This reminds of an old joke told to all undergraduate economists:
A hundred-dollar bill is lying on the ground. An economist walks past it. A friend asks: "Didn't you see the money there?" The economist replies: "I thought I saw something, but I must've imagined it. If there had been $100 on the ground, someone would've picked it up."
This seems like an expensive vanity project for Musk, who often seems to lack focus. In the decade-long bull market he has so far thrived in, he hasn't paid much of a price. That may change in a forecasted environment that looks more like inflationary recession.
SpaceX is pretty much recession proof. SpaceX will get government and commercial contracts as long as the technology is there. Tesla might face issues, but a recession might be used to propel the "green/climate change" movement even further which will benefit tesla greatly. Like how the 2008 financial crisis was used to pump billions into the "green" industries. I can see the next recession being used to promote electric cars and other "green" initiatives. But I'd imagine tesla's lofty $1 trillion market cap will certainly take a hit in the next recession.
He didn't buy Twitter to make money. He is buying power, and especially political power.
He is already the richest guy on Earth and will stay among the top 10 whatever happens. He has nothing to prove as an entrepreneur and CEO. Being richer has no meaning at some point. But power is something most can't get enough.
See Putin: he became the king of the oligarchs, e.g. the richest among them. Now he wants to make Russia great again, e.g. be considered as a giant in Russian History like Peter the Great and Stalin. I hope he will fail miserably for Putin's hubris is the only reason for his unjustifiable war on Ukraine.
Musk will soon be God in one of the main social network on Earth. One of the best spot to watch how the global opinion is evolving, detect which country is trying to mess with elections in another, analyze the communication strategy of the big brands, the political parties, activists etc.
We have an idea of how efficient Cambridge Analytica was at monitoring and influencing political opinions. But they had only a partial access to FB data. Musk will have all Twitter data, with access to current but also past interactions.
That's a huge leverage on political parties and even elected governments. By giving back his account to Trump when he runs again in 2024, or not, he can play a major role in the outcome - as it appears clearly to everyone.
Musk will negotiate that decision directly with the top level players in Washington. If there is a GOP primary, he could side with those loyal to the Constitution first or those loyal to Trump first.
Of course, SpaceX will gain plenty of NASA contracts and the new President will secure fund for huge spatial projects.
But that's only a secondary outcome. Power is something you can't have enough of. He doesn't care if he loses billions.
Musk is becoming the new Rupert Murdoch, who had a huge influence through his newspapers and tabloids in so many countries.
I agree with most points here but surprised by "Musk is not a coder and has never worked for a company that develops code as a core business function". He was a part of x.com / PayPal
I think that’s a partly fair assessment. He hasn’t code in decades, saying he is a coder when 99% of his career is management is wrong.
PayPal isn’t a social network. They are different beast altogether. Elon likes to work on companies with tangible assets such a money transfer, cars or rockets. Social media’s asset is attention seeking from users. That’s much harder to monetize. Only ads have been able to stick.
How do you know this? I find it very likely he has written some code here and there through the years. Whether that is Python, C++, Matlab or R, who knows. As chief scientist at SpaceX he at least needs to do some modelling on a regular basis that requires - at minimum - tweaks to some code.
Yeah, the author didn't seem to do his homework here. Musk is extremely competent at programming. Wrote and sold a game when he was 12, started and ran two s/w companies. He approaches real world like its software - that it can molded as he likes.
That was true about electric cars and rockets too. Musk may fail at this one or another future project, but you can't blame the guy for not being refreshingly original and dynamic
"Musk is not a coder and has never worked for a company that develops code as a core business function. So it’s not clear that he even understands what “open source” means"
If you take into account how much money social media makes for Musk: /wallsteetbets and crypto pumps, I think this purchase will be directly enormously profitable for him, not just a political power move.
I don’t understand finance much but I think that Musk will soon have to make Twitter public again. A huge part of this deal is being financed through banks and using Tesla stock as collateral. But soon banks will start asking for their money back . At which time Musk will either have to sell his Tesla shares or make Twitter public again to repay the banks.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 55.2 ms ] threadA hundred-dollar bill is lying on the ground. An economist walks past it. A friend asks: "Didn't you see the money there?" The economist replies: "I thought I saw something, but I must've imagined it. If there had been $100 on the ground, someone would've picked it up."
He is already the richest guy on Earth and will stay among the top 10 whatever happens. He has nothing to prove as an entrepreneur and CEO. Being richer has no meaning at some point. But power is something most can't get enough.
See Putin: he became the king of the oligarchs, e.g. the richest among them. Now he wants to make Russia great again, e.g. be considered as a giant in Russian History like Peter the Great and Stalin. I hope he will fail miserably for Putin's hubris is the only reason for his unjustifiable war on Ukraine.
Musk will soon be God in one of the main social network on Earth. One of the best spot to watch how the global opinion is evolving, detect which country is trying to mess with elections in another, analyze the communication strategy of the big brands, the political parties, activists etc.
We have an idea of how efficient Cambridge Analytica was at monitoring and influencing political opinions. But they had only a partial access to FB data. Musk will have all Twitter data, with access to current but also past interactions.
That's a huge leverage on political parties and even elected governments. By giving back his account to Trump when he runs again in 2024, or not, he can play a major role in the outcome - as it appears clearly to everyone.
Musk will negotiate that decision directly with the top level players in Washington. If there is a GOP primary, he could side with those loyal to the Constitution first or those loyal to Trump first.
Of course, SpaceX will gain plenty of NASA contracts and the new President will secure fund for huge spatial projects.
But that's only a secondary outcome. Power is something you can't have enough of. He doesn't care if he loses billions.
Musk is becoming the new Rupert Murdoch, who had a huge influence through his newspapers and tabloids in so many countries.
PayPal isn’t a social network. They are different beast altogether. Elon likes to work on companies with tangible assets such a money transfer, cars or rockets. Social media’s asset is attention seeking from users. That’s much harder to monetize. Only ads have been able to stick.
"How's, like, the code that gets the spaceship in the air and back down again. Is it all working ok?"
"Yes Elon, should work fine. It's basically just typing."
"Great! Should work without any problems."
Can't believe I just read this in the article.