Elon Musk buys and ruins Twitter

[inbetween]

I thought you'd woken up to the fact that Musk is a dangerous ****. Business performance has nothing to do with Tesla's valuation. The fact that Tesla's share price is up 80% since the US election is purely based on the fact that Musk has got himself into a position where he can strongly influence regulations and contracts to favour his businesses. I don't blame anyone making money on the back of this but you're kidding yourself if you think Tesla or Musk's other ventures are great companies. There are laws against what Musk will do however the law means fuck all in the USA to him thanks to Trump's takeover of the legal system.

Musk has a net worth today of $400bn, he doesn't need the money so I can only ask why?

Talk of corruption in government contracts makes absolutely no sense because he has the better product. SpaceX already delivers more payload to orbit than any other launch company by a factor of 20. And they're cheaper!

So ask yourself why would anybody instead give Boeing for example a contract over SpaceX?

The answer is Boeing already had a back channel lobby into Washington because they have jobs to fill and profit to be made. And yet because you don't like Musk and he's seemingly in office you're now choosing to call out corruption in public contracts? Hmm.

 

[domalino]

When I talk of job losses I'm not talking about economics which requires job losses sometimes, change is after all normal. Did anybody shed a tear when Meta/Facebook laid off 10,000 workers during the tech crunch last year? No, it's normal.

I was referring to shorters who actively bet on the demise of a company and profit from job losses. Is Musk actively betting and hoping on the failure of X, Tesla or SpaceX and subsequent consequences for his employees? Of course not, he does run his businesses harshly but well don't choose to work for Tesla if that's going to be a problem for you.

Remember that Twitter never made a single $ in profit and X still functions today so if Twitter employed 80% more people than it needed then why would its owner continue to employ those people? Would you take continued losses to employ an evidentally non-productive workforce? It's just silly.

I don't know what's going to happen with DOGE but why does the public sector exist? Does it exist for itself or does it exist to serve you? If it's the latter then you would want to ensure that money isn't just wasted so therefore the existence of something like DOGE is probably sensible.

He's probably just going to ask the US public sector to examine the unimaginable cost of everything and find ways to be more productive, this isn't controversial, every private sector company does it. The US just for example chose to replace Air Force One at a cost of $4bn (a 747 normally costs $400m), where did that come from and who challenged it? This is what DOGE will probably do and it's 100% correct to do it.

Wait so you think it's totally fine to borrow loads of money to buy a company, cull most of the employees, make life miserable for the rest and generally ruin a profitable business that was contributing to the economy.

But if I see him doing that and bet that it tanks the stock price long term, I'm the bad guy?

 

[domalino]

Talk of corruption in government contracts makes absolutely no sense because he has the better product. SpaceX already delivers more payload to orbit than any other launch company by a factor of 20. And they're cheaper!

So ask yourself why would anybody instead give Boeing for example a contract over SpaceX?

The answer is Boeing already had a back channel lobby into Washington because they have jobs to fill and profit to be made.

Boeing also has a 100+ year record of delivering on government contracts.

SpaceX has received more government subsidies than any other private Space program and so it's not surprising they're further ahead at the moment, but it's also very telling that NASA have said on record a few times they can't/won't rely on SpaceX as their only private supplier....and why do you think that is?

As for government corruption... are you pretending Trump hasn't chosen one of Musk's best buddies, a SpaceX astronaut to head up NASA purely because Musk threw a few billion into getting him elected?

 

[inbetween]

Boeing also has a 100+ year record of delivering on government contracts.

SpaceX has received more government subsidies than any other private Space program and so it's not surprising they're further ahead at the moment, but it's also very telling that NASA have said on record a few times they can't/won't rely on SpaceX as their only private supplier....and why do you think that is?

As for government corruption... are you pretending Trump hasn't chosen one of Musk's best buddies, a SpaceX astronaut to head up NASA purely because Musk threw a few billion into getting him elected?

Boeing has a 100% record of delivering government contracts that are technically problematic and overbudget, that's why SpaceX has spent years winning more contracts. The evidence of this is not difficult to find. The Starliner contract was awarded 10 years ago costing $4bn and has yet to deliver a single astronaut back home from the ISS.

It isn't telling that NASA has said that they can't/won't rely on SpaceX, that's because each NASA administrator has to consider giving everybody a share of the pie. How that share works comes down to lobbying power and politics, not logical sense. Is this the potentially corrupt practices that you're alluding to?

