• Bongles@lemm.ee
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      14 days ago

      Nope. His major companies rely on government funding and regulation, and now he’s going to be whatever it was called for Trump. A cool 44 billion to actually control parts of government?

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        14 days ago

        Sort of, but they also benefit from tariffs and lower regulation:

        • Tesla - don’t have to cut prices if your competitors have to raise theirs; also, less regulation on cars means he can get to market faster
        • SpaceX - oversight on rocket launches costs money
        • xAI - slashing regulations on AI helps this new company
        • Neuralink - again, regulations are a major limitation here

        He is also big into cryptocurrencies, so he stands to gain there as well.

        All in all, there’s a good chance he makes his $44B back by having Trump’s ear and being able to encourage certain changes over others.

      • CliveRosfield@lemmy.world
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        14 days ago

        They’re indirectly in his pocket. And in my view paying 44 billion to control parts of a government in the most powerful country in existence is nothing to scoff at.

    • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      14 days ago

      This is giving him way too much credit, thinking he’s some mastermind who engineered this whole thing. He’s very wealthy and addicted with twitter, and started amassing a lot of shares of the company. He didn’t really care to own it, and instead tried seeing if he could sway Twitter to benefit him, namely by trying to ban the Elonjet account. That didn’t work, so he used his classic 420 joke to say he’s going to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share, which was way above market rates. He had to be literally sued to purchase the company, after trying to get out of the deal.

      Once he was forced to buy the company, it was the company that assumed the debts, not Elon, so it immediately was performing terribly, and Elon had to cut costs, firing employees, not paying rent and server costs, etc. Nothing was planned out ahead of time, the company is flying by the seat of its pants. And arguably the second most prominent user of the platform, the next President, has a competing platform and is directly invested in seeing that succeed, not Twitter/X.

      If anything, both Elon and Trump are the modern epitome of failing upwards, exploiting the labor and systems in place to protect Americans, just so they can make more money for themselves. The fact they’re celebrated as much as they are is disgusting.