[HN Gopher] Elon's Out
___________________________________________________________________
Elon's Out
Author : jaxonrice
Score : 191 points
Date : 2022-07-09 14:46 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| anonu wrote:
| Twitter feeds are pretty public, albeit expensive to buy the
| firehose. Nonetheless, shouldn't a handful of motivated hackers
| be able to answer the bot question??
| csours wrote:
| The way I see it, the bot question isn't about "bots on
| Twitter", it's about "bots, spam, and insincere people on
| Twitter that annoy Elon Musk". That is, Elon does not enjoy the
| flood of spam that he has to interact with. His experience as a
| user of Twitter is poor.
| erk__ wrote:
| The issue here is that only twitter knows who they count as a
| mDAU. So there could be a lot of bots that are simply not
| included in their counts.
| petilon wrote:
| This article says Musk agreed to buy Twitter mostly as a joke. I
| think there's a far better explanation. This wasn't a joke for
| Musk because after agreeing to buy Twitter he proceeded to sell
| billions of dollars' worth of TSLA stock, supposedly to finance
| the purchase. Even for the richest man in the world that's not a
| joke.
|
| I think a better explanation is that Musk offered to buy Twitter
| as a cover for selling billions of dollars' worth of TSLA.
|
| Look at this story: https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-sells-
| billions-of-dol... The headline is: "Elon Musk Sells $8.5 Billion
| of Tesla Shares After Deal to Buy Twitter"
|
| Why does he need a cover? Because TSLA is way too overvalued. He
| has to know that it is overvalued. Tesla's market cap is double
| of Toyota, VW, Mercedes, BMW, GM, Honda, Ferrari and Volvo _all
| combined_! [1]. If you sell stock while knowing your company 's
| stock is way too overvalued, you're fleecing unsophisticated
| investors. Pretending to buy Twitter provides a convenient cover.
|
| Musk pretended that TSLA valuation is reasonable. Musk even
| called out Gates for shorting TSLA stock [2]. If he didn't have a
| cover then Musk would look like a hypocrite for selling TSLA.
|
| In reality, both Musk and Gates sold TSLA, the only difference is
| that Musk sold stocks he owned, but Gates sold borrowed stocks.
| But Musk used buying Twitter as a cover, so he gets to pretend to
| be morally superior. Even though both men sold TSLA, according to
| Musk, Gates' sales means that he isn't serious about climate
| change [3].
|
| [1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/automakers/largest-
| automakers...
|
| [2] https://nypost.com/2022/05/31/elon-musk-calls-out-bill-
| gates...
|
| [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-shorting-tesla-
| wo...
| grecy wrote:
| If that was his plan, what's he doing with the billions he now
| has in cash?
| 202206241203 wrote:
| Trust funds for the next dozen of his babies?
| bambax wrote:
| This is alluded to at the end of the article:
|
| > _Is it fun for him? If he manages to walk away having spent
| only millions in financing fees, millions in legal fees and say
| $1 billion in termination fees, was it worth it? What did he
| get out of this? The guy really seems to like being on Twitter,
| and he did make himself the main character in Twitter 's drama
| for months on end. That's nice for him I guess. Also he made
| the lives of Twitter's executives and employees pretty
| miserable; as a fellow Twitter addict I can kind of see the
| appeal of that? I always assume that "everyone who works at
| Twitter hates the product and its users," and I suppose this is
| a case of the richest and weirdest user getting some revenge on
| the employees. _He also gave himself an excuse to sell a bunch
| of Tesla stock near the highs. _He maybe got an edit button
| too? Maybe that's worth a billion dollars to him?_
|
| But for that to be the sole reason of the whole circus is
| conspiracy theory.
|
| > _Musk has buying Twitter as a cover_
|
| It's a very, very annoying/distracting cover, not to mention an
| expensive one.
| [deleted]
| akelly wrote:
| If that was his plan, why didn't he put an out in the contract?
| perlgeek wrote:
| Because then the Twitter board wouldn't have signed it.
| tptacek wrote:
| That seems like an enormous amount of risk to take on just to
| sell stock that he actually owns and avoiding "looking like a
| hypocrite". It's not just plausible but somewhat likely that
| he'll be forced into an 11-figure settlement with Twitter to
| avoid the actual worst case outcome of being forced to take
| custody of and actually operate Twitter until he can unload it
| on someone else.
