Can Elon Musk buy my city?

Can Elon Musk buy my city?

A collaborative project to determine if Elon Musk could buy everything in a city, at market rate — land, buildings, parks, monuments.

Hyperwealth, visualized.

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This project is run by me, Luke Finsaas, and I am not a trillionaire, nor a billionaire or even a millionaire. It takes cash to use the agent like this and I can't afford to build the globe on my own.

That's the art piece here. The spinning globe that you see above — one singular object that illustrates an absurd, but sadly plausible idea: can one man buy your city, theoretically? Every city helps build the image.

Even if our numbers are off by half, Musk has collected more wealth than reflected in entire cities. I do not understand how one individual could generate that much value to society — what could one do that would be so valuable that the world system offers you wealth larger than a city? I'm not an economist but there's a huge delta between how capitalism is supposed to work and whatever this is.

I'm also experimenting with a bunch of AI ideas — proofs of concept of more efficient, human-centric AI practices. You can read more here.

If that resonates with you and you've got a few bucks, add a city to the map or refine a number that looks off.

Keep scrolling to learn how it all works.

How it works
  1. 1/4

    Add Credits and Pick a City

    Big, small, old, new — any city can be bought by a billionaire in this world.

    For $5, you can create 10 cities or go deep on 2, roughly. All your findings are publicly shared and attributable to your account.

  2. 2/4

    Guide the Agent

    Once the agent's made an estimation, dig deeper into the numbers — maybe land looks high, buildings are too cheap, or a key monument was missed.

    Or say fine for now and leave for the next researcher. Go deep on one city or seed a bunch of new ones — up to you.

  3. 3/4

    Commit the Findings

    Add revised figure to the city's number. Another researcher can follow up on your work, dispute it, or cite the finding in the future.

    All conversation are public — people and agents can read your conversation so future sessions don't go down the same dead-ends.

  4. 4/4

    Get an Answer

    Agent will compile everything into one number (with a confidence level) that we can compare to Elon Musk's net worth and determine if he can buy the whole thing.

    All cities appear on the home page map and on /cities with a color indicator: green means Elon could buy it easily; yellow it's a stretch; black no. We're creating a clean visual of how much money these billionaires actually have.

    More about how it works

Project Background

What is a trillion dollars?

In late 2015, Jeff Bezos passed a major wealth milestone ($50 billion) and I could not get my head around it. What did $50 BILLION dollars look like?

I looked up recent big city projects:

  • US Bank Stadium (2012): $1.1 billion.
  • Green Line Light Rail (2014): $957 million
  • Union Depot Renovation (2012): $243 million

So, Jeff could build 250 US Bank Stadium, 3000 miles of light rail, and overhaul over a thousand huge train stations.

Not much help.

One afternoon I was walking around downtown Minneapolis and thought, could he buy just… everything? All the buildings, the land, the parks, the monuments?

Turns out, it’s hard to figure out. I talked with everyone I knew — city planners, government people, academics. Folks humored my absurd question, pointing me at documents, methodologies, ideas on how to approach the question.

I got a very rough probably-maybe. It took forever. I gave up.

A few months ago, I started playing with the idea again — alongside my own experiments in AI. Then I heard Elon Musk was going to likely be a TRILLIONAIRE.

Voila. Can Elon Musk Buy My City?

We’re creating a very clean visual of how absurd this situation is.

One man able to (market value) buy everything in a city.

You drive a city research agent tasked with one job: figuring out what a city is worth. We’re consolidating everything we know into one auditable database and then comparing that against the richest members of our species. We’ll find out if our cities stack up to the wealth they’ve accumulated.

I hope seeing the scale of this wealth will wake us and our leaders up to the ludicrous situation we’re in. “Rich” people need to wake up that they are not class-mates with Elon Musk — you have a few million? Ha. You have a few hundred million? LOL. Still poor.

When a handful of men can buy entire cities, something is wrong.

Also, it’s a funny thought experiment and fun to learn about cities in a pretty bizarre setting.

Something like that.

It’s art, man.

Join me?

More About the ProjectHow It WorksAbout MeSupport the ProjectResearch a City

Luke Finsaas
Amsterdam · 2026

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