this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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[–] AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world 204 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Look at the sheer scale and number of massive, malicious mistakes that one of our billionaires makes, while having ZERO impact on their tangible quality of life or lifestyle. None. Their ego score goes down and nothing else changes. The people they laid off suffer, never them.

Remember that when some pro-market capitalism class traitor nitwit inevitably tries to shame struggling people for daring to get a latte, eat Avacado toast, or get an education based on learning and growing as a person rather than solely insatiable greed.

People in the little club basically have to rape dozens of people to finally be permitted to fail, like Harvey Weinstein.

You aren't poor because of "your bad decisions," you're poor because of a relatively small, insatiably greedy, powerful group of people that demand and expect almost all of the capital value your effort produces to go directly to them.

[–] Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Wasn't the Twitter buyout for a significant portion of his wealth that he like, claimed he didn't even have?

All those people say things like "well they're risking their wealth!" he seems to be a pretty good example of someone who "risked a lot of their wealth", objectively fucked up and should have lost at least most of it, and has come out essentially unscathed.

If you can collosally fuck up a whole company, and your wealth doesn't even move, what are you even risking? At all?

[–] BossDj@lemm.ee 20 points 10 months ago

Another part of being a billionaire is saying you have it when it's prudent, and saying you don't when it's not.

[–] sushibowl@feddit.nl 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

He paid around $20 billion cash (by selling Tesla stock) and loaned another 6.25 billion personally (loan secured by more Tesla stock). The rest was funded by various bank loans that are now owed by Twitter itself.

One of the neat tricks you can do when you're wealthy is loan billions of dollars to buy a company, then you put those loans in the name of the company you just bought, so you don't have any personal risk. The reason he still needed to pony up $26 billion in cash is because banks thought it was too risky to loan the full amount. They might now regret loaning even this much, Twitter has a substantial debt burden and I understand ad revenues aren't doing great.

Obviously, since the company is private now we don't get as much insight into financials.

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[–] anlumo@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

He sold a few shares to get the money, besides also taking up loans and gifts from others in his billionaire club.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 27 points 10 months ago (2 children)

mush never intended for twitter to become profitable. his only real incentives here are:

a. use saudi money to help kill twitter with some plausible deniability (for legal reasons) b. try my favorite 'business tactics' because i have nothing to lose

he has been very successful at these intended actions

[–] Wrench@lemmy.world 29 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Except it also impacted his other companies because of the public perception of his competence changing drastically.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

yeah, thats where he needs 'plausible deniability'. he can say, 'but i triiiied to make money, those damn libs canceled me'

[–] 800XL@lemmy.world 22 points 10 months ago

If it were that easy to cancel a billionaire, this world would be so much better.

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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The only reason it’s still alive is because we’ve got an election in 10 months

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[–] MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world 75 points 10 months ago (2 children)

These numbers are relatively easy to explain. Elon Musk is a fucking idiot.

[–] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm not a finance guy but I agree with this statement.

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[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm waiting for him to get kicked out of Tesla if they still have a board, haha. His acts of removing things like Disney + and such do to political arguments is a direct impact on purchases. I don't think streaming in the front seats should be, but investors should easily know that limiting buyers will devalue the company over time.

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 50 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago

Pretty sure a genius like Musk can make that happen! Look how well he's done so far, and in only 1 year.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 10 points 10 months ago

Rookie numbers! I’m sure he can push the value below zero if he just tries hard enough.

[–] LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago (6 children)
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[–] Furbag@lemmy.world 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Buying a multi-billion dollar brand and then rebranding it has got to be in the top 10 all time most smoothbrained business decisions ever, right up there with New Coke and Blockbuster not buying Netflix.

He probably could have started his own social media site to compete with Twitter for 1/1000th of the cost and still have all the Elon poleriders hop on board. It would still be exactly as shitty as X is today, but it could have been done without destroying something somebody else built up. Not that I care, because fuck Twitter too, but if we're looking at this from a purely strategic perspective it's so blindingly obvious this was a bad business move.

