A movement does exactly that, it moves forward a specific distance, then stops. A revolution has a way of always coming back around, in your face! Tommy Lee Jones Under Siege
Elon Musk has always been considered as a revolutionary sort of character, from suddenly deciding to publicly post online the proprietary schematics for his revolutionary batter and power drive for his electric Tesla car, to spending billions on a risky start up gambling that there was profit in commercial and consumer space travel. And on the surface he most often seems to come up aces.
In reality I prefer to compare Musk to inventing savant Thomas Edison. Musk would take that as a compliment, though it’s not. Both men were and are more PT Barnum than the Wright Brothers. Edison’s inventing strategy was simple, First sell the concept, then figure out how to build the damn thing. Edison was often beset by design failures, release delays, recalls, and cost overruns.
Musk is no different. His original Tesla’s were beset by design errors, production delays, recalls and cost overruns. His risky move of making his proprietary engine and battery designs public is now backfiring, as Ford and GM use those designs as springboards for cheaper and more efficient engines and batteries. And one of his rockets just blew up shortly after takeoff, delaying his program, and costing him who knows how many untold millions to replace.
But when it comes to business practices and personality, Musk reminds me of no one more than Trump. A brash, pampered, spoiled, silver spoon arrogant Afrikaner, Musk combines the personality of Genghis Khan with the appearance of one of Madame Tussaud’s wax museum exhibits, his racism, white nationalism and anti-Semitism are pure Trump.
And nowhere is that toxic combination of personality, racism, lax business principles and shoddy business strategy more brilliantly on display than in his purchase and mismanagement of the app formerly known as Twitter, which I will continue to call it here, just to piss him off. There’s one major difference between them though, and it’s one that could cost Musk dearly. The Trump Organization is a mom and pop bodega, but Musk has investors and a board of directors he has to answer to.
When Musk first made his initial offer to buy Twitter and take it private, most large industrial investors and business analysts laughed their collective asses off. While it is a common practice on Wall Street, when buying a company to take it private, to pay greenmail, a price above the current trading price, Musk was offering almost double the current trading price per share, and many investors already considered Twitter to be overvalued.
Musk persisted, at least as far as getting the Twitter board to vote on the offer. My personal instinct is that it was all a publicity stunt so that Musk could drive up the value of the shares, and then sell off the minimum 5% stake he had to have to make the tender offer, and then sell at an inflated profit. Sometimes the bulls make money, and sometimes the bears make money, but the pigs always get stuck. Tje investors and traders on The Street were much smarter than Musk. They started selling Twitter shares, tanking the stock price, and making his takeover even more expensive.
Musk may be an arrogant moron, but unlike Trump he’s not an imbecile. After the twitter board approved the deal, Musk tried to weasel out by saying that the Twitter board had withheld critical financial information during the initial offer negotiations. The Twitter board was having none of it, and went to court to force Musk to pony up.
For reasons known only to the eccentric Musk, on the first day he walked into Twitter headquarters, he carried a sink in his arms. And as far as I can tell, his second official act was to install it in his office, unzip, and start pissing away what was left of Twitters value down the drain.
First he started by telling the staff that he worked 16 hour days, and he expected them to as well. The pressure would be intense, since he had just laid off almost 20% of the staff. For anybody that didn’t have the juice for the journey, the door was right over there. There went more staff, leaving Twitter under less than efficient operating conditions. Then he tried a series of cheap rip off scams, trying to get users to pay extra for services that were free before. No dice.
Then he went on an all out Klan and Gestapo membership recruiting drive. He proudly announced, on Twitter of course, that the site was now an unfettered free speech platform. To prove it he basically shuttered the quality control department, basically turning the site into an electronic open septic tank. He had dessert by restoring scores of members banned by the previous owners, including Traitor Tot.
The result was both predictable and swift. Pretty much everybody voted with their feet. Facebook took advantage by rushing to release their Twitter knockoff, which set a record for most signs up in its first 48 hours. Even worse, the advertisers that did stick around through the turbulent transition caught the A Train out of town, putting both Musk and Twitter under increasing financial strain. More layoffs followed.
Like Trump, Musk is nothing ig not arrogant and stupid when pressured. When questioned in an online forum about the dearth of advertising and advertising capitol, Musk snottily replied, If they think I’m going to abandon mu principles for advertising revenue, they can go f*ck themselves. When laughter and groans erupted, Musk straightened in his chair and re-iterated, I’m serious. They can Go. F*ck. Themselves. Is that clear enough? I’d say yes. The advertisers certainly seem to have gotten the memo.
But I’ve got to hand it to Musk. He finally has exactly the unfettered wild west platform he wanted. Musk has totally alienated his principle revenue base, they’re not coming back. And nobody new is coming in either. And as a result Twitter is on life support. And I can prove it statistically.
After he took over, one of the first things that Musk did was to ban diabolical conspiracy theorist and disinformation artist Alex Jones. This was crippling for Jones, who especially after the Sandy Hook verdicts, Jones relied on his chump Twitter followers to come to his site and order his scam vitamin and health placebos.
Who knows why. Perhaps it was Jones’s piteous whining and crying, but Musk had a change of heart. But he couldn’t just overrule himself, or he’d look like even more of a pathetic wussy that he already is. And like Trump, he can’t lose face with his loser base. So Musk put up an online poll: Should Alex Jones have his account restored on Twitter? It was a simple yes or no. And the final result was that an overwhelming 75% or respondents felt that Jones should return. The only thing I can’t figure out is why that remaining 25% are still going on Twitter in the first place? Maybe they’re closet online masochists.
