At some point, no one would want to deal with Elon and his companies if they don't have to, right?
He doesn't pay bills, litigates, and even uses his enormous social media following to harass any person/entity he doesn't like. Quite frankly, he's a lot like Trump. They both seem to be sociopaths. No matter how much destruction they create for others, they have to be on the winning side.
Choosing to deal with Musk is an equation of crossing a sufficient (if ever increasing) threshold of greed, ignorance and desperation. But the problem is a lot of people have a lot of those. Same with Trump.
They do have a lot of similarities yes. They're half conmen, half businessmen. With "half" being a somewhat crude measure here.
A surprising number of people out there have Trump-like tendencies, but for the most part those were dormant before. Trump blasted onto the scene and showed everyone that it is OK to be horrible. It's actually "manly". People like Musk, who are highly impressionable and needy (so that's also in common), mimic that behavior and the twisted version of masculinity - "I can do whatever I want, nothing matters".
Just recall how invisible he was before all these years. A lot of us had very high opinion of Musk because he didn't talk much, really. He kept to himself, and you had to dig really deep to find out that, yeah, he is kind of a tool in real life.
Once he started acting out his "Trump", the downward spiral began.
This guy really is not that smart and I don't understand why people keep defending him or pretend that he's playing multi-dimensional chess or something. He acts like a gambler who keeps doubling down on previously risky bets that didn't pay off. It's worked for him for a long time, but I think his luck might run out finally, at least with the Twitter deal.
He seems to have bought the company because he felt legally compelled after running his mouth. Now he's not paying lawyers and rent and the consequences of this are likely going to be even worse financially for his failing social media company which might struggle to attract any advertisers besides erection pills and fitness supplements (the small niche of brands that wants to associate with right-leaning single men).
He'll find a way out of this fight with Zuckerberg because he's not legally compelled to stick to his word :)
As a Tesla investor, I'm happy to have him distracting himself with Twitter. I suspect he's not any better at managing Tesla than he is at Twitter. The company appears to be expanding perfectly well without him.
Tesla and SpaceX both have excellent people in top positions. He has backed their good judgment in taking chances. Good for him in doing that. But he also seems to be an idiot, and I'd much rather have him off ruining a company I don't care about than one that has a genuine chance to make the world better.
Oh gosh, better not focusing on SpaceX and Tesla. He would destroy these two companies as well. As read somewhere (here at HN?), both have departments to distract Musk once he visits them, so he doesn't create much harm.
Musk is not the genius some people think he is. The companies have good engineers, that's it.
He doesn't pay bills, litigates, and even uses his enormous social media following to harass any person/entity he doesn't like. Quite frankly, he's a lot like Trump. They both seem to be sociopaths. No matter how much destruction they create for others, they have to be on the winning side.