https://t.co/87IkPJv24k pic.twitter.com/aazg9abgms
— Charles Gaba (Had a blue check pre-11/07/22) (@charles_gaba) December 19, 2022
Matt Levine, at Bloomberg, can (mostly) make finance understandable even to someone as math-blind as I am. Also, he’s funny, as when he explains why it may not be so easy to find a replacement CEO for Twitter:
… So the proposition is … what? You take all of your money, you give it to Musk to buy equity in his company at a price that you all agree is absurd? And then you get to work for him, running a sullen and broken Twitter according to his ever-shifting whims, until he changes his mind and fires you? And when he fires you he denies you severance and dares you to sue, and accuses you of being a sex criminal?
I am sure that there are Musk fans who do want the job; as I have said, proximity to Elon Musk is what creates value in modern markets, and so throwing away your life savings to work for him might be a good trade. (Also I’m sure he’s kidding about investing your life savings in Twitter.) Still, the candidate pool is probably limited to Musk’s most ardent yes-men. “Those who want power are the ones who least deserve it,” Musk also tweeted…
… Like most people, I assume that (1) Musk tweeted this poll because he has already decided to step down as Twitter CEO (since, after all, he said that a month ago!) and (2) he is planning to step down as Twitter CEO to spend more time at Tesla Inc. (since, after all, he said it in a court hearing about how Tesla’s board gave him a record-breaking compensation package to retain his services, and then he went flying off to run Twitter instead). One possibility is that “be careful what you wish for” is directed at Tesla’s board or shareholders. “Sure now you say that you want me back running Tesla full time, but look at the mess I’m making here, are you sure you want that at Tesla too?” Musk owns companies that (1) produce self-driving cars, (2) send rockets into space, (3) make human brain implants and (4) run a website where people make fun of him. If he is having some sort of self-sabotaging meltdown, it is much better for him to spend his time on the making-fun-of-him website than the brain implants or the cars or the rockets. If he messes up the brain implants, people die! If he messes up the website where people make fun of him, they will make fun of him more. If you use Twitter as a source of comedy and a way to get in fights, then it is good for Twitter to be run badly. Rockets don’t work that way.
Or of course “be careful what you wish for” could be a reminder to Musk himself. He wanted to buy Twitter, and oh boy did he ever end up buying Twitter, whoops. Ten million years ago, in April, when Musk first announced that he had taken a stake in Twitter, I wrote:
Excellent Light Reading: <em>‘Oh, Elon’</em>Post + Comments (52)