> Is Musk known really for his shrewd political skills and sharp maneuvers?

He should be. Solidly Republican-leaning Texans are buying and driving electric vehicles, in some cases believing that doing so is "owning the libs".

Tesla seemed like an impossible long shot 15 years ago, not just for the considerable technical and business challenges but also because most Americans were happily buying gas-gusslers and even fantastic hybrids like the Prius were still somewhat niche. At the time, not a single major car company was willing to invest seriously in building electric vehicles.

Now there's gigafactory right outside Austin. It's something I did not think would have been possible. Tesla has threaded a nearly impossible needle to get to where it is in 2022.

> He should be. Solidly Republican-leaning Texans are buying and driving electric vehicles, in some cases believing that doing so is "owning the libs".

Could this attempt at buying Twitter be part of the same vice-signalling[1] schtick, then?

1. As in "See how I hate the same things you do?"

All these examples are business bets and not political ones. Don't get me wrong, they're astoundingly impressive but of the wrong type.

I don't dispute that he's a shrewd businessman and fancy visionary but when it comes to the world of politics, I have my doubts and reservations.

I'd like to see action and results first before I can vouch for him in that field.

> I don't dispute that he's a shrewd businessman and fancy visionary but when it comes to the world of politics, I have my doubts and reservations.

In this day and age you don't become a billionaire without being good at politics. Navigating the regulatory state is an enormous task even when you don't have people laser-focused on you like Musk would due to his wealth and size of his companies.

> If I were a Tesla shareholder and this was his actual masterplan to maximize value for shareholders

Doesn’t have to be either-or. Marketing strategy is an important part of running Tesla and given the empirical dislike of media establishment of him, ensuring Twitter won’t go against him on a whim of the board seems strategically important.

> business holdings will got tainted by his politics like what happened with Trump

Is there data on Trump businesses doing materially worse overall after the taint? I assume the half of US that like him bolster it and the other half see the taint but the vector sum is material here.

Alternatively he stops being the whimsical "fun" billionaire that people find amusing, and starts being the tyrannical billionaire that people hate. This results in political backlash and a massive boycott of Tesla's consumer products.

To be clear: Elon buying Twitter doesn't necessarily trigger any of this. Elon using that influence to actually push Twitter around in ways that are "useful" to Tesla shareholders potentially does. For Tesla shareholders I'd say the risk here is much higher than any possible reward.

> massive boycott of Tesla's consumer products.

I mean we could speculate at length but the condition you’re describing already exists. People have polar reactions to him. Some hate with a passion, some love him. As for boycott, I’m not surprised if a lot of people already feel like they won’t buy a Tesla. Hard to imagine it can get worse from here.

> Hard to imagine it can get worse from here.

He could get indicted for the FSD scamming and bring the whole thing tumbling down. If he stuck to just selling battery powered cars I'd be a lot more bullish on TSLA, but he hasn't and I think his antics represent a serious threat to the company in the long run.

I think the opposite. Getting it right once is hard enough but the fact Musk has been a core figure involved in the development of:

- Paypal - Tesla - SpaceX

Tells me that his success isn't a fluke. You might get lucky with one of those companies, but with three? Don't think so.

> . Hard to imagine it can get worse from here.

I imagine a lot of "save the earth" and "Let's go to Mars" people overlap with the "Fuck Donald Trump" people. So letting Trump back on Twitter may cause them to swear off Teslas and DogeCoin. Alternatively, not letting Trump back may cause a bunch of truck-driving Texans he's been targeting to convert to electric to tell him to fuck off.

Bottom line, it puts Musk in the unenviable position of having to piss off a third of the country by deciding if Trump has a Twitter account. And while I would still swap with him in a second, this is an additional burden he's putting on himself.

See this is precisely why I am bearish of Elon's companies, he's a savvy businessman, not a technologist, precisely why my opinion is that he is an idiot not a savant - PayPal is known for having been a flaming dumpster fire, it succeeded because of early market penetration (banks unable and unwilling to produce online payments systems in lieu of pushing credit cards). Ironically it is most useful now in traditional payment systems online, there are now reasonable more up to date payment systems available which largely supersede PayPal.

Again, Tesla is known for creating more hype fewer cars, expensive messes and underdelivering on promises - he has stimulated the market into considering alternative fuel sources, which is good but in a lot of ways showmanship not vision, more top down execution and spectacle than forethought or planning.

SpaceX is the most evident of these, Musk is busy taking tax dollars and building efficient rockets, which I guess is good but not about getting us to Mars.

So I think you are right to call out pandering for sales, it's what musk does best, not tech or vision.

It's like calling flappy bird visionary - popular yes but preceded by hundreds of sidescroller helicopter games with a single button controlling altitude. Difference being Flappy broke in on a verdant mobile market while the two color LCD version I played 25 years ago on a flipphone didn't even have Facebook to get popular on, while Flash versions of the same thing that had been out for decades suffered from anti Flash sentiment and a smaller mindshare.

> For Tesla shareholders I'd say the risk here is much higher than any possible reward.

I think that's probably right. But do those Tesla shareholders believe it?

> ensuring Twitter won’t go against him on a whim of the board

Can you tell me please what you mean by this?

AFAIK, Twitter is decentralized and fragmented for any actor to orchestrate an all-out political witch hunt where everyone on the platform goes against anyone in particular.

As far as Trump's business holdings go, Trump Organization runs like a brand management firm where they license and operate businesses with Trump name plastered on them, and I believe it's safe to say that the brand name's risk profile increased greatly due to the association with Trumpism from 2015 onward.

