This was almost certainly done by a lawyer working on his behalf. This strikes me as a technicality of paperwork that is being seized upon by the media as a way to portray Musk in the worst possible light.
> I wouldn't want somebody like him on my board
In this hypothetical, what is your role (i.e. fellow shareholder, CEO, employee)? I ask because shareholders (aka the owners of the company) choose the board. Musk owns nearly 1/10th of the company, and is now the largest shareholder, institutional or individual, by a good margin. In other words, whatever your hypothetical role, you wouldn't have much of a choice.
Setting the mechanics of boards aside, there is strong case for him being the most successful business person alive. He is right up there with Bezos, Gates, and Zuckerberg. Shareholders should be cheering this on. And there is some evidence, in the form of the stock price, that they are.
Are you arguing that when he signs his name and certifies that the (short) form is "true, complete and correct" that he is not responsible because the form was prepared by an attorney of his?
> being seized upon by the media
How did "the media" seize on this? When I last checked, there were zero articles. And even if they had, why wouldn't discussion be merited?
I have heard it several times already today, but so what a form was filled out wrong, is there any consequence to that that anybody would care about? (I doubt anybody complaining about it actually knows anything about how important it is, it’s just being latched on to because it’s a way to match events with preexisting opinions)
But why is that form there and what is the consequence of filing one way or the other? I mean besides being punished for doing it wrong, why does that rule exist and what are the effects of filling it out one way or the other?
Why is this anything more than an administrative mistake? Did he get some benefit from filing the form that way?
... or, what it seems, is this just a "gotcha!" for people to complain about on the Internet.
I'd almost say it was on purpose for whatever reason. You don't get rich like Elon by hiring incompetent lawyers.
Let me ask you this: how is it that you are aware of the form and how Musk (or, more likely, a lawyer) filled it out?
It is being reported [1]. Every word in an article for a major news outlet is meaningful in some way. Journalists are not provided limitless word count, so decisions have to be made about what is and is not included.
Now, one could definitely argue that journalists merely reported on it as they were trying to divine Musk's intentions. But to then interpret this, as the GP has done, as a sign of Musk's dishonesty and lack of integrity is too great a leap (in my opinion).
[1] https://news.google.com/search?q=elon+musk+twitter+passive
Edit: Also, I love your handle. "Wildcat. Wiiiiiild cat."
RE: handle, thanks!
Also, I have since-posting found one article kinda about this: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/04/elon-musk-thumbs-his-nose-at...
However, even that article is just about the lateness of the filing. It doesn't mention the debate over whether the filing itself was misleading. And this is the best example I could find!
Can I introduce you to Matt Levine? A very popular opinion columnist - you can get his column by email even without a subscription to Bloomberg, but he’s one of the reasons I subscribe.
His take on this was emailed out midday yesterday and I enjoyed every minute: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-04/elon-m...
You can find an archive of columns here: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe... and the email sign up is at http://www.bloomberg.com/newsletters (it used to be a bit easier to find… but pick “Money Stuff” from the list)
Elon openly attacks and disregards SEC. He doesn’t have any benefit of the doubt left, when it comes to activities that SEC is suppose to be regulating.
This is a tempest in a teapot. People who don't like Musk are pointing to it and saying, "See? SEE!? He is a liar. He is bad."
But the reality is, this doesn't actually hurt anyone and its not really a big deal at all.
But let's take the least charitable interpretation and play it out: Musk filled out the form himself. He intentionally with malice aforethought lied. The day after the SEC form becomes public, he takes a board seat. What is the material damage done to the public?
Twitter shareholders got a huge 2-day pop. That would have happened regardless of Elon's intent.
That's entirely irrelevant. The point is that his past behavior shows a pattern of disregarding financial laws.
Yes, you do. Many crimes, like tax evasion, require “willful” violation, so blaming your tax attorney is a valid defense.
That makes it worse, not less bad. It makes the good-faith-mistake defense untenable.
This is like saying that you can’t be responsible for tax dodging because your accountant filed on your behalf.
> This strikes me as a technicality of paperwork that is being seized upon by the media as a way to portray Musk in the worst possible light.