If Musk comes to lobby the new NASA administrator for new contracts for example then well how is that new? That's exactly how the space industry has worked in the US since the Apollo programme. The reason why the Shuttle was retired without replacement is because of the riddled failures of public contracts and lack of competition.

I really don't think that a guy worth $400bn who lives in a $90k house in Texas is really seeking to corruptify government just in order to become even richer.

 

[west didsblue]

Boeing has a 100% record of delivering government contracts that are technically problematic and overbudget, that's why SpaceX has spent years winning more contracts. The evidence of this is not difficult to find. The Starliner contract was awarded 10 years ago costing $4bn and has yet to deliver a single astronaut back home from the ISS.

It isn't telling that NASA has said that they can't/won't rely on SpaceX, that's because each NASA administrator has to consider giving everybody a share of the pie. How that share works comes down to lobbying power and politics, not logical sense. Is this the potentially corrupt practices that you're alluding to?

If Musk comes to lobby the new NASA administrator for new contracts for example then well how is that new? That's exactly how the space industry has worked in the US since the Apollo programme. The reason why the Shuttle was retired without replacement is because of the riddled failures of public contracts and lack of competition.

I really don't think that a guy worth $400bn who lives in a $90k house in Texas is really seeking to corruptify government just in order to become even richer.

You're probably right in one respect. He's made his hundreds of billions and probably isn't motivated by money any more. It all seems to be a power thing now. He seems to get a kick out of behaving like an utter **** and being allowed to get away with it because of his status as Trump's sidekick. He's tweeting all sorts of shit supporting far right cunts like Tommy Robinson and doing his best to undermine world leaders like Starmer and Zelenskyy, just because he can.

 

[domalino]

I really don't think that a guy worth $400bn who lives in a $90k house in Texas

Ohhhh right, you’re the kind of person who believes that shite.

It’s actually kind of terrifying seeing you post Musks debunked lies without any sort of critical thinking happening.

We know from his latest divorce/custody hearings that he actually lives in a ~$10m mansion in Austin, not the $50k prefab he lies about living in.

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

The US just for example chose to replace Air Force One at a cost of $4bn (a 747 normally costs $400m), where did that come from and who challenged it? This is what DOGE will probably do and it's 100% correct to do it.

Musk won't take up any formal position. If he did he would get caught up in regulation applying to government employees. Like most Trump policy, its all performative. Musk might put his name to cuts, he won't do any work to understand it. And like prior Trump policy, it will possibly all unwind when the push back starts. He's already losing people to push back and he's not in office yet.

Trump is surrounded by idiots and scamers. I'm confident there will be a lot of scaming, anything else we will have to wait and see.

 

[grunge]

When I talk of job losses I'm not talking about economics which requires job losses sometimes, change is after all normal. Did anybody shed a tear when Meta/Facebook laid off 10,000 workers during the tech crunch last year? No, it's normal.

I was referring to shorters who actively bet on the demise of a company and profit from job losses. Is Musk actively betting and hoping on the failure of X, Tesla or SpaceX and subsequent consequences for his employees? Of course not, he does run his businesses harshly but well don't choose to work for Tesla if that's going to be a problem for you.

Remember that Twitter never made a single $ in profit and X still functions today so if Twitter employed 80% more people than it needed then why would its owner continue to employ those people? Would you take continued losses to employ an evidentally non-productive workforce? It's just silly.

I don't know what's going to happen with DOGE but why does the public sector exist? Does it exist for itself or does it exist to serve you? If it's the latter then you would want to ensure that money isn't just wasted so therefore the existence of something like DOGE is probably sensible.

He's probably just going to ask the US public sector to examine the unimaginable cost of everything and find ways to be more productive, this isn't controversial, every private sector company does it. The US just for example chose to replace Air Force One at a cost of $4bn (a 747 normally costs $400m), where did that come from and who challenged it? This is what DOGE will probably do and it's 100% correct to do it.

Sorry but what Musk did to Twitter was not normal in any way. It was a total gutting of the workforce and forcing all hours crunch on those remaining.

Meta laid of maybe 20% of its work force. Which while tragic is what could be classed as “normal” business when cutting corners.

And being in the tech industry I can tell you outright the lay offs from lots of tech companies is concerning to lots.

 

[Username Required]

because Musk threw a few billion into getting him elected?

Source for your claim that Musk spent "a few billion"?

FEC filings show $277 million.

 

[west didsblue]

Source for your claim that Musk spent "a few billion"?

FEC filings show $277 million.

FEC filings won’t include his Twitter investment which was one of the main vehicles for Trump propaganda.