Musk bought Twitter, what hasn't gone wrong?

milk said:
I personally do not want to live in the world Musk wants to create for us, much less be his little puppy in it.

But what he does say is that none of his current endeavors are aimed at making himself richer. That is what he SAYS and it could all be lies, but its true that if he all he wanted was easy money, he would never have invested in electric cars and space travel.

His justification is he wants to push humanity foward. I don't doubt he may believe that in parts. I also suspect strongly that he likes the fact he is becomeing extremelly influential and powerefull. He's making himself into a new Rockefeller type character, which is both incredible and allarming.

I'm all for not taking Musks PR at face value but that sure as fuck should apply to Mr. Gates just as much, no?

Hiding your fortune and influence behind philayropy is the oldest trick in the god damn book. Nothing smells more like calculated optics than going straight for giving medicine to empovireshed african children.

Lets not forget Bill is one of the biggest lobbyist for mantaining pattents for medications and vaccines with big pharmaceutical conglomerates. Many of which, he is a big stake holder of.

During the covid crisis, no less, he was adament of not allowing the vaccines patents to be broken up, or allowing the technollogy to be disclosed to other labs so that more vaccines could be manufactured.
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I don't think your right sorry. He didn't start Tesla. Shotwell is more responsible for spacex success than he is. And spacex is about money. If you want to get filthy rich then find an ossified industry full of people who don't apply lessons from the past 45 years of manufacturing due to government contracts and lack of competition and you will find you can make amazing gains as well.
 
Sxotty said:
I don't think your right sorry. He didn't start Tesla. Shotwell is more responsible for spacex success than he is. And spacex is about money. If you want to get filthy rich then find an ossified industry full of people who don't apply lessons from the past 45 years of manufacturing due to government contracts and lack of competition and you will find you can make amazing gains as well.
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How often is it done though? I'm not deffending Musk as the sort of visionary he sells himself as and his fanboys believe in. I know he is as much a con-man and as any other ruthless business person.

But you are not gonna tell me that aquiring tesla and investing in Space X were purely profit driven. It makes nos sense. Don't let your wish to place people cleraly into comic-book-level charicatures cloud your ability to see things for what they are.

Musk can be an narcissistic egomaniac selfish idiot and still have some lofty idealistic ambitions at the same time.

Just like Bill Gates can be the same asshole business man that was hated by the entire industry during his MS times for his constant backstabbings, and still have some legitimate good intentions motivating his philantropy simultaneously.

As orangepelupa said, truth lies somewhere in the middle. I can see both sides of the coin and concede to plausibility to both of them. Can you?
 
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milk said:
As orangepelupa said, truth lies somewhere in the middle. I can see both sides of the coin and concede to plausibility to both of them. Can you?
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Sure, but doesn't mean I agree with you. Gates engaged in monopolistic and shady practices and may have done some gross things with epstein. He may only be doing philanthropy because he wants a novel prize. That is plausible. I don't have evidence one way or the other about the later statements.

Your personal beliefs about musk may be plausible but his actions say otherwise. Rockets are not what we actually need to get to colonize another planet. Other technologies are the issue. Cheaper rockets are nice. Bezos saw that there was opportunity in rockets as well he just hired the wrong people to run it. Bezos or course is targeting O'Neil cylinder style ideas. Now maybe Musk is a longtermist as was linked earlier in the thread. The evidence would certainly support that idea, but that is a far different portrayal then what he tries to get into the news.

Obviously with his tweeting stupid things he has gained a strong following among a certain group of people but he also has created a group that dislikes him. If I was a purposeful Tesla shareholder instead of a passive S&p holder I would be annoyed that he has limited growth. I spoke with many people recently who are interested in electric cars and very ignorant about the technology who say things like "I want and electric car but don't really like Musk". They think from media buzz that tesla basically define the market and are conflicted because of his antics about buying a car. To me Musk is just a great hype man who bought into his own hype too much. He needs a few years wandering the wilderness to get his head in a better spot.
 
Sxotty said:
Obviously with his tweeting stupid things he has gained a strong following among a certain group of people but he also has created a group that dislikes him. If I was a purposeful Tesla shareholder instead of a passive S&p holder I would be annoyed that he has limited growth. I spoke with many people recently who are interested in electric cars and very ignorant about the technology who say things like "I want and electric car but don't really like Musk". They think from media buzz that tesla basically define the market and are conflicted because of his antics about buying a car. To me Musk is just a great hype man who bought into his own hype too much. He needs a few years wandering the wilderness to get his head in a better spot.
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With that, I can agree 100%. The only explanation I can muster for the shareholders not to have kicked his ass out of Tesla is that they think despite the hurt his antics cause, the hype he generates is still a net positive in the agregate.

He is such a blatant reality distortion field generator that its hard to believe he isn't trolling us on purpose.

As for why he went into rockets, electric cars, and now tunnel digging and pig brain chips, I think that a more plausible uncharitable explanation is seeking out political influence rather than monetary profit.

As a diamond mine child, perhaps electric cars seemed like a good way to white-wash and green-wash his daddy's money, all the while getting a foot in the infra-structure business.

SpaceX got him another foot into what could be called "essentials" business (with satelite launces and all) and his space internet certainly is getting both his feet in there.

He uses development of human science as a cover for really trying to put himself in a position of being indispensable around the world. Thus my calling him a Rockefeller type figure. That's not unlike how Bill Gates aproached Windows and Office, by the way...

But as every megalomaniac, I think Musk believes some of the bullshit he sells. He convinced himself he is indeed revolutionizing human technology and maybe he might end up taking us to mars and what not.

I say this not to further hype the man, or deffend him. You won't ever see me deffending a billionaire. But rather, to try to understand the guy's motivations more clearly. Mere profits simply can't be it... He clearly has ambitions. I think they are narcissistic ones, but there is that...
 
Investors aren't going to be booting Musk out because everyone in tech is always looking for the new Steve Jobs so these charismatic types (perhaps more accurate to describe some of them as sociopathic types?) can always get away with unusual behaviour as long as things are going well enough in the long run.
 
Tesla truly needs a Gwynne Shotwell right now. It's stock price is such a ridiculous bubble, even after recent falls. The "legacy" competition is coming for it ways that are not true for SpaceX.

Maybe this is something that confuses Musk?
 
This conspiracy theory suggest the twitter buyout along with many other actions by Musk may be in part motivated by diverting people's attention and search results from his other more shady shenanigans.


I don't find it all that impossible to believe.
 
Confirmation bias makes me believe that conspiracy video party about having an excuse to sell Tesla stock without panicking the people who hold it. Musk has so much money tied up in the performance of the stock and has already shown he was willing to lie to boost the stock (remember the funding secured) that I find it totally believable.
 
Elon is like Trump in that he doesn't like to be seen losing. Though honestly who does? He was going to lose and now can pretend he did not.
 
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