Almost all of securities law is “technicalities”, it still has the force of law.
Like, I know he hasn't delivered on FSD (And I know he won't for a long time, which is why I didn't buy FSD when I bought my Model 3 in 2019), and the Cybertruck and Roadster have been very delayed, what has he lied about?
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/fsd-timeline-promise...
"Funding secured"
Screw the SEC, just another in a long list of government agencies that shouldn’t exist.
I would add 'in its current form' onto the end of that.
The problem is, we have these agencies, so we can say, "look, we're fixing the problem," but then we provide them neither the power nor funding to really do anything but be annoying. I am firmly convinced this is by design. One side gets to say, "look we fixed it" and the other gets to say, "look it doesn't work and never will," and nothing changes.
If you hate Elon Musk, consider probing your mind deeply to figure out why. It may just be that you're an Ayn Rand villain.
0 - Again, Musk didn’t found tesla, he did a hostile takeover and has tried to rewrite history with him as the founder.
You can use this argument to say that no one deserves credit for doing anything. Seems like a dead-end way of thinking about the world to me.
All I see in this “we wouldn’t have EVs without Musk!” discussion is a rehash of the old “great man of history” theory, something that’s generally been discredited in the historical fields. The whims and decisions of individual actors matters, yes, but they also act in a context that molds and constrains them. The specific circumstance that made Musk and Tesla took both his initiative, and a specific cultural and policy environment to support his actions. We overweight the former.
First, one must acknowledge that Tesla would’ve died on the vine without the policies I mentioned above. They finally turned a profit excluding emissions credits in Q1 2021. A feat, yes, but also one that was wholly dependent on public policy to survive and grow. You can give credit to Musk for recognizing the opportunity here, but he didn’t make it.
Second, there’s really nothing to suggest that nobody else would have taken this path if Musk had not, albeit a bit later perhaps. History is full of “great men” who discover and create, but dig under the surface and one will find dozens of uncredited inventors who were either a close second, or less lucky in marketing. Heck, there is no real reason to believe that Musk was even critical for Tesla; remember that he took it over, and we have no idea where it might have gone absent his involvement.
To say that the idea of one person changing the world has been discredited is so wildly wrong I don't even know where to start. We can't neglect the background but we can't neglect individuals and the choices they make either.
What we can say is that Musk presided over the growth of a company that has sold 2 million EVs. We can't say "someone else would have done that if he had never been born," which is what you said. Unreal.
I was attempting to paraphrase a common sentiment, and should have been more clear about that. It’s pretty easy to find people stating a varient of this idea in sibling threads.
> To say that the idea of one person changing the world has been discredited is so wildly wrong I don't even know where to start.
You could start by actually reading what I said, rather than making up for yourself and then arguing against that. Everything you said here is unrelated to my point, and directly countermanded by my actual words.
Or in other words, the end justifies the means?
Not all of us share that philosphy.
To others, those things are in fact enough to say that Elon Musk is a shithead.
It's as if there are gradients of human behavior, and not everyone is always a cartoony villain or Dudley Do-right all the time.
> However, "being a troll, exaggerating, and sometimes lying" are not mortal sins.
Mortal sins are serious sins, venial sins are less serious sins. "Colloquial" doesn't mean you get to delete words you find inconvenient or don't understand.
In which alternate reality?
You just have to look at the pandemic to see what difference no combustion engine cars would make for the world. Cities that were covered in smog suddenly had clean air because of the stay at home directive.
Despite all of that, climate change itself has not been "significantly reduced" in any way, nor has there been any evidence that increased adoption of EVs has slowed down or altered climate change's progression.
Two years ago we needed to start reducing emissions by 4% every year. We didn't. We must now reach a whopping 50% emissions reduction by 2030 to limit temperature increases to 1.5C, because the current path we are on could increase temperatures by 4.4C by 2100.
Getting every nation to ditch their ICE vehicles has to happen, yes, but it's not that simple. You can't just ban the sale of new ICE vehicles and expect that 7% to drop to 0%, because everyone who already owns an ICE vehicle is going to keep driving it until they've decided they're done with it for whatever reason. So, the only way to get to 0% ICE vehicles by 2030 would be to make it illegal to operate one - today.