| Strom wrote:
| > _Because TSLA is way too overvalued. He has to know that it
| is overvalued._
|
| Indeed he does. He has talked about this publicly in various
| interviews over the years. [1]
|
| > _Musk pretended that TSLA valuation is reasonable. Musk even
| called out Gates for shorting TSLA stock_
|
| Musk definitely really dislikes short sellers, no doubt about
| that. However that is different from pretending that TSLA
| valuation is reasonable.
|
| --
|
| [1] A decent example is the 2021 Kara Swisher interview, where
| he states _I have literally gone on record and said that our
| stock price is too high._ https://youtu.be/O1bZg7frOmI?t=2450
| niklasbuschmann wrote:
| Could Musk buy Twitter shares on the open market before the deal
| closes?
| t_mann wrote:
| Can we also take a moment to appreciate the tongue-in-cheek
| writing style of this (fairly thorough, by my impression)
| analysis of rather dry things like SEC filings, merger
| covenants,...?
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| This is why Levine's is one of a very few newsletters I
| subscribe to, and I read it immediately when it arrives. He's
| both entertaining and educational. I know a great deal more
| about finance now than I did a year ago, and that's because of
| Matt Levine.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| (Note that he writes a newsletter like this roughly daily,
| though not ordinarily on weekends. It's is free to subscribe
| to)
| tyleo wrote:
| Money Stuff is really good. Some of my favorites are right
| around when GameStop started to spike.
| calmoo wrote:
| Matt Levine is fantastic, highly recommend subscribing to his
| newsletter.
| KKdU9EXbBhmLznR wrote:
| > Would he line up billions of dollars of financing and sign a
| binding merger agreement with a specific-performance clause and a
| $1 billion breakup fee as a joke? I mean! Nobody else would! But
| he might!
|
| What a silly thing to say. Of course he would; I'd also risk $20
| (~1/200th of my assets, like $1b is for Musk) on a joke,
| especially if I knew I'd almost certainly never lose that much.
| jp57 wrote:
| Another hypothesis: Triggering a legal battle in the courts is a
| delaying technique to push out the acquisition until the economy
| rebounds (and Tesla and Twitter valuations with it), or until
| after the 2024 election, because Elon realized that he doesn't
| actually want to let Trump back onto the platform. (Perhaps
| because he perfers DeSantis)
| alphabetting wrote:
| I found this part most interesting. Public awareness of the
| Delaware Court of Chancery is about to skyrocket during this
| court battle.
|
| _The fact that Musk is working in such bad faith here -- that he
| seems so unconcerned with law and the contract he signed -- cuts
| both ways. On the one hand, it will certainly annoy a Delaware
| chancellor; Delaware likes to think of itself as a stable place
| for corporate deals, with predictable law and binding contracts,
| and Musk's antics undermine that. On the other hand it might
| intimidate a Delaware chancellor: What if the court orders Musk
| to close the deal and he says no? They're not gonna put him in
| Chancery jail. The guy is pretty contemptuous of legal authority;
| he thinks he is above the law and he might be right. A showdown
| between Musk and a judge might undermine Delaware corporate law
| more than letting him weasel out of the deal would._
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Maybe this is a good reason a single human being shouldn't be
| so fucking rich.
|
| If enough money makes you untouchable by the law, then our
| system is simply broken.
| bmitc wrote:
| I continue to be super concerned about this. I do not
| understand how the U.S. government does not view these
| billionaires as serious ideological threats to democracy, the
| court system, national security, etc. Makes one realize just
| how bought out Congress is.
|
| Once a person has wealth over, say, $500 million, then there
| should be a 100% tax.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| According to the Laffer curve it should probably be 70% or
| so to maximize government income, but yes.
|
| If you tax them 100% they'll just stop working or bail to
| another country, and then you collect zero tax revenue from
| them. At 70% most of them will just suck it up and pay.
|
| (I realize France is a counterpoint here, but I'd argue it
| was a half-assed attempt, and they have neighboring French-
| speaking tax havens that have no real U.S. equivalent.)
