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Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

wsj.com

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Re: Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

#51

Post by gpm »

api wrote: post #47
TechBro8615 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But trusting all of the future to just one guy Part of the problem is not trusting the future to one guy, but rather that there is hardly more than one guy to trust it to. Where are the other Elon Musks? We need more people like him, not less.

Oh yeah. I've been on about that for years. If extreme wealth or political power were a meritocracy most billionaires and high-ranking political officials would be similarly productive and competent and he'd be average for his socioeconomic class. There should be hundreds and hundreds of Elon Musks at least.

> There should be hundreds and hundreds of Elon Musks at least.

I'm not sure I agree.

I like Elon Musk (a whole lot more than most people) - but every Elon Musk consumes a lot of societies resources. He's spending 10s or 100s of billions of dollars worth of resource on (literal) moonshots. A hundred of him would raise that to trillions to 10s of trillions of dollars.

I think we can afford the former as a society (and that it benefits us). I'm not sure we an afford the latter. Worse, we become less efficient at is when there are more of him because we start running out of talented and driven engineers.

Maybe 10s would be a good order of magnitude.

Re: Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

#52

Post by mandeepj »

colinmhayes wrote: post #32
mandeepj wrote: post #21

> Yet he has to borrow, sometimes a lot, to pay for his lifestyle and business investments without liquidating shares that help him maintain control of the companies he runs. Not sure. He could sell secondary shares without losing control, just like zuck

As the article points out, Tesla went public before the "founder gets preferred shares that have all the voting power" thing became popular. Zuckerberg sells the non-voting shares, but Musk doesn't have any.

Yeah, I also read that in the article. It's incorrect. Google went public in 2004, and they have that voting structure. It's mentioned correctly in the article.

Re: Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

#53

Post by dntbnmpls »

colinmhayes wrote: post #32
mandeepj wrote: post #21

> Yet he has to borrow, sometimes a lot, to pay for his lifestyle and business investments without liquidating shares that help him maintain control of the companies he runs. Not sure. He could sell secondary shares without losing control, just like zuck

As the article points out, Tesla went public before the "founder gets preferred shares that have all the voting power" thing became popular. Zuckerberg sells the non-voting shares, but Musk doesn't have any.

> As the article points out, Tesla went public before the "founder gets preferred shares that have all the voting power" thing became popular.

This is simply not true. Google popularized it in 2004 with their IPO. It's how page/brin today control over 50% of the alphabet votes. Zuckerburg copied page/brin. The reason why musk couldn't get the same privileges is because tesla wasn't a growth powerhouse that google/facebook/etc were. He wasn't in position to make such demands from investors.

Re: Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

#55

Post by new_realist »

gpm wrote: post #50
mire_rustling wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything he does is for PR. That tweet came out right before he got his bonus payout. He's had controversy with the virus and his factories. By tweeting that out, he gave off a "billionaire doesn't care about money" vibe. What got more coverage? His payout or his rambling tweets. He would have got more flak if the press covered his payout while he has been pushing his workers to get back into the factories.

> Everything he does is for PR. That tweet came out right before he got his bonus payout. This is overly cynical. A fair bit of what he does is about PR - but not all of it. He's still human and it's pretty clear that he uses twitter as a stress relief mechanism (for better or worse). Whether that was for PR or not is pretty unclear. It was basically simultaneous with him (according to him) having a fight with his gi…

The nonsense wasn’t PR, it was drugs.

Re: Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

#56

Post by ydb »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #4
vikramkr wrote: post #3

It's really concerning that theres essentially a giant liability, Elon's personal debt, that doesnt show up on the balance sheet. As the article discusses, a margin call would be devastating, and hopefully any irresponsible decisions in his personal lifestyle choices don't spill over to put Tesla or SpaceX at risk. Especially considering how powerful a force they've been in driving consumer changes in vehicles and in…

Very unlikely, but if necessary Tesla would go through a Chapter 11 reorg, not a 7 liquidation. The brand, charging network, and manufacturing capacity has too much value to throw away. When Tesla was on the brink of insolvency years ago, he had a handshake deal with Larry Page (they jetpooled together) for Google to acquire Tesla and for Musk to continue to run day to day operations. Wasn’t necessary, but there are…

I hope Elon will be fine. The future depends on benevolent billionaires like himself to get us out of the financial mess the governments of the world have put us in. If we have any hope of tackling climate change, Tesla will be front and center in that battle.

Besides, he just had a child! What a wonderful gift to the world. I hope his child grows up to be as wise and down-to-earth as his father. :)

Re: Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

#57

Post by ydb »

new_realist wrote: post #54

Elon uses four personal jets guzzling who knows now much gas. He practically flies 24x7. When it comes to climate, he is a hypocrite.

Elon has done more for climate activism and the green movement in the last decade than basically anybody. Besides perhaps Miss Thunberg.

His "guzzling" jets as you call them are a minor convenience in order to facilitate quicker, more efficient transport to enable the evolution and development of Tesla and SpaceX.

Do you expect him to drive everywhere? Not only would that be worse for the environment, but it would mean more of Elon's precious time wasted and thus also our time wasted because a brilliant man is stuck in traffic.

Re: Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

#58

Post by dntbnmpls »

mike_d wrote: post #6

Remember that Elon agreed to have his tweets reviewed by Tesla's in-house counsel in lieu of formal SEC action after he lied about taking the company private. He recently tweeted that the stock price was too high. Something legal would never allow him to say, especially if he is on the verge of exercising options. My bet is the SEC isn't going to tolerate this behavior anymore, and he won't be at the helm of any of h…

> Remember that Elon agreed to have his tweets reviewed by Tesla's in-house counsel in lieu of formal SEC action after he lied about taking the company private.

He said he could've taken it private at $420. Tesla is trading over $800 today. So he probably wasn't lying.

> Something legal would never allow him to say, especially if he is on the verge of exercising options.

If he were exercising his options, he wouldn't want the share prices to drop.

> My bet is the SEC isn't going to tolerate this behavior anymore, and he won't be at the helm of any of his companies by the end of the year. He will be just plain poor.

People like you have been saying this for years. I remember the haters/journalists/etc claiming tesla was going to go bankrupt, SEC was going to remove musk, the "pedo guy" was going to ruin Musk, etc.

If you want a good laugh read the article and the comments. It's amazing how little journalists know about anything and how wrong online commenters tend to be.

"Is Elon Musk trying to commit ‘suicide by SEC’ by taunting the agency?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19259911

There are dozens more if you feel like searching.

Re: Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

#59

Post by [deleted] »

new_realist wrote: post #55
gpm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything he does is for PR. That tweet came out right before he got his bonus payout. This is overly cynical. A fair bit of what he does is about PR - but not all of it. He's still human and it's pretty clear that he uses twitter as a stress relief mechanism (for better or worse). Whether that was for PR or not is pretty unclear. It was basically simultaneous with him (according to him) having a fight with his gi…

The nonsense wasn’t PR, it was drugs.

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk, Tech’s Cash-Poor Billionaire

#60

Post by tehjoker »

RhysU wrote: post #34
tehjoker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people in charge in America only fail upwards, never down.

Is that statement tautological?

No. In a healthy society, when the people in charge fail, they are demoted or shunned depending on how badly they did. For example, should Judith Miller still have her job at the NYT after cheerleading the march to war in Iraq based on fake evidence? Obviously not. People that perform well and are correct should have the top seats.

It helps to compare the harsh treatment of the average worker to the soft humanized treatment reserved for the bosses and war criminals.

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