this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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There’s a woman over on Mastodon making the argument that he’s trying to destroy it so it can’t be used to organize left-leaning political action (fundraising, activism, issue messaging, etc) any longer. She makes a compelling argument.
I don't buy that. He tried to cancel the purchase. He's also losing money, and so it's definitely not a 3D chess.
Not only that, it would have been easier and cheaper to just shut the whole thing down after taking ownership. His very public (mainly by his own tweeting) stewardship of Twitter is damaging to his reputation, and the reputation of his other businesses. The reality is, he just is that dumb.
His net worth has only gone up since he bought it, iirc. Tesla will continue to print money at least for a little while until other automakers catch up on EVs. SpaceX doesn't seem to have any viable competitors, and both sides of the aisle agree on privatizing space, so that's a big growth industry. This is the unfortunate fact of capitalism in general and late-stage capitalism in particular.
It absolutely didn't. His net worth dropped over 50% in the months following the purchase. It's back up above $200b at this point according to Forbes, but he's still down from his pre-purchase state.