| bmitc wrote:
| Thank you for the reference to the Laffer curve.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The Laffer curve is a fact-free zone except for at it's
| two end points.
|
| The reality is that nobody knows for sure what the curve
| of revenue vs. tax rate looks like other than at those
| two end points, which makes the entire concept completely
| useless.
| double_nan wrote:
| It's fascinating. Not only that is fact free, but it's
| based on an assumption that the purpose of the government
| is to collect maximum tax value from the citizens. Is it
| thought?
| tbihl wrote:
| >Once a person has wealth over, say, $500 million, then
| there should be a 100% tax.
|
| Your inability to conceive of a useful purpose for such a
| quantity of money does not justify prohibiting its
| existence.
|
| >I do not understand how the U.S. government does not view
| these billionaires as serious ideological threats to
| democracy, the court system, national security, etc
|
| Cooperation. A government that can't handle the idea of
| powerful citizens has all the tools it needs to make almost
| all those people (hard to banish all the Christian
| missionaries, and martyring them is the surest way to grow
| more) leave or fall in line, but I don't think many people
| look at Venezuela or North Korea as ideal places to govern
| in terms of democracy, the court system, national security,
| etc.
| bmitc wrote:
| > Your inability to conceive of a useful purpose for such
| a quantity of money does not justify prohibiting its
| existence.
|
| What inability and where was it demonstrated? Are you
| referring to a useful purpose if it was taxed or a useful
| purpose for individuals to have such wealth? If the
| latter, then I propose that an individual containing such
| wealth is less useful than it being returned.
|
| Those things and countries you mentioned have nothing to
| do with this discussion.
| towaway15463 wrote:
| It's rather ironic that a discussion of Elon Musk
| prompted you to make that assertion.
| tbihl wrote:
| It's so many layers of delightfully nested irony. Give
| more money to the federal government so they give more
| big tax credits for Tesla purchases, but Tesla can't
| exist any more in this fantasy world where nothing
| outside of the federal government can grow beyond $500
| million in scope.
| nightski wrote:
| Meh the government doesn't need more money to conduct
| frivolous and corrupt spending with.
|
| However it might be interesting to explore an option that
| required people who own a stake in a company that has grown
| beyond a certain size to be required to siphon off some of
| those shares to employees over time in a way where it was
| not conducted on the open market and would not affect share
| price.
|
| I also question whether corporate entities should be
| allowed to own shares and what the benefits are of that.
| Should private investment firms be allowed to accumulate
| massive stakes in public companies?
| bmitc wrote:
| I don't think we should avoid something just because
| there are more problems. We should fix those other
| problems as well. The primary issue is that there is a
| single extremist party, not unlike those found in the
| Middle East, that is hell bent on undermining America for
| want of power. By systematically undermining education,
| public health and services, infrastructure, treating
| government projects as jobs programs, etc., they are
| creating a worse America and a sort of political
| Stockholm syndrome among their constituents. But there is
| indeed corruption across the board in America.
|
| Local governments are starved for money, and almost all
| of their funding comes from local property taxes, that
| is, normal people. So, these mega-rich are allowed to get
| unboundedly wealthy, while normal people have to pay to
| keep society running as a minimal level. The mega-rich's
| money, as well as corporations', needs to flow back
| through the system. It does no good to let it concentrate
| so heavily and ultimately do nothing while it sits there.
| sokoloff wrote:
| IMO, neither party excels on educational topics and both
| 100% treat government projects as jobs programs.
| [deleted]
| nightski wrote:
| Is it ironic I don't even know which party you are
| referring to because it accurately describes both in my
| opinion?
|
| But I disagree in that I think we absolutely should avoid
| it because a larger federal government has been heavily
| correlated with less local funding (so much so that the
| SALT deduction was once a thing). It's given rise to
| globalization and large multi-national conglomerates. It
| creates a situation where power & money is too
| concentrated.
| bmitc wrote:
| I'm not sure it's ironic as much as it is either not
| paying attention or not being honest with the situation.
