Elon Musk has the whole world at twitter over his bitcoin bid to buy Twitter. It’s a bitcoin bid because his interest in Twitter seems every bit as impulsive and careless as his interest in that cryptocurrency turned out to be.
Menacing Bitcoin
Recall that, in February last year, Musk tweeted that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and, more importantly, that it would begin accepting bitcoin as payment for its cars and other products. Except that, just months later, he tweeted Tesla was no longer accepting bitcoin. He claimed to be “shocked, shocked” to learn that bitcoin mining was having a harmful impact on the environment.
More to the point, the pump-and-dump effect not just on bitcoin but on all cryptocurrencies was considerable. Musk made out like a bandit. But he couldn’t care less that millions – who order their lives based on his social media antics – didn’t fare so well. This headline from a BBC report on May 13, 2021, said it all:
- Victim of ‘Elon Musk’ Bitcoin scam loses home deposit
In fact, Musk has an uncanny knack for making billions while protesting he has no interest in making money.
Menacing Twitter
This brings me to his ongoing Twitter heist, which the Washington Post framed on April 6 as follows:
________
Elon Musk was 11 days late in publicly declaring he had amassed a large stake in Twitter. That omission may have earned him $156 million, according to a half-dozen legal and securities experts. …
In between, he continued to buy stock at the price of around $39 per share, bringing his total stake to 9.2 percent. After his disclosure, Twitter’s share price rose roughly 30 percent and is now above $50 per share.
________
Remarkably, though, Musk seems to care even less about violating securities laws than he does about costing poor fools their life savings. Twitter shareholders have filed a class-action suit claiming, as the April 13 headline in Vanity Fair blared: that
- Elon Musk just stiffed us and made off with millions
Of course, the last time he violated securities law, by tweeting about plans to take Tesla private, the SEC fined him $20 million and subjected his tweets about Tesla to moderation. Given that, if it wants to be taken seriously, the SEC should fine him $312 million in this case.
Otherwise, just like Donald J. Trump, Musk will continue to see paying lawyers to fend off lawsuits and paying off occasional fines when he loses as small prices to pay to get away with all the things he does. Indeed, Musk seems to relish being to business what Trump is to politics, namely a hegemonic, bullying pain in the ass.
I would ask him what it’s like to be so amoral. But, given that Musk apparently has no social conscience, he really couldn’t say, could he…?
In any event, as my title indicates, nobody should be surprised that he is menacing Twitter shareholders the way he menaced bitcoin shareholders. Except, in this case, the delayed filing of his initial purchase of that large stake was only the beginning.
Because Musk is now embroiled in a hostile takeover bid that is to social media what Vladimir Putin’s bid to takeover Ukraine is to geopolitics.
After Twitter’s board on Friday moved to shore up defenses against Elon Musk’s hostile takeover bid, Musk has sought to use the company’s platform against it, launching a series of critical tweets at the board this weekend. …
Musk, the Tesla CEO, has offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, an approximately $43 billion valuation on the company. On Friday, the board announced it had adopted a poison pill measure, which would allow them to sell stock and dilute Musk’s ownership. It is a signal the board has little interest in accepting Musk’s proposal.
(Forbes, April 17, 2022)
Musk quits before the board rejects him
Of course, this is the same board he tweeted up a storm about joining – until he abruptly tweeted he was not – for still mysterious reasons. But do not think for a moment that it was based on principle – of any kind.
Because I am convinced that, like Will Smith resigning before the Academy kicked him out, Musk quit before the board rejected him. This, because he was “shocked, shocked” to learn that joining was “contingent on a background check” he could never pass.
This is when he started floating the idea of buying a majority stake. Except, here again, he seems “shocked, shocked” to learn about the board’s poison pill measure.
But imagine Twitter with a board composed of Elon clones… I say, thank God that, besides love, money can’t even buy him a seat on Twitter’s board, let alone the whole company.
Because it’s one thing for Musk to tweet all that comes to his unhinged mind. It’s quite another for him to set policy for what Twitter allows to be published on its platform.
Orwellian: Truth Social and Free Speech Utopia
Perhaps you’ve read about his intent to turn his twitterverse into a “free speech utopia.” This, of course, is what Trump’s Truth Social was supposed to be. But users, like his former fixer Roger Stone, were shocked and dismayed to learn that any speech critical of Trump is not allowed in his “free speech utopia”.
In this case, given the racial discrimination lawsuits pending against Musk, I suspect “free speech utopia” is just a pretext to let hate speech ring…
Grand Impulses and Epic Failures
Lest you think I have nothing but criticism for him, I readily acknowledge that NASA now depends on Musk to ferry its astronauts into space. In fact, think what you will him, Musk makes pioneers like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison look like slackers. Okay, Nikola Tesla made them look like slackers too.
Not to mention this remarkable feat with respect to Ukraine’s effort to fend off Russia:
When war broke out in Ukraine, the country faced threats of Russian cyberattacks and shelling that had the potential to take down the Internet, making it necessary to develop a backup plan. So the country’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, tweeted a direct plea to Musk urging him to send help. Musk replied just hours later: ‘Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route.’
He has fallen short on some past pledges, including making ventilators for coronavirus patients and efforts to help rescue Thai children stuck in a cave. But this time, Fedorov and some experts say he’s come through.
(The Washington Post, March 19, 2022)
Musk is an undeniably gifted, once-in-a-generation entrepreneur. The problem is that he has undeniably mischievous (racist and anti-social) impulses he seems unable to control. His “threat” to buy Twitter seems like nothing more than one of those impulses.
Except his money invariably allows him to escape the consequences. And, as his infamous blustering about those ventilators and Thai children demonstrated, the consequences are not always financial.
In this vein, I am also mindful that Kamen’s Segway was supposed to be a fun way to revolutionize urban travel. It turned out be neither fun nor revolutionary. Musk’s Loop was supposed to be the same. Except that it’s infamous launch suggests it too will be neither.
Political Gadfly
Don’t get me started on his flippant forays into politics. Nothing was more telling in this respect than the way he railed against California’s Covid restrictions.
In fact, he claimed they were so bad for his business operations that he announced in October that he was moving Tesla’s headquarters to Texas. Never mind the other prevailing reasons he had for doing so, namely lower taxes, affordable housing for employees, and better commuting conditions.
But once in Texas, this same Musk insisted he “would prefer to stay out” of politics to avoid a foray into the raging debate on that state’s anti-abortion law, which was having a Talibanic impact on women. No doubt this was because women not having safe access to abortions does not affect his business operations in Texas.
Then, apropos of Covid restrictions, there were the tweets that got him very involved with the Freedom Convoy truckers. No doubt you recall how those clueless, selfish, and dangerous morons held Ottawa, the Canadian capital, hostage for nearly four weeks earlier this year.
Their ill-fated mission was to force the government to end vaccine and mask mandates. But Musk rallied them with his tweets every bit as much as Trump incited the Jan. 6 insurrectionists with his Stop the Steal rally. What nobody dared say, however, is that Musk only rallied them because, if they all died for their cause, he wouldn’t feel so guilty replacing them with his self-driving electric trucks…
Autistic Narcissist…
Finally, Musk seems to have a congenital need to appear unconventional. Only this explains him making news on Monday by sharing with the world that he, of all people, is a homeless man who “rotates through friends’ spare bedrooms.”
Except this just shows the amoral nature of his narcissism and lack of self-awareness. Not to mention his notorious inability to show empathy, which he shamefully blames on autism …
But it might also be that, because he’s so rich and thinks he owns everything and everyone, this arrogant SOB thinks people must consider it a privilege and honor to have him crash in their homes whenever he feels like it.
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