Politics is involved. Getting large swaths of America (or anyone in any nation with an affinity for an ICE vehicle, but this subset of folk is a great example) to give up their gasoline and their trucks and their mustangs is like asking someone to stop breathing. Asking developing nations with little money or ability to modify their infrastructure to support only ICE vehicles over the next eight years is an outstandingly daunting task. I could go on and on, and while I admire your hopefulness, what you're saying requires the entire world to accomplish the same goal in a far shorter amount of time than we actually have.
I want to view the future through rose-colored glasses. I want to have high hopes that EVs will save us.
They won't.
2. Tesla accounts for ~14% of EVs sold.
3. Passenger vehicles account for less than 7% of total CO2 emissions globally.
So, I'm going to reply to your comment but really, this is relevant to most of this thread (and nearly every thread about him), because I'm just tired of these conversations.
Yes, by many measures, he has been incredibly successful at both running businesses and amassing wealth. There are a lot of metrics that you could cite that support that assertion.
At the same time, by many measures, you could successfully - and easily - argue that he's a pretty shitty person.
And guess what? Both are true. I don't know what my ultimate point here is besides saying that yeah - some people think he's awesome, some people think he's shitty, and neither view is technically incorrect. Move on.
So absurd that anyone takes that argument seriously.
And you know what? That's OK. :)
You hint that Elon Musk treats other people badly. Has he raped anyone? Murdered anyone? Waged any wars? Are there abuse allegations? No, he's a troll on twitter.
I truly don't know how else to make my previous post any clearer to you. The simple fact of the matter is that everyone has their own personal reasons for putting more importance on one thing over another. Nobody ever owes you an explanation for why they might put more importance on how someone treats someone over how many units of a product they sell. I could speculate as to any number of reasons why that may be, but for the sake of this conversation, that's not my place. I will, however, say that I'm incredibly surprised and perplexed by your inability to understand that there are people out there who "place people over profits".
>You hint that Elon Musk treats other people badly. Has he raped anyone? Murdered anyone? Waged any wars? Are there abuse allegations? No, he's a troll on twitter.
As I've made clear in this thread, I am not taking a position on Musk. All I can say is that what I've alluded to, in regards to how he treats people and his employees, are all things that have been very publicly discussed in the past and should be surprising to nobody who has paid even a modicum of attention.
You literally called him a "shitty preson", and you're saying you're not taking a position on him. Are you joking?
>Yes, by many measures, he has been incredibly successful at both running businesses and amassing wealth. There are a lot of metrics that you could cite that support that assertion.
>At the same time, by many measures, you could successfully - and easily - argue that he's a pretty shitty person.
I simply said that there are reasons people could successfully argue that he's shitty. What I did not do, however, was take a position on those arguments. The phrase, "You could successfully argue" does not mean, "This is what I believe".
Have a nice day man. I'm not replying to you anymore.
I truly hope you have a pleasant day as well. :)
No one owes me anything. I'm asking a question and you're not answering it, you're just restating "some people value different things and we can't say why".
My point is that people should value Elon's accomplishments more than his attitude. The fact that they don't is bizarre and demands an explanation.
To them, your attitude is bizarre and demands an explanation. To them, you should value someone who is a decent person over any money they make.
OP wasn't saying Elon Musk is a shithead. S/he was pointing out that both things can be true - he can be a shithead, and he can create wealth and innovation. Both can be true, and some people will place value on one over the other, much as you have done.
We can't talk to each other because you're coming from a value-relative perspective ("people value different things, no one is wrong, and we can't say why"). To me this is insane. If someone values 5 dollars more than their life, we can question that. When people say Elon Must being a mean person on twitter outweighs everything he's built, we can question that.
And I never said anything about money.
>Your post is perfectly clear. It's just not answering the question. Ditto this post.
It does answer the question, you just don't like the answer. Notice how I'm not questioning the why behind why you choose to value how many units of his product he has sold over how he treats others? The simple fact of the matter is that many people put "people over profits" for many reasons - I am but one person and cannot answer for them. This is no different from why you can't speak to why every single Musk fan supports him, because everyone's reasons are different.
