil.
And that's what makes the conversation hard.
No es el caso sencillo del villano que solo destruye.
It's not the simple case of the villain who only destroys.
Es el caso complicado de alguien que construye cosas útiles y acumula un poder que ninguna democracia sabe cómo gestionar.
It's the complicated case of someone who builds useful things and accumulates a power that no democracy knows how to handle.
Fair place to leave the headline.
By the way, I want to ask you something, because it's been bothering me since we started.
When you said SpaceX debutó en bolsa, what's the actual phrase there?
Is that the standard way to say a company goes public?
Sí.
Yes.
En español decimos que una empresa sale a bolsa o que cotiza en bolsa.
In Spanish we say a company 'goes to the stock market' or that it 'cotizes on the stock exchange.' Cotizar comes from Latin, it has to do with setting a price.
Cotizar viene del latín, tiene que ver con fijar un precio.
A company that cotizes is one whose shares have a public price and can be bought.
Una empresa que cotiza en bolsa es una empresa cuyas acciones tienen un precio público y se pueden comprar.
Cotizar.
And here's the thing I actually got confused by today, not my Spanish for once.
You used the word billón in Spanish for a trillion dollars.
Because in English a billion is a thousand million, but in Spanish a billón is a million million, which is what we call a trillion.
Eso es uno de los falsos amigos más importantes en los negocios y la economía.
That's one of the most important false friends in business and economics.
Un billón en español no es lo mismo que a billion en inglés.
A billón in Spanish is not the same as a billion in English.
Si alguien te dice en inglés que algo vale a billion y lo traduces directamente como un billón en español, estás multiplicando por mil.
If someone tells you in English that something is worth a billion and you translate it directly as un billón in Spanish, you're multiplying by a thousand.
Es un error enorme.
It's a massive error.
So Musk is worth un billón de dólares in Spanish, which maps to a trillion in English.
And if you said un billón in a Spanish newspaper in 1990, readers would have known that was an almost unimaginable number, because nobody had one.
Now we're talking about ten of them potentially.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y la próxima vez que leas noticias económicas en español e inglés al mismo tiempo, ten cuidado.
And the next time you're reading economic news in Spanish and English at the same time, be careful.
Un billion en inglés son mil millones.
A billion in English is a thousand million.
Un trillion en inglés es lo que en español llamamos un billón.
A trillion in English is what we call un billón in Spanish.
Los periodistas cometen ese error constantemente.
Journalists make that mistake constantly.
So the word for a number that didn't exist in practice until yesterday is one that most learners would mistake for something a thousand times smaller.
Somehow that feels fitting for this story.