Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Grey Fox]

Did anyone vote in the poll?

Musk's?
Yes, I voted for him to leave.

[The Minsky Moment]

Elon is deeply unpopular at the moment.  He may be an awful person.  I oppose making false claims about awful, unpopular people.  I support true statements about everyone.

If Elon deliberately took advantage of what he perceived as a flattering price for TSLA by coming up with an excuse to offload lots of stock for cash, without conveying the impression that he thought it was overvalued, then my perception of his acumen would go up.

I think you right and there was no master plan, just flailing about to finance twitter in a chaotic fashion by willy-nilly liquidation of his most easily available and highly marketable asset.  Which I guess says better things about his business ethics than the alternative.  But it hardly reassures as to him being a reliable pair of hands for managing the company going forward.

[Admiral Yi]

If Elon deliberately took advantage of what he perceived as a flattering price for TSLA by coming up with an excuse to offload lots of stock for cash, without conveying the impression that he thought it was overvalued, then my perception of his acumen would go up.

This theory of the case is a shambles.  It relies on Elon being clever and duplicitious enough to concoct a scheme to cash out some of his position in a stock he knows is overvalued without affecting the share price, but to stupid to realize adding millions of shares worth billions of dollars to the free float will affect share price.

How about the dog wagging the tail instead of vice versa?  An impulsive, narcissitic very high net worth individual decides to buy Twitter and to finance the transaction uses his *only* liquid asset, Tesla stock. 

[Sheilbh]

Counter-intuitive - maybe hot take - given how polarised the US is on political lines, maybe we'll see loads of conservatives/Trump-fans start adopting EVs by buying Teslas?

[Jacob]

Counter-intuitive - maybe hot take - given how polarised the US is on political lines, maybe we'll see loads of conservatives/Trump-fans start adopting EVs by buying Teslas?

... and giving up rolling coal? Because they think climate change is real? And the oil industry is harmful?

I'm guessing a bit more work needs to be done before the Trump wing of the American public gets on that particular train.

[Barrister]

Counter-intuitive - maybe hot take - given how polarised the US is on political lines, maybe we'll see loads of conservatives/Trump-fans start adopting EVs by buying Teslas?

... and giving up rolling coal? Because they think climate change is real? And the oil industry is harmful?

I'm guessing a bit more work needs to be done before the Trump wing of the American public gets on that particular train.

Also wicked-fast acceleration, and stick it to the Saudis by not using their oil?

[Sheilbh]

... and giving up rolling coal? Because they think climate change is real? And the oil industry is harmful?

I'm guessing a bit more work needs to be done before the Trump wing of the American public gets on that particular train.

No to signal that they love Musk because he annoys the libs/what Musk seemingly now signifies politically and culturally etc. Maybe the reverse of I imagine liberal Americans right now who might want an EV possibly scoping out non-Musk associated options.

Given polarisation at the back of my head I always wonder if it would have been good if Americans had somehow identified one of the vaccines as "Trumpy".

[viper37]

If Elon deliberately took advantage of what he perceived as a flattering price for TSLA by coming up with an excuse to offload lots of stock for cash, without conveying the impression that he thought it was overvalued, then my perception of his acumen would go up.

This theory of the case is a shambles.  It relies on Elon being clever and duplicitious enough to concoct a scheme to cash out some of his position in a stock he knows is overvalued without affecting the share price, but to stupid to realize adding millions of shares worth billions of dollars to the free float will affect share price.

How about the dog wagging the tail instead of vice versa?  An impulsive, narcissitic very high net worth individual decides to buy Twitter and to finance the transaction uses his *only* liquid asset, Tesla stock. 

I'll stick with my marijuana binge smoking where he lost touch with reality and made some dumb offer he couldn't get out of.

[Josquius]

That tesla was over valued is something that is in question?
I thought there was quite the consensus there.

It's logical that Musk wanted to offload some of it and make his gains real however it should have been obvious to him it would damage the price to be seen to be doing so.

