Musk doesn't pay "because he can get away with it" isn't better or worse than "because there's a money shortage"; and in any case, the federal government being delinquent is a very different kind of catastrophe, as is it making promises it refuses to keep.
Elmo being a shitty business partner isn’t the same as the US.
There's a possibility of contagion from Musk to the US government, but I very much agree they're different — and it's much worse if that contagion goes from potential to actual.
2.5mm in liens is just how much they have proveably shorted construction workers in Texas. It doesn't count other vendors doing work that isn't elegible for a lien, or how many workers got shorted, but it just wasn't enough to worry about.
If you were one of the 70+ businesses that held a lien against them, you would think differently.
> It don't appear to be because SpaceX is having trouble paying.
Having the cash to be paid out, and having the systems in place to pay your bills are two different things.
> I would guess SpaceX are delaying payment as much as possible because it is cheap lending and because it's run as an extremely mercenary company.
Violating the terms of your contract isn't cheap lending. It is fraud. The fact that they are getting away with it isn't a defense.
> Their costs of deliquent payment are likely below their lending costs. So optimally don't pay until the cost of deliquency exceeds lending costs (maybe ≈ junk bond rate per year).
Consistently and intentionally violating the terms of payment is, as noted above, fraud. They are getting away with, and they might continue to get away with it, but mercenary businesses getting away with crime is a bad thing.
Aside: I think most moral people struggle to even recognise amoral decision making. I also suspect that learning to be more sociopathic can be profitable. I don't much admire most doyens of business. Trying to fight amoral business people seems like a personally losing game because you eventually internalise their tricks.
Everything you said says nothing of how they pay their vendors. $2.5mm is not exactly breaking news for construction projects. Most large projects have some percentage of total project value in liens.
I know we all want to get upset but its too hard to say either way, the dollar amount is far too small, it maybe involve a large portion of contractors and based on the cost of the development does not seem to be a rampant issue.
I hate to be this guy but please provide a source for this. I’ve been involved in the construction industry for quite a while, almost exclusively on large and mega projects, and “most” of my jobs have not had any percentage of their total project value in liens.
One company that refused to pay for work my (then) company performed is SpaceX. Our work did not permit filing a lien.
Now SpaceX could totally be stretching their NWC as far as it goes and always paying late on purpose. Really impossible to tell in this style of shock reporting.
I would be surprised in your experience that you have never had cases of a GC not paying on his end and those folks throwing a <$100k lien on the project. Or a dispute between the GC and payer.
——
SpaceX donated $265M to Trump last year:
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race/donald-tr...
It sounds like that’s comparable to their total profit for the year, and it would cover the liens 100 fold.
I wonder how much of that cash was taxpayer money that got laundered and used for Trump’s personal finances.
The page I linked is confusing. (Why attribute it to SpaceX, but not X or Tesla?)
It don't appear to be because SpaceX is having trouble paying.
I would guess SpaceX are delaying payment as much as possible because it is cheap lending and because it's run as an extremely mercenary company.
Their costs of deliquent payment are likely below their lending costs. So optimally don't pay until the cost of deliquency exceeds lending costs (maybe ≈ junk bond rate per year).