>No one owes me anything.
And yet you have repeatedly said...
>The fact that they don't is bizarre and demands an explanation.
I'm not sure how you can say people don't owe you anything when you've demanded it repeatedly.
>... Elon Must being a mean person on twitter...
Actually, I've been speaking broadly this entire time. When I reference how Musk treats people, I am referencing everything he does, not just his actions on Twitter.
I think what this ultimately boils down to is akin to the question you first posed in this thread - "If you hate Elon Musk, consider probing your mind deeply to figure out why." I would like to ask you, why is it so important to you what other people think about Elon Musk, and why do you seem to let it bother you so much if they don't like him? He doesn't seem to let the court of public opinion bother him or hold him back from doing nearly whatever he wants, so he's going to keep doing what he's been doing regardless of what other people think. With that in mind, what does it matter to you - you, who isn't Elon Musk - if an internet stranger isn't a fan of him?
I never said business success outweighs how you treat people. I said, in the specific case of Elon Musk, what he has built outweighs his obnoxious attitude. That's a specific, not a generality.
Anyway, we've arrived at a conclusion. To you, values are relative. That's an answer but it's not acceptable to me.
Leaving aside the stunt where he called a rescue diver a pedophile, there has been enough and substantially bad racism at Tesla under his leadership that the company was ordered to pay 137 million dollars [1].
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-t...
And yet here you are, engaging in one of them. I echo the parents request of a deep meditation on why you are feeling this way.
Pointing out the futility of a conversation is different than engaging in it.
>I echo the parents request of a deep meditation on why you are feeling this way.
Please highlight where, in this thread, I've stated my own feelings about Elon Musk.
[...]
>At the same time, by many measures, you could successfully - and easily - argue that he's a pretty shitty person.
Right here.
Kind of like how this very comment chain is going, no?
I don't think we in any way need to lionize the mythology of John Galt like figures to make progress and build a future better than the present.
> If you hate Elon Musk, consider probing your mind deeply to figure out why.
I'm not a hater, but I can understand why others are. Like you said, he's obnoxious. And he lies. Which should be enough justification by itself. But he's also really fucking rich, which is a teeth-grindingly annoying combination.
I really admire what he's done for the Electric Vehicle industry, and the rocket industry, (and the satellite broadband industry) and I absolutely cannot wait for Starship to fly to orbit. That's gonna be amazing. He can execute on a vision like almost no-one else.
But he's a dick - I can't deny that. And for people who don't really care about EVs, or rockets, or satellite broadband (i.e. non-nerds), the "being a dick" part is what's going to stand out the most.
It's not because "they don't care about EVs or rockets," it's something deeper and uglier.
Tons of people care, an entire industry of celebrity gossip lives off of it.
Elon has just as much of a cult following as he has haters, the fact that you can’t see how perfectly this mirrors wider celebrity culture suggests that you are either very out of touch with pop culture, or are a part of the Elon cult.
You have a point. But what does it say about someone that they spend time hating celebrities? Do they think "this celebrity is a bad person, if I were rich and famous I would be a good good person!" Is that true? Or is it just childish resentment?
Do we defend the people who have a deranged hatred towards Anne Hathaway? No we find them bizarre and disturbed.
Probably about the same thing as people that spend their time defending and dickriding celebrities on the internet.
You seem to be under the impression that there is nothing legitimately off putting about Elon’s public persona.
> Elon Musk is kind of obnoxious. He lies (or "exaggerates"). But what Tesla has done is insane. It's happened so quickly, and that's leaving aside the rockets. The hard evidence that we can build new things, that we can progress and build a future that's better than the present is so important. If it takes a flawed man to show us that, I'll take it.
> If you hate Elon Musk, consider probing your mind deeply to figure out why. It may just be that you're an Ayn Rand villain.
Please show me where I said "there is nothing legitimately off putting about Elon’s public persona".
You just come off as so aghast at criticism of the man.
Elon didn’t like how Twitter was being run, so he spent a relatively minor fraction of his overall wealth to buy a large stake in the company and get himself onto the board. This is beyond comprehension to the average person who is typically just a the will of these large corporations.
