If this court doesn't have real power against clever C-suite types, maybe it's better that we find that out. In terms of compensation and personal money management, Musk isn't doing anything that other wealthy execs haven't done. (For example, Steve Jobs famously took a $1.00 per year salary for a long time.) Either there's an enforcement mechanism that works or there isn't.

Steve Jobs also famously illegally parked in disabled parking spots and paid the fine because he didn’t care. And he famously leased a new car every 6 months because he didn’t want to put license plates on his car.

And tangential to that kind of behavior, Apple recently was paying a weekly 5 million Euro fine in the Netherlands rather than comply with an order from regulators.

Jail. The consequence needed here is jail. Put these clowns in jail with junkies and wife beaters and gang bangers. While we’re at it, treat them the same as their local pd treats the most vulnerable in their community. They deserve no better than the most vulnerable and marginalized.

Jail for parking multiple times in disabled places or for buying a car every 6 months? Hard no from me. Both of those things are not the same as beating people.

If he Wants the space that bad he should buy it. The city should make the fine proportional to the sum of wealth and income over 100,000,000 to deter shenanigans. Repeat offenses should be points on license. DMV should adjust their policies to prevent this for the rich only abuse through fines that reflect the above metric. Try thinking through a problem and not just jerking your knee.

I think its clear that there is a set of people well are willing to violate certain laws because the consequences of such are trivial. That scales up with wealth because most misdemeanors result in a fixed monetary fine - which is less impactful for someone with wealth.

When the consequences of a law violation are trivial, it’s no longer serving as a deterrent. So I think we need to find a way to deter everyone, kind of on a sliding scale or something?

Likewise, there needs to be real consequences for corporations which take advantage of paying fines as a cost of doing business. One violation can be a mistake, but it sure as heck better give you a solid reason to never do it again.

Strict liability for executives would be a good start. Corporate death penalty is also a good thing.

Routinely breaking the law and then paying fine? Jail is a good way to put routine offenders away from the civil society

Many people routinely jay walk and speed and we've decided as a society that they shouldn't go to jail.

> There’s a genuine danger that the result of this case will be “some people are too powerful to be regulated by the US system, and this is now obvious”.

This should have been obvious by now. Cash rules everything around me.

> Cash rules everything around me.

Serious question: Are you in the US? Any Western European country?

There's a tendency for people in corrupt areas to assume the whole world works like that.

I’m in a white and homogenous area of the us. Cash does indeed rule every thing around me. There’s not a problem that can’t be solved with cash. Kill a few kids drunk driving or shooting recklessly? Cash in the right pockets and the evidence will be inadmissible and the case goes kaput. Want some more privacy? Your neighbors might suddenly find the neighborhood inhospitable with cash in the right hands. Want your kid to start for a team or graduate? There’s palms out. Very few people are principled enough in this economy to refuse a bribe. If you want to remain principled I suggest you think through your price before you’re asked if $1,000, some blow, and a cheap lap dance is enough and you end doing more for free when you’re extorted.

There’s a tendency for sheltered and privileged people to be aloof to the corruption all around them.

I'm not sure how much the first line really matters, as I grew up in a rather diverse top 25 city, but yeah, experience was about the same.

In high school, everyone knew exactly who to call if you got a DUI. 10k was the going price to get a certain lawyer who gets the case in front of a certain judge and however that worked, the charge was dropped to a moving violation. Kinda sick how the system works.

Justice in America isn't a right, it's a product you buy. Public versions should be non-existent or inferior. This is so that the best people get access to the best version of the product that money can buy. By definition in America, the best people are rich people. God rewarded them with money after all. Therefore they are closer to god and thus superior. Why be rich if you can't spend money buying things like justice, health care, education, and clean water?

Yep, it's kinda sick but also kinda true.

The French have a good response to the contagious mental illness that creates this mindset.

Ooh! Is it a machine? Does it make it effecient to remove the head from many people? claps maniacally

There’s that, but their protests are what I was referring too.

The first line only matters to racist whites that assume only BIPOC are corrupt when data shows white wealthy people commit far more crime and more substantial crimes at that.

Not the parent, not just cash, but capitalism literally means capital is (political) power. Just because you don't bribe police officers with cash that doesn't mean your political system isn't corrupt. In the West we just find it more comfortable to talk about lobbying and public-private partnerships instead of calling it what it is.

