The only policy platforn I recall Howard Schultz stating was “Howard Schultz should get a tax cut”.
Those probably deserve their own thread.
At any rate, it’s not like Elon Musk is some kind of environmental warrior. He found a way to make himself a lot of money in a way that made himself look good. Good on him. But it’s not like he was trying to be a lefty. He’ll totally be a righty if he judges that’s what will benefit him most - and not coincidentally, this is precisely what just happened. If this changes again, he’s more than willing to change affiliations immediately.
I’m not even sure why this is so mysterious for people. They’re trying to fit him into some kind of pre-existing political box based on social issues or whatever when it’s a lot easier than that - his political box is ‘the box that produces the most profits for Elon Musk’.
Gates is certainly trying to help both developing nations and the world overall face many chronic and existential issues from poverty to medical care to climate change, and encouraging other billionaires to use their fortunes to do the same (preferably by paying into his eponymous foundation but he’s advised others on setting up their own charitable foundations). However, he’s also put a lot of effort into getting himself nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize (despite the dubious honor that conveys) which was the purported substance of his relationship with pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, so we can question the true nature of his supposed selflessness, notwithstanding his massive real estate holdings, multiple megayachts, five enormous mansions including one literally named “Xanadu 2.0” on Lake Washington. Still, at least he is doing something beneficial with his money instead of launching himself into space or buying a social media platform to satiate his own ego, so that’s something at least.
Stranger
Thirded or whatever – really, it’s all about him and what makes him more money or makes him look more powerful and influential. Problem is, you cannot really buy respect and that’s what is at stake here.
So he is one variant on the generalized vibe I get from a subset of billionaires who seem to intensely crave to be admired for “transforming the world” and given some sort of endorsement as One Of The Good Ones? Probably. Now, interestingly, he said himself in his SNL monolog: “Did anybody really expect me to be a normal chill guy?” well, no we didn’t – but somehow he seemingly can’t just take the less than positive reaction from people to that and live with it.
I read a piece stating all of Musk’s motivations can be understood through a philosophy of longterm thinking. This would seem to be trolling at its best. Such philosophies are very hard to take seriously, but would seem to offer immediate benefits to the empathy challenged.
I was today years old when I learned that Elon Musk explicitly waived due diligence on Twitter in the signed agreement. (In the “Would Musk be able to sue…” section, below):
Just running the numbers, on April 25th Elon’s 175 million Twitter shares were worth $174 billion, and as of yesterday’s close… assuming he hasn’t sold any of his holdings… is now worth $116 billion.
Twitter is ~$37 a share, so Elon will pay a nice 45% premium on the current share price. Or, another way to view things, it appears the ‘market’ is discounting the odds of this purchase going through.
I think you mean that his Tesla shares were worth $174 billion but are now worth about $116 billion.
An actual tweet I read yesterday:
“I think he (Elon Musk) is literally sent my God to make a difference in the world. He has a purpose driven life on a large scale. He is starting to tap into God’s design. He is our Cyrus the Great!” - from @hrladychoctaw
This does not appear to be a fake account and the tweet seems sincere.
As to he Twitter thing, his buying it never made sense, ever, for any reason. It was a rich guy trying to buy something just because he wanted it, and that’s a business plan that NEVER works.
“Cyrus the Great” seems to be the go to historical person for the christian right to use to ease the cognitive dissonance of wanting a nation of good christians while advocating for the shittiest people imaginable to have power. Trump gets described in the same way.
There is the question of manufacturing, but according to this chart, transportation produces 12% of the emissions, while the rest of the sectors surely include vehicles as part of their emissions. And electric vehicles are roughly twice as energy-efficient as ICEs, and some of that electricity can be from renewables.
So, even in the worst case scenario, where they are only 2/3 as efficient with all electricity coming from oil and gas power plants, and only counting the transportation sector, completely switching over to electric vehicles would cut global emissions by 4%, which is several percent rather than a fraction of a percent. I suspect the actual number would be in the mid teens once you account for renewable energy and electrifying more vehicles outside of transportation (such as tractors and diggers). That does still leave open the question of carbon released in its manufacturing process, but it would be replacing vehicles that would have been made anyway eventually with their own energy costs.
Oh great, now I have the image of Musk standing on some playground equipment shouting, “Can you dig it?”
I’m having difficulty actually finding the source of the data (the chart says “See website”; going to Earthcharts.org only provides a link to a CSV of the summary data without breakdown or reference) and footnotes 1 that just gives me the title of a reference on the IEA.org (“CO2 Emissions from Fuel Combustion 2018: Highlights”) which is just another chart with summary data. All of that aside, personal vehicles are only a fraction of total transportation emissions which include a large amount of transshipment from sea and air ports to the interior by truck. Nearly every product you buy in a store has travelled thousands of miles over the road, often repeatedly as it moves from importer warehouse to retail warehouse to regional depot to store. Even if all personal transportation were battery electric powered by 100% sustainable, non-carbon dioxide producing energy sources, we would still have that footprint of consumer goods and raw materials that are shipped over the road, virtually none of which are done using electric vehicles.
Stranger
If you think I’m critical of Elon, check out this good old boy:
Stranger
Eon Musk threatens to pull out. (Which is what his father should have done on the day he was conceived.)
no. stop. come back.
Please.
Don’t go.
I mean it.
That’s another piece of evidence Musk is going to probably try to get out of this deal, which means what will likely be a very long and expensive legal battle, that will probably result in him either having to actually buy Twitter (maybe for slightly less than agreed), or getting out of buying it but likely owing a lot of money for his stupidity.
But not until he stumps un an ego-ful of cash.
He still doesn’t have the contract on his side and will have to convince Twitter to renegotiate or go through a lengthy legal fight, neither of which would be received as positive signals for his investors, one would think.
Nor for Twitter. Musk’s unspoken threat is that if he can’t have it he’ll burn it down. Expect to see more shitposting from him about how Twitter is all bots or doesn’t allow free speech and so forth.
Stranger