| One party being extreme does not make the other party the
| good party. It just means that one party is extreme,
| which is a fact. The Democrats are not a paragon of a
| political party. They are as inefficient, middle of the
| road moderate, corrupt, etc. as any political party. But
| the Republicans, or at least a powerful subset of them,
| have become an extremist group. And they are well-funded
| by conservative and libertarian ideologues who care about
| nothing other than power and money and can use their
| wealth to avoid any downsides in their quest.
|
| Once you start looking into the ideologies of people like
| the Koch brothers, Robert Mercer and his family, Peter
| Thiel, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, Sheldon Adelson,
| Ronald Cameron, Steve Wynn, and others, you start seeing
| very weird and strange beliefs that are incompatible with
| a functional society. The primary thread is that these
| people do not care about others. Just look at the Koch
| brothers' political donations and the businesses they
| run. Is it then any surprise why the Republicans might
| not care so much about climate change and policies to
| mitigate it?
|
| We have one extremist political party, and then the
| other, somewhat incompetent, party spends all their
| energy fighting back against the extremism of the other.
| [deleted]
| nightski wrote:
| I just do not agree that one party is more extreme than
| the other, sorry. I also don't believe you are being
| honest with yourself over the situation either. It's
| clear you have dug your heels into a particular set of
| beliefs and have no interest in discussing real solutions
| (instead just want to play the blame game). Frankly it is
| just not interesting discussion.
| bmitc wrote:
| That can be your opinion, but I think it stands in
| disagreement with several events and facts of the
| Republican party. There are oodles of articles and books
| addressing the growing extremism of the Republican party,
| so I don't think it's even a controversial opinion. By
| just saying "oh, they're just another political party
| with different beliefs" is enabling their extremism. Any
| rational discussion with a Republican, at least those
| that I know, which includes family members, can often not
| be had. I understand that there are actual conservative
| political beliefs, but from what I can tell, they are not
| the ones driving the power dynamic of the Republican
| party. The discussions I have had quickly turn weird
| because it quickly becomes a case of religion, sexism,
| racism, or something else deep down affecting their
| political beliefs, which mainly consist of wanting
| everyone else to be like them and to do what they want
| (how they want).
|
| A certain Republican sect literally tried to overturn the
| presidential election, threatening to hang the vice
| president, killed a capital cop, ransacked the capital,
| and only one Republican had the guts to vote against the
| president. Then that same party will decry people
| marching for human rights and supports violence against
| those groups. The Republicans are the same party that
| supposedly stand for small government but are hell bent
| on telling people what they can do with their own bodies
| and forcing religion to be taught in public schools.
| Republicans' reaction to mass shootings is more guns,
| while they are the ones that block any investigation into
| why these are happening or preventing people that should
| not be buying guns from buying guns. I happened to drive
| across the country during COVID. You could tell the
| Republican states from the amount of masks being warn.
| The Republicans blocked a third supreme court nomination
| by a two-term president in Obama that was 10 months ahead
| of the presidential election, meanwhile they rushed a
| third supreme court appointee by a one-term president
| just two months before an election, throwing out every
| reason they used to block Obama's nomination. These are
| all extreme positions that don't have analogs in the
| Democratic party.
|
| > have no interest in discussing real solutions
|
| Mind pointing that out? In fact, I've elaborated quite a
| decent amount. I'm not sure what you've brought to the
| discussion other than just stating disagreement and
| making bad faith statements. You are free to contribute
| or elaborate on what you mean by the Republican party not
| being extreme.
|
| The solutions I believe that could help things are:
| increasing tax on the wealthy, limiting the amount of
| political donations including to interest groups and
| think tanks (i.e., get private money out of politics and
| government), abiding by separation of church and state,
| and increasing primary and secondary education.
| MrMan wrote:
| You are pissing in the wind. This place is essentially
| r/conservative and most of these people are totally fine
| with how things are progressing. I think the US is
| completely fucked and no rich people I know care, at all
| Stupulous wrote:
| Yeah, this place is so conservative that you can't even
| say that Republicans are extremists who are intentionally
| undermining the country and that everyone who supports
| them is suffering from a rare mental disorder without
| people calmly disagreeing. /s
| [deleted]
| rlt wrote:
| > Meh the government doesn't need more money to conduct
| frivolous and corrupt spending with.