That is a great point and I'm not disputing it at all.

We all know monarchy is tyranny, but in that category there is quite a difference between a cult ruler with a bag of shrunken heads who is getting his orders from God vs. a stable, well managed, system in which the institutions basically function, including to some extent for the poor, and yet in which which the ruling class still basically dominate and exploit everything and everyone in order to enrich themselves and maintain their power.

The latter is a social malady, the former is completely chaotic. I think people are concerned that the US is resembling the latter less and less, and resembling the former more and more.

This

> Serious question: Are you in the US? Any Western European country?

The United States of America

> There's a tendency for people in corrupt areas to assume the whole world works like that.

Exactly. I live in a corrupt area and start with the assumption that most of the world is corrupt.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me is a Wu-Tang song (C.R.E.A.M.)

US law obviously works in favor of billionaires. I doubt even Musk would want to expose it further, and the other parties involved in this deal surely don't.

They will set their lawyers at it and come to a settlement. The super rich know better than to be at each others throats, that sort of behavior is for the poor...

Except that some of the ultra-rich have major personality disorders which cause severe cognitive distortions and erratic and impulsive behaviour. Their power and influence tends to allow their cognitive distortions to spread in to the general population, which eases the cognitive dissonance that would be a problem for normal people. But anyway, these people cannot be compelled in to psychiatric treatment, and who could convince them? Who do they listen to? We're talking about a category of people who are notoriously difficult to get to enter treatment, even when they are not princes and emperors, but average Joes.

I mean, if a street sweeper thinks he is King, you might convince or compel him to get treated when he comes in to contact with the system. But when the King thinks he is King... that is a much more difficult problem to deal with.. usually the kingdom joins in with his madness so as to keep him happy.

History says that these people likely reside in impenetrable bubbles. The idea that he is so special as to avoid the court system sounds a bit like “let them eat cake” as there is no bread.

I have no insight into this but it looks that it will happen eventually. ( the degradation of the US gov authorities on the conduction of large financial arrangements)

This is a cyberpunk future.

I'm overall a fan of Musk, but this is too far. There simply must be rule of law for the United States to remain a dynamic society.

Literally there’s not even a hint that Musk is above the law yet you’re calling it a cyberpunk future

>According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Stewart avoided a loss of $45,673 by selling all 3,928 shares of her ImClone Systems stock on December 27, 2001, after receiving material, nonpublic information from Peter Bacanovic, her broker at Merrill Lynch. The day following her sale, the stock value fell 16%.[49]

Martha Stewart went to jail for 5 months for a meager case of insider trading. Musk manipulated Tesla stock in front of, literally, the whole world and got a slap in the wrist (i.e. a fine that comes to about 0.1% of its net worth). A citizen would to go jail forever for a similar thing.

> Martha Stewart went to jail for 5 months for a meager case of insider trading.

I believe she went to prison for lying to investigators. The insider trading they couldn’t make stick. So in the end, maybe the cases aren’t so different?

Facts. She also just paid a fine for the insider trading. Her criminal case was due to conspiracy, obstruction of justice and lying to federal investigators.

“Lying to a federal official” is one of the most BS things in the entire US penal. It’s practically carte blanche to imprison anyone you come across.

It would be more reasonable if federal officials faced similar penalties for lying to the public.

So just don't lie to the feds?

Smoking weed makes you lose your security clearance, Musk did it on camera and still has his because of "reasons". That is one example of the rules that apply to most others not applying to him.

Probably also an example of a rule that should be retired. Either that or they should remove clearance if you enjoy whisky.

you're missing the point of the rule. the issue with smoking weed isn't really about having impaired judgement, it's that weed is still illegal at the federal level. there are all kinds of low-level crimes that can put your clearance at risk. which kinda makes sense... they want the kind of person who strictly follows the rules for cleared positions.

I agree it's a dumb rule, but that seems orthogonal to whether Musk should have to follow an established rule. Repealing the rule would be best, but while it's in place equal enforcement is much better than enforcment for everyone except petty billionaires.

Equal enforcement just is never the way the world works, exceptions are made when its important enough.

It ain't just Elan. There's a lot of non-enforcement of federal law, rules, & reg's involving marijuana.

