Maybe The Richest, But Definitely Not The Smartest

I couldn't help but notice this morning's news:

Elon Musk is dipping into his electric car company to pay for his share of the $44 billion Twitter purchase, according to reports.

He sold another $3.95 billion of Tesla shares Nov. 4-8, the Associated Press reported from regulatory filings, following up the $7 billion he sold in August as he tried to exit the Twitter deal on allegations of fraudulent account figures. He's now sold more than $19 billion of Tesla shares since April, when he started the Twitter deal.

Forbes reported this was the first time Musk's personal wealth, which is tied up in Tesla, has dipped below $200 billion since May 24. It also happened Oct. 1, 2021. Tesla shares closed at a 52-week low Tuesday at $191.30.

As I've looked at the Twitter takeover, on one hand from a considerable distance but on the other from a career in tech, I can't escape the feeling he's making things up as he goes along, which doesn't bode well. He started out making the $44 billion bid in April following a strange dance over whether or not he'd join Twitter's board of directors.

Less than a month later, Musk announced he'd put the deal on hold following generally vague statements about the number of bots among the platform's users. In July, he announced he wouldn't go through with the deal, whereupon Twitter filed suit to compel him to do so.

In October, he announced he'd changed his mind and would go through with the original deal at the original price. Late that month, he and Twitter closed the deal, and Musk fired Twitter's top executives, taking over as interim CEO. Other than vague and inchoate announcements about reducing workforce and making the company profitable, he hasn't articulated anything resembling a business strategy. Most visibly, his intentions over the blue-check feature of the application aren't clear, while his firing of half the workforce within a week of his arrival seems to have been largely a public relations move that by the way threw thousands of lives into chaos.

In fact, observers who thought Musk's staff cuts would largely dismantle the hated "trust and safety council" discovered no such thing seemed likely to take place.

Yesterday’s reduction in force affected approximately 15% of our Trust & Safety organization (as opposed to approximately 50% cuts company-wide), with our front-line moderation staff experiencing the least impact.

— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) November 4, 2022

What strikes me is that the captains of industry in the robber baron generation like Rockefeller, Gould, Carnegie, Morgan, Ford, and Harriman worked from consistent and predictable business strategies. Indeed, some like Morgan and Ford may have played those strategies too consistently in their later years, but at least they were consistent. Musk is anything but, and in the case of Twitter, he seems to be playing for attention and publicity instead of maximizing his investments. How much money has he thrown away to white-shoe law firms in this whole erratic Twitter saga?

I can't escape the idea he's playing a part in a personal drama, caudillo financier out to fix tech and remake society, maybe even a little like the emperor Nero who sang and played the lyre for his private amusement. This won't turn out well. He got rich, he got laid, he spread his seed for the benefit of mankind, and it all went to his head.

But then, I suppose this is the overall state of our public life. We need to find public figures who are stable and smart.