|
| I agree with that, but they could just, you know, _lower_
| taxes on the lower and middle class to balance it out.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Or do something useful and somewhat efficient with the
| money. Eg: good, reliable public school, roads, network
| infrastructures, renewable energy sources.
|
| I'm a US tax payer since less than a decade. My
| experience is that I pay a significant portion of my
| incomes to taxes that only marginally benefit me or folks
| around me.
|
| Recent uptick of direct distribution is nice.
|
| But a leadership in the stewarding of the land would be
| tasteful and send the right message IMO.
|
| It's fascinating to see the Western European countries
| I'm familiar with being blinded by the economic might of
| the US but not realizing how little the average citizen
| benefit from it.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| In very direct, real terms, assets are power. They represent
| resources to do things.
|
| The problem here isn't that wealth is power, it will always
| be power. The issue is that a single person has been allowed
| to accumulate too much.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I appreciate that in such a short comment, you succinctly
| summarize the problem statement.
| avalys wrote:
| Musk owns about 25% of Tesla, mostly after investing about
| $50M in Tesla's early funding rounds.
|
| His wealth today comes largely because Tesla (under his
| leadership as CEO) has become a company that investors now
| believe is incredibly valuable, and they've driven up the
| stock price. At what point in this process did Musk
| "accumulate" this ownership of Tesla, and exactly what do
| you propose should have happened to stop him?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Musk has sold billions in stock at this point, so this
| whole "it's stock that's increased in value independent
| of Musk" line of thinking is a bad misdirection.
| spullara wrote:
| And every time he has sold he has paid huge taxes on
| those sales.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| It has become so valuable, more valuable than the rest of
| the auto industry combined at one point despite much
| lower revenue and sales numbers, because of loose
| monetary policy by the Federal Reserve creating
| artificially inflated asset prices. The Federal Reserve
| is directly responsible for Musk's disproportionate
| wealth as Tesla stock zoomed past ridiculous levels.
|
| Tesla has been successful in many of its lines of
| business and succeeded when many thought they couldn't,
| that is undebatable. The failure of our system is that
| its stock price is completely out of line with the
| reality that reflects that success.
| nerdawson wrote:
| > loose monetary policy by the Federal Reserve creating
| artificially inflated asset prices
|
| You can buy shares in other car manufacturers. Why would
| Tesla disproportionately benefit from inflated asset
| prices?
| Rury wrote:
| Because Tesla is in major indexes like the NASDAQ
| composite, and S&P 500, as well as many major/popular
| funds/ETFs. Additionally, many funds are weighted by
| market cap (so more expensive companies get even more
| disproportionate investment). And the majority of stock
| investment activity happens through these investment
| vehicles today.
|
| Generally, anyone who puts money into a 401k, will likely
| have some of it going to Tesla and disproportionately
| over other auto companies - simply because how funds are
| typically weighted.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| Because car companies are boring, and in an era of cheap
| money the meme wins. "Sexy" automakers also got insane
| multiples, look at where Lucid and Rivian were trading.
| But the capital is diverted to whatever asset people
| think will keep going up, not the one that will create
| value in the form of profits. This is also why GameStop,
| AMC, DogeCoin, Shiba Inu, NFTs, Pokemon cards, etc. were
| trading so high, the meme is the only thing that matters.
|
| Elon Musk knows this and is a master at harnessing this
| power, which is why he's shamelessly pumped DogeCoin and
| Shiba. He continually pushes his company to be the most
| popular brands by promising impossible futuristic
| products that cannot exist, but build excitement.
| Countless examples of these, but a few are Full Self
| Driving, a flying Roadster, the Tesla semi, solving
| transportation issues with tunnels, the Tesla bot, $25k
| model 3, solar roof that costs less than a normal roof,
| robotaxi, etc etc etc. It's all calculated.
| Nevermark wrote:
| It would mitigate the problem if institutions could be
| strengthened by design to be less sensitive to corruption
| or special treatment.
|
| There are lots of successful examples - constitutions,
| voting, term limits, separate judiciary, non-political
| commuters, etc
|
| The big problem I see in the design of egalitarian systems,
| is explicitly addressing the need for continuous response
| to new forms of centralization. I don't know of any
| significant systems that were designed with any explicit
| statement of prioritizing that (vs. just general support
| for fixes, amendments, etc.)