[–] RalphFurley@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

Every Business School 101 class will use this as a case study

[–] GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago (2 children)

As others have said this purchase didn't really fuck up his overall lifestyle.

Yet when the topic of raising taxes on these people comes up they all freak out, like if they have to pay an extra 20% on their wealth they will be living on the streets.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

He is set for life no matter what.

There is only one way to hurt him- to humiliate him. To hit his ego. Booing him at the Chapelle show, for instance.

All we can do is keep doing that sort of thing until Real Life Iron Man becomes Real Life Terrence Howard as War Machine and gets replaced with some other asshole billionaire that sycophants will worship instead who hopefully will be mildly less insufferable.

[–] retrieval4558@mander.xyz 11 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I can think of other ways to hurt billionaires

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Not ones which don't involve mobs with torches and pitchforks and they have well-paid, well-trained, well-armed security teams to deal with them.

[–] MartinXYZ@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm all for eating the rich but this fucker looks rancid.

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[–] puppy@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

The US has an addiction with simping for billionaires. In the rest of the world, only politicians oppose it ('cuz "lobbying"). Not the general public.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

he fucked himself into being forced to buy twitter with his big fucking mouth.

only then did he go shopping for who would want to help pay for this mistake... hmmm geee who would want to topple a bastion of liberal communication... in walks the saudis with more money than they know what do with.

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[–] silvercove@lemdro.id 17 points 10 months ago

Looking forward to Twitter losing the remaining 28% of value.

[–] Akasazh@feddit.nl 16 points 10 months ago

It's infuriating to see how little consequence fuck ups like this have for his personal net worth. If normal people would fuck up this badly they would be bankrupt.

But somehow if you're super rich or doesn't matter at all how much you screw up.

[–] zingo@lemmy.ca 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Social media as it's worse.

Facebook, Instagram, X and WhatsApp, all toxic waste.

At least there are platforms like Lemmy, where people (most of the time) share knowledge in an "anonymous" environment, which is actually brilliant for passing on information to the next man, without the toxication and promotion of suicidal tendencies.

Social media in the common sence always was a cancer in our modern society.

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Don't worry, they made one for you. :p

[–] LWD@lemm.ee 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

And people say Elon Musk hasn't done anything good.

[–] goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

@LWD @boem I look forward to the day he becomes a self made millionaire.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

Ooh, that's not bad.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Next he should destroy Meta and Amazon. The internet would become a better place.

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

The caption of his meme standing with a sink in the building after purchase said "let that sink in" but it should have said "I'm going to sink this company"

[–] Monomate@lemm.ee 10 points 10 months ago (4 children)

If the company's private, which means its stocks are not tradeable anymore, what's the point in measuring the company value at this point?

[–] goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org 20 points 10 months ago (4 children)

@Monomate @boem Because he owes the banks a shedload of money which he may have to start paying back if the value drops too much.

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[–] silvercove@lemdro.id 7 points 10 months ago

Banks who loaned Elon money hold a bunch of Twitter stock. They want to eventually cash out.

[–] technicalogical@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Can these measurements be used as losses to offset taxes?

[–] runeko@programming.dev 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Typically, losses in one year can be used to offset profits in following years, but not indefinitely... maybe three years tops IIRC. But that would mean the company would have to become very, very profitable profitable, which is doubtful.

[–] SeaJ@lemm.ee 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

They changed the rules under the Tax Cut and Jobs Act and losses can be carried forward indefinitely.

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[–] pope@c0tt0n.world 8 points 10 months ago

Twitter the thing you do on the shitter

[–] theodewere@kbin.social 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

seems like every decision has been carefully designed to do the most damage possible to the brand, while still being mostly legal.. although using twitter to troll legal systems worldwide also seems intentional..

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 4 points 10 months ago

Seems like many commenting here can't see this.

It's always seemed to me his intent was to diminish the influence of Twitter.

He seemed rather transparent about it.

[–] BlackSkinnedJew@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 10 months ago
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