Elon is _extremely_ powerful, and as such he deserves to be held to a higher level of scrutiny, beyond even the level of some random celebrity.
Then stop hand waving with poor analogies and just say what it is then.
Musk is seen by many as a sociopathic narcissist who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. Doing things like sending private investigators to try and dig up dirt on that rescue diver who criticized him hardly distances him from that image (and doesn't help his claims of being a "free speech absolutist" either). Those traits combined with tremendous power are generally not a good combination.
We don't owe him anything for his business ventures. He isn't running a charity. He isn't doing it for you and me. Electric cars and rockets are very cool, but are not moving humanity into some new dawn. The idea that he is some necessary component of "hard evidence that we can build new things" that deserves special treatment is borne straight out of a personality cult. Pointing this out is a far cry from "claiming his work isn't valuable."
You can argue that Tesla in particular is successful off the back of the taxpayer; are you advocating against government incentives for electric vehicles?
Who knows what costs we'll be exposed to as their somewhat suicidal 'self driving' functionality becomes exposed to more of the buysers they sold it to on the back of improbable promises (such as "your car will eventually pay for itself by acting as an antonymous taxi").
It may seem like an off-topic point, but I recently had a big wake-up call with the kinds of people you mention. The flip side of your flowery description is that they're often short-sighted, vicious people who can get worked up into a frenzy with little warning, or reason. Sometimes they want to for no reason.
You're trying to describe the nobility of people with no skills (valued by society). But imagine if the entire world were populated by them. Would you really want to live in it?
And if not, can they be called heroes of humanity?
I dont even think Rand would follow you there; I can't really think of any corollary to that sentiment other than fascist rhetoric. To know nothing of a group of people but how much they make at work, and to go that far in painting a picture of them... Its shocking! Haha
I'm sure you mean well, and are genuinely reflecting, but this is not a good look at all to anybody but the most rightwing people. What amounts Idiocracy lore is not a suitable or humane thing to ground political beliefs on.
Musk is rich on paper but the stocks are massively overvalued for various reasons. The idea that "billionaires are evil people who exploit innocent laborers" is false and it comes from a place of resentment.
And yes, billionaires absolutely build their wealth on the backs of others. There's simply no way to become a billionaire without exploiting a system and taking advantage of others in some way. It may be legal, but legality took a sharp turn away from morality a long long time ago.
I agree with her that some very smart people are completely consumed by resentment.
> And yes, billionaires absolutely build their wealth on the backs of others. There's simply no way to become a billionaire without exploiting a system and taking advantage of others in some way. It may be legal, but legality took a sharp turn away from morality a long long time ago.
You're just resentful of people who have accomplished more than you. What's stopping Bob, who makes less money than you toiling in a factory, from saying the exactly same thing about you? You're an exploiter, it's how you earn a living without getting your hands dirty.
Something, something terrorists and freedom fighters.
He shows what's possible and it exposes our inadequacies and sloth. If you're insecure, he is constantly touching a nerve with success after success, his massive fanbase and ever presence in the news.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9853387/Elon-Musk-r...
The fact that I made a little money on Elon's coattails doesn't make it OK for him to constantly lie to customers.
Doesn't change my opinion of Musk's practices. If he's selling very expensive features that are actually donations into the hopes & dreams tip jar, it should be clearly marked as such.
If you bought late in 2013 you probably paid ~$180, for only 30x.
That's not some kind of consumer protection escape hatch, though:
"Yeah, we sold them software that will never exist, but because it's actually impossible to implement on our hardware, it's their fault for buying it."
I think the software WILL eventually exist. Just not on the timeline Elon thinks it will.
"I would be shocked if we do not achieve full-self-driving safer than a human this year. I would be shocked." - Musk in a 2021 earnings call.
"I don't care what Elon does as long as it makes me money."
If you had a money printer, wouldn't you give it a lot of freedom? Personally I'd draw the line at killing a dog or cat. Other than that, well... If it wanted to knock out a few walls, I'd just sigh and put up with the noise for a few months.
(For context, I'm undecided about Elon. But none of the counterarguments to his behavior seem persuasive yet.)