|
| For instance, the centralization of US political power into
| only two parties, where (temporary) single party rule of
| three branches is actually a practical possibility should
| have triggered some major reforms before it spun out of
| control.
|
| A simple requirement that no coordinated individual or
| organization have sway over more than 25% of political
| seats, and political organizations at the federal and state
| levels must be separated, would do wonders for
| decentralization and better representation.
|
| But the constitution is silent on any guidance or
| requirement on addressing new power centralization
| problems.
|
| It is the hard root problem of power, but not systemizing
| progress on it is to accept inevitable dystopia
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I don't think the onus is on any one of us to come up
| with fixes to a problem this large. The government
| employs hundreds of incredibly smart people whose job it
| is to fix these types of issues. I, and I think most
| other people as well, would even be fine with small
| corrections here and there that tested what worked.
|
| A fundamental problem, that we are all burdened to solve,
| is how do we get from an ideological government to a
| scientific one. Until we do that, we're all just plugging
| holes in a sinking ship.
| edgyquant wrote:
| >A simple requirement that no coordinated individual or
| organization have sway over more than 25% of political
| seats, and political organizations at the federal and
| state levels must be separated, would do wonders for
| decentralization and better representation.
|
| and would be undemocratic
| IX-103 wrote:
| How is that? Popular parties would split to express a
| wider array of views.
|
| Of course first-past the post voting systems won't work
| here, but that doesn't make it undemocratic.
| MrMan wrote:
| This is a forum for white guys trying to become more
| powerful, and who hate government or any limits on their
| actions
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I'd like to see the data on that one. I think most people
| here recognize that limits on individual power can
| increase freedom.
|
| Such a reductive view, on any group, isn't productive.
| kolinko wrote:
| As someone who grew up in a communist country with literally
| zero rich prople - it's not about wealth, it's about power
| and influence. We've had just as many, if not way more,
| people above law as in capitalist countries.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| Putin is rumored to be the richest person in the world, but
| of course you'll never see him listed on Forbes because he
| hides it.
|
| https://fortune.com/2022/03/02/vladimir-putin-net-
| worth-2022...
| moomin wrote:
| This is one of those things that could genuinely cause problem
| for the entire US (corporate) legal system. 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".
| arcanus wrote:
| 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.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Literally there's not even a hint that Musk is above the
| law yet you're calling it a cyberpunk future
| moralestapia wrote:
| >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.
| pacificmint wrote:
| > 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?
| towaway15463 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| moomin wrote:
| "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.
| v21 wrote:
| 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.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| 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.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > 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.
| towaway15463 wrote:
| Probably also an example of a rule that should be
| retired. Either that or they should remove clearance if
| you enjoy whisky.
| leetcrew wrote:
| 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.
| MrMan wrote:
| What a legacy opinion. We are all about destroying
| everything here
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| That would be a good thing. Put some light on one of the
| biggest failure of our democracies.
| phatfish wrote:
| 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...
| lumost wrote:
| 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.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| 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)
| KerrAvon wrote:
| 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.
| tenpies wrote:
| edgyquant wrote:
| The fact your argument rests on a convicted billionaire is
| pretty ironic
| willcipriano wrote:
| 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.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| 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.
| MrMan wrote:
| Mainstream media is too woke! It's all a conspiracy
| haliskerbas wrote:
| > 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.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > 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.
| hnbad wrote:
| 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.
| typon wrote:
| 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.
| parineum wrote:
| > 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.
| mrkstu wrote:
| The Supreme Court restored the law of the land to the state
| it was (i.e. enforcement of actual laws passed by
| democratically elected legislators) by overturning a
| previous ruling that did the opposite (i.e. make up reasons
| not actually found in the Constitution to overturn laws it
| didn't like.)
|
| This returned the law making and enforcing ability to the
| elected arms of government and removed it from the
| appointed arm.
|
| Whatever one thinks the balance between the rights of the
| unborn and women's personal autonomy of their bodies should
| be, let's be more accurate about the process of how we got
| to where we are now.