Whether twitter therefore was basically a spin on money laundering in giving him an excuse to sell tesla stock.... That's where the theory doesn't really add up. You launder money by making it real and usable. Not by throwing it on a fire.

At best I would believe that he thought he could get out of it having already sold his tesla stock. More likely he fucked up with a joke not expecting to see the offer accepted and scrambled to try and make the best of a bad situation.

[The Larch]

Let's see now if he actually steps down. Rumour goes that he's being forced out of the CEO position by other investors in the acquisition and this is just a charade to save face.

Elon Musk's Twitter poll: 10 million say he should step down
Billionaire chief executive of Tesla insists there is no successor in the wings at social media platform

More than 10 million people have voted in favour of Elon Musk stepping down as the chief executive of Twitter in a poll he posted on the site late on Sunday.

However, the billionaire, who bought the company and installed himself as its head only 50 days ago, has insisted there is no successor in the wings. "No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive," he said on the social network. "There is no successor."

Replying to another user who said they could do the job, Musk added: "You must like pain a lot. One catch: you have to invest your life savings in Twitter and it has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy since May. Still want the job?"

On Sunday, Musk asked Twitter users whether he should step down as the head of the company, promising to abide by the results of his poll.

When the poll closed on Monday, 57.5% said he should step down.

As the majority owner of the privately held company, no one can force Musk out, but a series of baffling decisions over the past few days has caused even some of his closest backers to break ties with him.

A decision to ban an account that tracked the location of his private jet last week was followed by a mass suspension of critical journalists who reported on the ban. That led in turn to an exodus of some engaged users to other social networks, chiefly its decentralised competitor Mastodon, whose own account was banned for posting a link to the jet tracker's account on the rival platform.

On Sunday, Musk reacted by banning all links to other social networks, including Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, and even minor platforms such as Nostr, used by the Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and Linktree, a homepage creation tool favoured by influencers.

That ban was rescinded by the end of the day, after a Twitter poll from the Twitter Safety account, with Musk saying: "Going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes. My apologies. Won't happen again."

However, the move was the final straw for some. Paul Graham, an Anglo-American venture capitalist who had only a month earlier backed Musk, saying: "It's remarkable how many people who've never run any kind of company think they know how to run a tech company better than someone who's run Tesla and SpaceX." Graham also declared the move "the last straw" and told users they could find a link to his Mastodon profile on his personal website. His account was suspended for the post.

Musk has a history of using Twitter polls to rubber-stamp major decisions, selling a tenth of his Tesla holdings after one poll in 2021, restoring Donald Trump's account after a second last month and reinstating a number of suspended accounts after a third. "Vox Populi, Vox Dei," Musk tweeted after the Trump poll.

However, in many cases, he has given the impression of already having decided on the outcome before posting: he had already announced a sale of his Tesla holdings, for instance, long before he put it to a vote, and his plan to reinstate Trump had been discussed since before he even bought Twitter.

The decision to step down as chief executive had also been hinted at long before the Twitter poll was published. On 16 November, he told a Delaware judge that he planned to reduce his time at Twitter and "find somebody else to run Twitter over time".

[The Brain]

Musk is such a walking turd.

[Admiral Yi]

Rumour goes that he's being forced out of the CEO position by other investors in the acquisition and this is just a charade to save face.

I just watched a clip that says the other investors put in 7.14 billion.  That means if they just vote shares they can't force him out.

The story mentioned Ellison as a minority investor and some other known name I can't remember but didn't mention the Saudis.

[The Brain]

Ellison was part of the Theranos fraud. He certainly has a type.

[DGuller]

I imagine there have to be some protections for minority shareholders.  I can't just form a venture where I own 51% of the shares, and decide to then sell this venture to another company that is wholly owned by me for 1 cent per share.

[The Brain]

I imagine there have to be some protections for minority shareholders.  I can't just form a venture where I own 51% of the shares, and decide to then sell this venture to another company that is wholly owned by me for 1 cent per share.

How do you sell other people's shares?