Your money printer may print you money today, at the cost of putting you in jail for counterfitting tomorrow. It could result in the Mafia to come and break your legs to take it (and the money it printed) from you. Or greatly increase inflation (since mechanically, inflation is a result of more money being added than removed from circulation) in the future so your future earnings are worthless.
What I'm saying is
1) that I care about the merit of the company (the products) much more than I care about what their talking heads say
2) that I don't think Elon's that bad as some say/ IMHO he's a semi-autistic person (don't know what his exact diagnosis is) who fucking loves technology and sometimes gets over-excited. I cut him some slack because he delivers - even if late and something's missing, well so what - it's still revolutionary and that's more than enough for me, everything on top of that is a bonus
That doesn't mean you weren't.
The rest of your comment almost reads like stockholm syndrome - or mostly just rationalizing being misled.
There's nothing to rationalize. Elon had some nice visionary talks which I like, but mostly don't care about - and I'm not going to be mad just because he said something will be in 3 years and it's in 6 or 9 - even 12 is good in my eyes, so what. I like his optimism much more than the """realism""" (read: pessimism) of mostly any other public company's management. His optimism is one of the primary things pushing Tesla forward - kill that and you kill the company.
I mostly care about hard facts on the ground, and these go more than well enough. Along with my investment.
Commercial space flights were becoming rarer and rarer out of the US, and now it is the most common.
The price of space flight while still high, was reduced by a huge percentage.
I’m sure he told many lies to get there. But economics and physics don’t really lie.
I like him for the reasons I like Kanye, Bernie Sanders, and Trump (though I only voted for the first). Just says crazy things, but some of them are just truths that we’ve all chosen to ignore it don’t like to accept.
With respect, this comment makes you sound like a contemptible, gullible fool that makes society actively worse. I really hope you’re being a bit facetious.
"a contemptible, gullible fool that makes society actively worse", seems a little overwrought to me.
Seriously though this is my point. Kanye is absurd. A fool you might say. Like Trump and Bernie. Yet if you live in an upside down world, you might say some obvious truth, and it will further make you like a fool.
I like that back in 04 he was talking about the way blacks are treated in America, before all the woke fools decided it was popular.
And Beyonces video was better than Taylor’s.
The funny part to me is you actually think your vote for Joe means something.
>Sanders, in particular, suggested that the US could adopt a socialist system by emulating Scandinavia. “I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people,” said the US presidential candidate, who identifies himself as a “democratic socialist.”
But Danish prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government this week, says Sanders got more than a few things wrong.
“I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
https://qz.com/538499/denmark-says-it-isnt-the-socialist-uto...
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/bernie-sanders-wrong-d...
Now if you say “I think Trump likes black people” you are lambasted like Kanye was for saying George bush didn’t.
There was that time Tesla bought Musk's cousin's failing rooftop solar company.
So I would credit him with at least that accomplishment.
Elon, Bernie, Kanye, Trump - most things they say are just noise.
“Hands on” on the Jesus is King album is one of my favorites, and I do think he might have a messiah complex, but he isn’t saying follow me, but follow God.
Kanye is not a role model to imitate. But he does seem to play a large role in the cosmos (or think the story that will be told centuries from now). Like Elon I’d say.
I can appreciate Trump, and I can appreciate Bernie. I appreciate Kanye’s art and often his blunt words. My vote for him was purely symbolic. He wasn’t even on the ballot in my state.
The guy incited a deadly insurrection to subvert democracy to keep himself in power. He also extorted Ukraine by withholding weapons for his personal political gain. He was impeached for both.
You're not making any sense right now...
The crap economy is definitely all his fault. And gas prices, his fault. And he doesn’t even care about climate change.
He and Twitter will pay the SEC a fine and be done with it. The SEC is a civil agency. And this doesn't seem to rise to the level of criminal negligence.
(Practically speaking, he's probably losing his Tesla tweet-review case as a result of this. If he can't figure out if he's an activist when considering a Board seat, he probably needs someone with domain experience looking over his public statements.)