But here’s Musk’s problem, and it’s only going to get worse from here on out. While Musk may have personally engineered the Twitter takeover, he didn’t personally execute it. I don’t care how much money you’ve got, $43 billion is just a few too many eggs in one basket.
So he got investment partners to spread the risk. And those partners not being as brain dead as Musk, they saw the risk much more clearly. And since they saw it clearly, they had a little non negotiable demand of their own. Musk was required to put a certain percentage of his personal portfolio Tesla stock into an escrow account. And if the company’s solubility level sinks to a benchmark, Musk will be required to sell some or all of that stock to infuse more liquidity back into the company.
This would be a nightmare scenario for Musk, for a couple of reasons. Principally, Musk’s private holding of the majority of Tesla stock is the bedrock of his personal fortune. If he has to sell some or all of that escrow stock, not only is it money that’s coming out of his own personal pockets, something every investor tries to avoid, that sale weakens his position of dominance with the Tesla board of directors. And worse yet, it’s a personal insult, showing the world just what a sh*tty businessman he is.
And truth be told, neither Musk nor Tesla needs this sh*t right now. Tesla stock is already trading at near record lows. And Tesla is in the middle of a costly and widespread product recall, possibly damaging the company’s brand even further. And if Musk’s Twitter partners force an all-at-once stock dump to revitalize Twitter, that could lead to a bargain salmon run on Tesla stock, weakening it even further. And every down tick of Tesla stock lowers his own overall wealth for his remaining personal stake in Tesla.
What do I keep telling y’all? In all things, be smart enough to know what you don’t know. Apparently Elon Musk never learned that lesson. To be clear, Musk is no Trump. He has and is running profitable companies using established business and economic principles. But Musk badly miscalculated when he gambled that his name, wealth, and persona were all it took to make him a mogul in a business he knows nothing about. And to then rid himself of all of the people who could counsel and shepherd him along the way. The pig is about to get stuck.
I thank you for the privilege of your time.
That name Tesla. Funny thing. Edison did actually invent stuff on his own but a big chunk of his rep. and his fortune came from taking credit for the work of people that worked at Edison labs. Or stunts like paying a dude to run off copy after copy of a then revolutionary movie made over in Paris and showing it to delighted American audiences. When the actual filmmaker wanted to market his film over here he was stunned to learn it had already been shown! (He never made money off it and died penniless) That was Edison. Tesla was smarter and more inventive than Edison which had to piss off the latter immensely.
Eventually the combination of Edison’s taking credit, belittling him and cutting off project he thought were promising Tesla resigned. Edison thought (and told him) Tesla would be a failure. He was wrong. Especially when it came to producing and delivering electricity on a wide scale. Edison was of course furious.
In any case, with other ventures Musk had the right combination of business sense and engineering knowledge to hire good people to turn his visions into something. However, like many a person he thought because he was knowledgeable about or good at one or two things he was equally gifted in EVERYTHING. And he didn’t know jack about social media or the kind of software that runs it or the computer hardware networks needed for it all to work. And, like Trump he’s too petulant and has too much ego to admit he got in over his head and needs help. Instead of swallowing his pride he seeks out ass kissers to fix the mess he’s made of it all, and just like some of the folks who worked for Trump and took lots of his money to run his campaigns, treating Trump as the “mark” in a con for a change Musk it seems keeps doing the same.
What he SHOULD do is cut a deal with those investors holding that chunk of Tesla stock hostage. He gets it back in return for stepping aside, giving them control of the company and selling his stake. He paid what, 44 billion? He can find a way to write off at least some of say a thirty billion dollar loss. But with him GONE and a new CEO and management team that actually knows shit about social media, who in turn have authority to hire back the people needed to fix things and investors will come back. Musk had enough money before this fiasco he could afford to lost 20-30 billion dollars. It would suck of course, but he really should cut his losses.
Don’t forget John Swan who had a working incandescent bulb a full year before Thomas Edison ‘invented’ it.
Elmo and his “investors” also wanted to destroy the prime information and communication venue available to EVERYONE. Without Twitter, does anyone honestly think we’re going to know what’s being done and is going on with the death cult formerly known as the gross old pedophiles? It was a deliberate, engineered act, committed to help destroy American democracy by preventing information and communication from being instant and available to everyone.
The Wolf Of Wall Street comes to mind.
the idiot parachuted into the dot.com arena of twitter
being no more sophisticated than a change maker at a
casino. most surviving tech co’s like google et al were
formed and designed years prior with nothing he has in mind.
he couldn’t do a startup for any online presence on his own.
my guess is he’s an out of control mr. roboto on the inside
and will somehow let us all know what the hell is going on.🤷🏻♂️
I confess I still use Twitter (screw X) because of the “user experience”. I have about 40,000 followers in my 5 accounts who keep interacting with me and I am still gaining about 200 new followers per month. My main subject matter is “sustainability”. We need to end the climate crisis and achieve a sustainable economy.
One thing that is clear to me is that the “back end” of Twitter is becoming less functional and the algorithms are becoming less effective. It clearly indicates that I need to start looking for an alternative from a technical perspective. And of course, Musk will not give “X” $$$ to make up for the lost advertisers so Musk may sell it for a lot les than the $billions he paid. And then there is Trump and Alex Jones issues. Any suggestions? Tribel?
I’m referring to his losing social media site as “Xitter”.
The “X” is pronounced as “SH”.
The Muskrat doesn’t design or create anything. He is business equivalent of a male model, sticking his face as the brand if a company. Other people do the actual work. How many women has he had children with other than his wife?