Musk is a multi-billionaire. He'll still be a multi-billionaire regardless of whether we tweet or not. This is why if we absolutely must have billionaires, we absolutely must require them to be superior human beings in all regards. That much wealth and power simply can not be stewarded by lesser.
^^ My BS detector just went off. Trend/trajectory says that if Musk maintains his current course of frivolously blowing cash out his ass, it's a matter of time before he's no longer a billionaire. If we require all billionaires to be superior human beings in actual fact instead of within their delusions of grandeur, then we'd have no billionaires.
it would also depend very much on how one defines "billionaire". since nearly all of Musk's "wealth" is determined by the value of the stocks of the companies he owns or has majority ownership of, and those stocks can rise and lower in value on a whim, how much is he really worth?
I highly doubt that Musk actually HAS a billion dollars in cash AT ALL... it's likely he doesn't have a million in cash on hand.
Hell, depending on what happens with Twitter, how his other investments go, he could soon be the same type of "billionaire' as Donald Drumph... in debt to the tune of billions while still pretending to be a "rich guy" while the debts pile up.
Nah. Look, I don't have a crystal ball so I can't tell Musk's fortune. However, a multi-billionaire, heck, even a one billionaire, rates orders of magnitude above any pissant wage-slave (like me, mine, and 99.9% of my fellow US-ian citizens).
Billionaires were a fluke, a corner case, an unanticipated side effect of neoliberal extremism. Regardless, billionaires are a thing. It's not BS to require billionaires be publicly accountable and respectable for the sake of the human race. Billionaires can afford to hire people to make sure their power is wielded responsibly and without controversy. There's no excuse for Elon Musk - IMO he is a failure and disgrace.
He remains a "lesser" nonetheless. Same category as Putin and Kim Jong Un. Being in control of power doesn't mean you're the right guy to have your finger on any buttons.
He might have enough liquid cash and credit to buy cars and houses on demand, but the billions may be all a pyramid card tower, where cards on the bottom have to be pulled first or half or all the structure flies flat on the table.
Elon is an interesting train wreck to watch. Gaining speed like trump, but the fFnal Destination has already been set...
Elon made a big mistake. He stepped into an arena (social networking) where his mental disability is fatal. He can bully his way along in his other businesses but not this time. The users and advertisers won't have it.
I have a friend who until recently was a software engineer at Twitter. The thing that surprised him the most about Musk is his stupidity. He knows nothing about computers, much less data centers and managing of high traffic services like Twitter. He hires engineers who do all the embedded computer stuff at SpaceX and Tesla. So he has no intuitions of his own. That's not a good sign either if you're going to run an operation like Twitter.
@frater chaos Yes, we should (IMO) stop having billionaires. They represent power that (in ye-olde US-ian view) should be left to democratic and representative government.
@Clara Listensprechen I'm a devout pragmatist. We have billionaires now. We have families of oligarchs ruling our country now. It's in my best interest to support these groups in caring for their own who fall short of the mark.
I saw a thing posted by somebody who is actually working on the twitter code right now for Musk... not sure if he posted it to twitter or mastadon or what (I think it may have been mastadon)
He said he was working and he put two instances of code from "neopets" up on two different monitors and used black backgrounds to make it look cool, and Elon came and asked what it was...
He told Elon some techno-babble bullshit about it being the main cyber sorter algorithm or some BS and Elon was like "Yeah, that's what I thought"
If you're going to run ANY operation, Phil, for that matter--and I expect all the investors in Tesla and SpaceX have taken notice. SpaceX isn't publicly traded, but Tesla is--and Tesla stock fluctuations have reflected what investors thought of the Twitter folly. It's TSLA on NASDAQ, and it's been on steady, steep decline. In March, it traded at $361 per share and today it's $168 per share (change was rounded).
With the way he's been spreading his genes around, it wouldn't surprise me if he thought he could bolster investments just on his good looks alone.
Richard, I always stop short of calling what the U.S. has "oligarchs" because of the way large public corporatiopns are set up with governing boards. They're required to have boards, unless you're talking LLC (small business). Musk would certainly qualify as an oligarch with his SpaceX operation, but Tesla wouldn't put Musk in the oligarch catagory. Oligarchs in the U.S. aren't quite as rare as hen's teeth, but damn close.
Yeah, from day one of the Twitter debacle, he's been showing investors who he really is and it's not pretty. At this rate, Twitter is going to crash and burn. CBS left the platform yesterday. He's lost the best employees. He's mainly left now with employees who can't leave because they're on H-1B visas and can't quit without getting deported.
The moment I start seeing posts from right-wing politicians that I don't follow in my feed, I knew it was over. He was forcing posts from Don Jr. and MTG into my feed.
Force feeding. Definitely showing his true colors, and I'm sure investors will be leaving him in droves, too. Funny that the stock forecast for Tesla is to regain the $300 range in friggin' 2025! Not anytime soon, that. He's going down the same path as the notorious Chainsaw Al who every troubled corporation hired and all he did was cut employee rolls, which is how he got the nickname. That worked until it didn't work for Sunbeam and now he's rotting in a corporate basement somewhere and I'm sure Musk will join him come 2025.
@Clara Listensprechen I wonder if that Tesla stock forecast takes into account the fact that 2023 will bring the first part of a tidal wave of competition for Tesla. Seems that it must. And maybe Musk knows what's coming for him. I mean, Ford completely reorganized their company this year to focus on EVs and extract maximum profit from ICE vehicles as they die off over the next ten years. And they explicity stated they are coming for him.
BYD is a Chinese company to keep an eye on. Instead of having components made by other companies and just assembling the vehicle, they make all their own parts, including batteries, motors, and even chips. They don't have shortages. I heard somewhere that some Fords were held up from sale because they were waiting for the blue oval grille emblem from whoever was making it for them.
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Musk is a multi-billionaire; if he demands that we tweet, then tweet we must