@jbcarioca’s superb post, up to his usual insightful standards, is Required Reading for all who choose to participate in this thread.
As it brings up the topic of keiretsu - the modern-day successor of zaibatsu - I think it necessary to emphasize another key element. These organizations each are structured around a financial entity - almost always a commercial bank - that performs the necessary functions of any bank, but to the specific benefit of the constituent manufacturing and service components of the organization, and which serves as the medium @jbcarioca alluded to in his mention of the crossholding of shares amongst the keiretsu’s components. In Japan - I am far less fluent in the Korean counterparts, their chaebols - these often had begun as trading houses, a function still of extreme importance today.
So, where does Tesla fit in the above? Currently, as @jbcarioca described, hardly at all. Yet it is apparent to me that a keiretsu-like structure could fairly describe the Tesla Inc…..or our “X Corporation” of the near future….and most particularly as one envisages an entity that is instrumental in organizing a Martian colony and, in fact, an entire planet. Trading company? My goodness, yes. Indubitably and of utmost necessity. Financial keystone? Not only just as vital, but one that patently could morph from the still-nascent Tesla automotive insurance arm. Tesla’s also close to unparalleled ease of access to the capital markets plays hand in glove to all this.
I have only three - at the most, four - decades of productive time left. Perhaps it’s time to leave my own wilderness redoubt and get to organizing all this. Mr Musk needs to stay as Chief Innovation Officer, irrespective of whatever words he uses.
