Oh yeah, that one too. It's just become impossible to defend Elon Musk's ridiculous behaviour. This Twitter thing is just the icing on a gradually swelling cake made out of stupid shit. The idea that he would spend $44 billion on a social media company rather, than, say, basically
anything else just makes my brain hurt. Things that $44 billion would have been better spent on than making sure less people can hurt Elon Musk's ego:
- SpaceX's Mars ambitions, for one, the Starship project, etc.
- Accelerating Tesla's zero-cobalt battery ambitions so that the electric vehicle revolution doesn't need to be inconveniently propped up by unpoliced child labour in cobalt mines inconveniently located in places that just don't give a fuck about this sort of thing. SpaceX and Tesla remain incredible and important companies, although it has to be said that that $44 billion could also have been spent...
- Restructuring the workforce (I mean - hiring more people - paying the existing staff more, primarily - maybe getting a real HR department, taking the initiative as major tech companies that so many others look up to by actually sanctioning and even funding the unionisation of their workforce) so that the companies weren't so damn dystopian and their achievements aren't tainted by the notoriously toxic work culture that we keep hearing about, despite Elon's best efforts to limit the free speech of anyone who wants to talk about that.
These 3 things are just in his own companies, I mentioned them first because as a late-stage Western capitalism absolutist, they are things that, one would think, could actually have crossed his mind, given that they would benefit the companies and endeavours that do seem to be important to the human species even if the way he intends to get there ("at any cost") is increasingly disturbing. There are of course, other things that don't involve his existing companies:
- Saving over 120 million people from starvation (according to the World Food Programme director in 2021, it would take $6 billion to save 42 million people, after which Musk facetiously promised to contribute $6 billion if it could be shown exactly how this would "end world hunger" - ending world hunger permanently was never on the cards, this is obviously a problem that will take more than just throwing immense amounts of money at it - in fact it's largely caused by the idea that just throwing money at things is the solution to every single problem - nonetheless, a budget was provided, and Elon ignored it)
- Countering Bill Gate's $0.5 billion Tesla short approximately 88 times over so he can forget about it and cooperate with Gates on some philanthropic endeavours (OK, Musk could not actually do this due to securities legislation - I include it mainly just to illustrate the pettiness of the man. For the record I'm not trying to wade into any nonsense discussion about the reason why this issue even exists, or Gates himself as a person, those things aren't relevant to the fact that throwing $44 billion away on bullshit, basically, makes this half a billion short "controversy" seem totally irrelevant in comparison
- Completely negate the impact on the US economy of the $40 billion lend-lease aid package for Ukraine, with $4 billion left over to sort out all the other insane shit going on in American politics right now (I know, throwing money at stuff doesn't solve problems, but, it can help)
- Oh that note... umm.. healthcare? Education? I'm sure investing $44 billion in education would ensure that the next generation doesn't believe in so much absolutely brain-melting, morally abhorrent, absolutely dumb fucking shit as the current relevant majority of voting adults appears to that is currently threatening to absolutely fuck the world. Then again, Musk is an educated, smart guy, despite being an egomaniacal douchebag. Some kind of education system that taught the kind of introspective self-analysis required to avoid these traits in ones' self - and to recognise them in others and avoid giving them positions from which they can wield too much influence - would probably be the best kind of help. Although maybe not immediately, there's a lot of pretty dangerous, like, immediate existential risk shit going on that we need to pull through as a species first.