And doing it publicly...that pretty well nerfs the old "give us the secrets, or we'll reveal the fact that you smoked week" spy gambit.

> still has his [security clearance] because of "reasons".

Does he? I don't remember any resolution to that, but I thought they "temporarily" suspended it pending an investigation and then never completed the investigation.

> ...I thought they "temporarily" suspended it pending an investigation and then never completed the investigation.

that's the theme of this entire thread : rich person has a slap on the wrist announced publicly but then the punishment is never successfully fulfilled.

MS antitrust style.

I'm saying the opposite. I thought they suspended his clearance pending an investigation and then the investigation never ended. Just like if you're in jail pending your trial and the trial date keeps getting pushed back. Sure, you haven't been found guilty, but you're stuck in jail so does that matter?

I might be wrong that they suspended his clearance or that the investigation wasn't done, but that would be a different point tag. What you're making.

There was that whole thing where a court said a lawyer has to check all of his tweets, Musk shrugged it off, and the court did nothing about it.

What a legacy opinion. We are all about destroying everything here

Agreed, this situation is uncomfortably similar to a number Trump crises. Much of our legal system is based on norms and good faith, which a sufficiently motivated and powerful psychopath can pervert to their advantage.

I have no idea what will happen here. Musk is clearly in the wrong both legally and ethically, but I suspect he will weasel out of resbonsibility for the damage he's caused. That alone will be bad enough, but the much larger risk is that it opens the floodgates for slightly less powerful scumbags to flout the law.

US law and democracy are shakier than I've seen in my lifetime, and Musk is actively taking a sledgehammer to a piece of that foundation for his own greed and whim.

It's wild to me that people think that Elon might actually face legal consequences for this.

The Delaware court isn't some magical place run by elves. It's a court in the US. You know what's a lot cheaper than $34 billion dollars, or heck even $1 billion dollars? $200k for 3-4 judges.

The Supreme Court just changed the law of the land based on a right-wing political campaign. You think a billionare, let alone the richest billionare is going to be subject to any serious consequences? It's absurd to even entertain this.

Twitter's got billions and fancy lawyers and lobbyists too.

> It's wild to me that people think that Elon might actually face legal consequences for this.

This stuff goes both ways. Yes Elon has a lot of money. But twitter is worth XX billions of dollars.

Twitter is willing to spend a lot of those billions of dollars, in order to get Elon to pay the agreed upon price that he committed too.

This is not the case of a nobody vs a billionaire. This is instead multiple billion dollar entities fighting each other.

> The Supreme Court just changed the law of the land based on a right-wing political campaign. You think a billionare, let alone the richest billionare is going to be subject to any serious consequences? It's absurd to even entertain this.

You know who has the authority to overturn that decision? Our democratically elected legislature.

Are you referring to the legislature where one house is deliberately unrepresentative of the people, and where the other house has been gerrymandered into unrepresentative oblivion, and whose bills are signed by an executive position who has preposterously lost the popular vote in two out of the last six election cycles?

Yeah, the one completely controlled by the party that says it's pro-choice.

> executive position who has preposterously lost the popular vote

What does the popular vote have to do with the presidency? Neither party strategizes to win the popular vote because the popular vote is meaningless. Therefore, the outcome if the popular vote has no value in determining who would win a popular vote should that be the metric by which the president is elected.

I wouldn't be so sure a hypothetical federal law enshrining a Roe-ish right to abortion would itself survive the inevitable challenge to its own constitutionality.

I expect this Court would find it a violation of he 10th amendment, leaving the issue to be decided only at the state level.

I very much doubt it but even if I thought that would happen, I'd like to make them actually do it.

Yes, the supreme court decided that the rights of women were up for democratic election. That's fucking great when you have an anti-women's rights party.

At the same time they ruled that states could not regulate a "well regulated militia", so this has nothing to do with states rights.

That would be a good thing. Put some light on one of the biggest failure of our democracies.

The fact your argument rests on a convicted billionaire is pretty ironic

It's the billionaires that didn't get convicted that are the problem.

Lots of powerful people spent a lot of time on the lolita express.

I think it's more about the people who murdered Epstein getting away without consequences or even an investigation than the fact that a rich guy, eventually, after repeatedly sexually abusing and trafficking children for years, finally was facing serious legal risks which he might've evaded.

Mainstream media is too woke! It's all a conspiracy