I'm not so sure about that. He doesn't have a lot of experience with running ad sales. His big breaks have been PayPal (kind of), Tesla and SpaceX. None of which were social, none of which were "free".
Also, I think Twitter was undervalued compared to its potential, and Elon wouldn’t be buying part of it if he didn’t think he could turn a good profit.
Unless he was buying a seat on the board so that he could help effect change that he desired.
There are fees when receiving money as a result of selling a product or service, which is where PayPal makes (likely most) of its money.
If a vendor makes PayPal purchases slightly more expensive, it can cause bad will with the customer (who is less likely to return and make more purchases). Exceptions are sometimes with one-off purchases (e.g. a conference ticket or course fee).
Separately, the original comment asserted that the PayPal account charges you each transaction (which is false). The new argument is different, which asserts that a vendor may charge you more due to PayPal fees.
You misunderstand me. I didn't say you got charged extra for paypal over Stripe, for instance.
Stripe which you mention is also expensive, and also factored in to the price. I don't know of any serious eccomerce company that is not acutely aware of card fees. Every payment gateway charges high fees and it is factored in to the price the consumer pays.
I personally would not invest in a company where I cannot trust claims being made by the board.
I wonder if people who say things like this actually use Twitter. Twitter has far less moderation than the other social media giants. It’s a high school popularity contest, and the cool kids didn’t need blue check marks from the teachers to be cool.
Wow that's very troubling. Can you show some examples of studies, or representative serious anecdotes?
The OP hasn't provided their answer but I'd be interested in your answer too!
> Free speech in this case is code for saying anything without consequence and weaponizing it at morons.
I was just curious if the government's guarantee not to censor political speech is just as ill-advised. A quick "yes" would take about 5 seconds to give, or of not, just a short sentence about what the motivation is for keeping the government out of policing political speech. e.g. "If the government can suppress political speech, then..."
Doesn't seem like a huge ask for the curious!
Edit: sorry, I mixed up public company and public good. Twitter is a public company, but not a public good.
All securities are under the SEC's jurisdiction, including those issued by unlisted companies, e.g. start-ups.
You wouldn't want the CEO of two of the most innovative, most successful companies of all time on your board? Why?
Suppose he comes in saying "hey, I'm going to be a passive investor" and the subtext is "funny you didn't notice me amassing so much of your stock", meaning "I could yet become an active investor and do a hostile takeover".
It's not farfetched that management might react to that by saying "we'd rather you become an active investor, and here, you can take a seat on the board if you promise you won't mount a takeover".
His intent could have been "passive for now" and mgmt maybe immediately changed his mind. Would that be a crime, or a violation of any kind, or misleading? Would saying "passive" commit him to being passive even if mgmt preferred him to be active? How would other investors get misled by any of this? Couldn't he just as quickly have decided to get out of TWTR and sold his shares, and if so, wouldn't that possibly have done more harm to other investors? What's the law say about this?
It's his board.
No he didn't.
There was discussion yesterday whether him polling his followers last week about twitter and social media was activism. Joining the board certainly is.
He has already signed a separate agreement with twitter that he won’t go over 14 % .
Twitter has always been ripe for being targeted for a takeover it is one of the smallest social media companies it is worth only 35-40B compared to say Facebook (900+B) or TikTok (400B) and it has enormous presence and daily active users. Snapchat is not very far in valuation, but has less reach, Reddit is growing and raised the last round at $10B post but is still private and not that easy take control of. The other attractive factor the founder is no longer actively involved.
Sooner or later someone was going to attempt take over and try to improve its monetizing strategy and generate more value. 3x-5x their MCap is well within the realm of possibility for twitter if executed to a good vision.
I dont see how filing a 13G is better than the above
It's amazing how jumpy the hackernews crowd gets without even reading the document in question. As if Elon's team of lawyers that did this paperwork for him overlooked such a trivial detail.
I appreciate that you take your own advice. You don't understand how these forms work. Both passive and active investors can file a 13G. Why are you just making stuff up?
I haven't seen analysis on whether it was illegal, but I wouldn't want somebody like him on my board even if it succeeded in keeping him from buying up more stock. With him on the outside, maybe he causes more trouble than on the inside but I would be wary of the association.