Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has championed capital markets as society’s most powerful tool for generating economic growth and creating jobs.His investment thesis is simple: for capitalism to benefit everyone, the masses must participate as owners of assets rather than remain mere spectators.Fink would know what he is talking about: he presides over a business empire that manages $13.89-trillion in assets worldwide. (Dorothy Kgosi) The power of deep financial capital markets was at full display on Friday when South African-born Elon Musk led the mega initial public offering (IPO) of SpaceX, which powered his “paper money” worth to an unprecedented $1.1-trillion.About 4,000 SpaceX employees are also set for multimillionaire status thanks to the successful IPO.Until Friday, no person’s fortune had ever exceeded $1-trillion. While the magnitude of that achievement is self-evident, consider, too, that based on the Bloomberg billionaires index, the wealth of the next four people — Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison — is $1.1-trillion combined.To put Musk’s wealth in a local perspective, his R18-trillion worth is almost three-quarters of the R25.1-trillion net revenue the South African Revenue Service (Sars) has collected over the past 30 years.In essence, Musk’s fortune amounts to about 72% of all taxes collected by Sars since 1997 — and is more than three times the size of South Africa’s economy.Musk, who is close to US President Donald Trump’s administration, has been a fierce critic of the country of his birth, accusing Pretoria of pursuing BEE laws that he claims are detrimental to investment.SpaceX’s satellite division, Starlink, has sought business in South Africa but is wary of the empowerment laws.Solly Malatsi, minister of communications & digital technologies, said last week that SpaceX has yet to make an application to do business in South Africa.“The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has not received any licence applications from Starlink for spectrum, Individual Electronic Communications Network Service (1-ECNS) and Individual Electronic Communications Service (1-ECS) licences, nor has it received any applications for the transfer of such licences,” he said in response to questions from MPs.“There has not been any engagement between the department of communications & digital technologies and the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX).”Oxfam, a global nongovernmental organisation dedicated to fighting poverty, inequality and injustice, said Musk’s wealth is symptomatic of the extreme concentration of wealth and decades of probillionaire politics that have allowed the ultrarich to write economic rules in their favour.“Musk’s rise to trillionaire status marks a new pinnacle of oligarchy and a dark day for democracy. But this moment of dramatically concentrated wealth was not inevitable. “Musk will be a government-backed trillionaire whose fortune was fuelled by an era of regressive public policy choices — decisions rigged by a tiny few to fuel their fortunes and overwhelmingly supported by political leaders,” said Nabil Ahmed, senior director of economic justice at Oxfam America.“A trillion dollars in the hands of one man is incompatible not only with an affordable economy, but also with a healthy democracy. Economic inequality begets political inequality, and ordinary people bear the brunt while billionaires continue to write the rules for their own benefit.”