> Can you tell me please what you mean by this?

Twitter can find an excuse to ban his account (you can easily imagine this sort of risk exists after some of his recent meme tweets for example). I believe that is a single point of failure in Tesla PR strategy and a risk to be mitigated.

> brand name's risk profile increased

Risk profile sure but has the net value decreased or increased due to his presidency? I don’t have data to say it’s one way or another but looking at the downside without the upside as well is futile.

Well .. not really. Not at all. How could you even think it matters?

Musk could simply setup muskannouncements.com and blog his own tweets. No one may search for your announcements, but you better believe for his site he will still get full coverage.

ergo he's not doing it for his own announcements. it will be for a mix of media influence, and to address the bias in twitters 'fact checking'

> ergo he's not doing it for his own announcements.

I do agree he is doing things for reasons besides his own announcements, but I cannot agree that it's not part of it. Some people may simply not care enough about EVs to bother, as technologists we assume people see the world through our lens but I bet you many people have barely bothered to research his cars, they only know Tesla in a cursory fashion the same way you might know Nissan or Kia, or even computers (people exist who struggle to use anything more complex than a power button, these can be intelligent well read people even).

If you do use Twitter say, to follow XYZ (not even certain this is correct, I don't and struggle to use Twitter although I have a general idea how it works), if they see some promoted or retweet involving a Tesla, they are likely to learn more or investigate further. Owning this would be a non insignificant marketing advantage.

This is patently ridiculous—it's like saying since everyone can post on their own blog, why would anyone publish an OpEd in NYTimes? Obviously reach and distribution of the medium is fundamental. How would you notify 80 million people that muskannouncements.com posted a new entry?

> How would you notify 80 million people that muskannouncements.com posted a new entry?

an app with push notifications. email. sms.

You've missed the point here - it's not that EVERYONE can post on their own blog.

But Elon Musk is unique, HE would still get full coverage. Journalists and influencers and the fanboys and outrage crowd would post his stuff to twitter for him lol.

> Is Musk known really for his shrewd political skills and sharp maneuvers?

The question should be whether TSLA shareholders think he is, and I think most of them probably do.

(I don't own any TSLA, btw. But from what I've seen, many of his fanboys love him for being conniving while simultaneously claiming he's done nothing wrong. I believe this is an example of double-think. But the subject of this discussion is how these people might react to Elon Musk controlling Twitter, not whether their allegiance to Elon Musk is rational and rhetorically consistent.)

Is really the makeup of TSLA shareholders a bunch of WallStreetBets dummies?

I really doubt that this is the case. I know that there's some real retail investor interest in the stock price movement and for a minority the fundamentals, but I'm sure there's some institutional investors and smart money who are in it for the long run and who analyze the company's financial statements, and evaluate and scrutinize the founder's every move and decision and this Dr. Evil's scheme of taking over Twitter and turn the platform as a tool of propaganda for Musk's financial interests and self-aggrandizement looks very concerning to put it mildly.

> tool of propaganda for Musk's financial interests and self-aggrandizement looks very very concerning to put it mildly

How is it any different than Bezos buying WaPo, in principle? That does not seem to have been detrimental to Amazon shareholders. And how does having a propaganda arm detrimental to Tesla financial interests? Marketing is a euphemism for propaganda after all.

(I can see legitimate Tesla shareholder concern for Musk attention being spread too thin, but to claim having Twitter makes things worse beyond his existing presence as a user seems ridiculous.)

Bezos bought WaPo for what is (to him) a relatively small sum of money to be a hands off owner of something he thought should continue to exist and has potential for Amazon style economising. That's a bit different to Musk proposing to offload or borrow against a significant chunk of his TSLA shares whilst declaring winning an argument with the management of his favourite social media platform about rewriting Twitter's policies on controversial stuff is more important to him than making money. And yes, Musk's record of posting Tweets unhelpful to TSLA as a user is another reason for them to be alarmed at controversy on Twitter becoming increasingly important to him.

It's not just the inevitability of less time to focus on managing TSLA (though running Twitter being a full time job was an issue for Dorsey, and he was only running one other company and wasn't at war with the management) but also the hints that this is an obsession.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I have not seen WaPo pushing Amazon propaganda in their content.

I'd like to take this occasion to remind you that my first comment was a rebuttal to someone's argument speculating about the motive or rationale behind this acquisition and posited that Musk's control of the platform would afford him political influence to further his own financial interests, hence my opening reply.

> posited that Musk's control of the platform would afford him political influence to further his own financial interests,

Clarification: Positing that many TSLA shareholders presently believe Musk's control of twitter would afford him political influence to further his financial interests.

Well, I stand corrected then if that was your initial intent but the delusion with these folks is really strong to come up with such ridiculous scenarios to justify their unquestionable attachment to that online persona.

One thing I feel relatively sure of is that present TSLA shareholders are the sort of people who, up until the present, see fit to own TSLA shares. This despite everything that is already publicly known or said about Elon Musk.

If I keep myself in my personal mindset of a Musk skeptic and try to model the behavior of TSLA shareholders, I would anticipate TSLA shareholders selling immediately (today, and every day previously in the past several years), because that is what I would do if I were gifted TSLA. But that's obviously not what TSLA shareholders do, so my personal mindset evidently makes for an inadequate model of TSLA shareholders.

If instead I try to suspend my own beliefs and imagine myself as somebody who thinks owning and holding TSLA is a good idea, then my new assumed mindset says that Elon Musk getting more power, by hook or by crook, is a good thing for me.