| wronglyprepaid wrote:
| > The guy is pretty contemptuous of legal authority; he thinks
| he is above the law and he might be right
|
| Of all the funny things I have read this week this takes the
| cake, Biden will not allow him to get away with it, not a joke.
| tyleo wrote:
| Or they could put him in Chancery jail? The law is already
| undermined if no attempt is even made at upholding it.
| xxpor wrote:
| But that's not how it works when you simply owe money
| (usually, modulo things like probation violations and child
| support, but lets ignore that for now). We don't have debtors
| prisons). They can seize his money though, garnish his wages
| (lol in this specific case though), etc.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Contempt of court can lead to jail time in civil cases when
| you have the ability to but refuse to pay
| tyleo wrote:
| I'm being loose with words but I do mean that he should see
| punishment. Not necessarily jail.
| metadat wrote:
| He _should_ see jailtime for the market manipulation. We
| 'll see what happens. This isn't even a thing the SEC is
| known to be pursuing presently, so don't hold your
| breath.
| parineum wrote:
| > He should see jailtime for the market manipulation.
|
| Is that the normal punishment?
| metadat wrote:
| Who else is rich _and_ dumb enough to do it in public via
| Twitter?
| mirntyfirty wrote:
| It's an interesting irony I think that one of the worst
| punishments for him is to have him follow through on the
| agreement that he signed.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| > What if the court orders Musk to close the deal and he says
| no?
|
| I can't believe people are taking this very silly statement
| seriously. This is utter nonsense. There are remedies for
| people who disobey court orders. Having assets makes you _more
| vulnerable_ to a court 's authority because you have something
| to lose.
|
| If a court orders specific performance and he doesn't do it
| then he's liable and the court will take his assets to
| compensate.
|
| Is Levine seriously suggesting that US courts don't have the
| authority to impose financial penalties, find liability, and
| seize assets? This is such an absurd thing to say it's hard to
| find a way to charitably respond.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Levine has addressed this in past columns. Of course the
| courts have such authority, but individual _people_ have to
| enforce the court 's decisions, and sometimes those people
| are reluctant to take on Musk.
|
| Musk is a special case because he has done things like
| threatening to ruin the careers of SEC lawyers who have come
| after him, and he has the power to make that happen.
|
| Is this illegal? Probably. Does Musk get away with it? Yes.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| You're talking about Musk pressuring Cooley to fire a
| lawyer who previously worked against him at the SEC. But
| the result was that Cooley told Musk no. Hardly a success
| story for Musk.
|
| There's no shortage of law firms willing to go up against
| billionaires. Hell, there's no shortage of firms willing to
| go up against criminal enterprises like drug cartels.
|
| The idea that Musk is somehow more threatening than the
| types that the US court system regularly puts under their
| thumb is simply laughable.
| sroussey wrote:
| Cooley then lost business from Musk firms.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| So what? This is business as usual for law firms. They
| will lose clients every time they take a case due to
| conflicts of interest and so on, even if everyone has a
| happy outcome.
|
| What Musk did was petty and questionable, but it didn't
| fundamentally change anything for Cooley.
|
| It's not a big deal.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Is Levine seriously suggesting that US courts don't have
| the authority to impose financial penalties, find liability,
| and seize assets
|
| No. He's suggesting that Musk's wealth and power will make
| the people who work in US courts reluctant to impose
| financial penalties, find liability, and seize assets.
| reverend_gonzo wrote:
| Levine is suggesting that they don't have the balls to
| enforce those penalties.
|
| And by history, he may very well be right.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Anytime the idea of a wealth tax is brought up, I see
| commenters coming out of the woodwork to say that it would be
| impossible to actually collect it from the wealthy. Though I
| will note that it seems like we are able to collect yachts
| and planes from Russian oligarchs now, so perhaps our
| techniques have advanced in the last few months.
| nikanj wrote:
| It's easier to collect from foreign billionaires who don't
| have the connections. Igor will probably not fund your re-
| election campaign, but Musk might.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| There's an entire profession who's job it is to go full
| scale threat modeling on assets held directly or indirectly
| by the extremely rich. Seems likely they either didn't
| account for war sanctions or thought the impacted assets
| would not be worth putting behind 10 proxy legal owners for
| the unlikely case of such sanctions. Yachts and planes seem
| like they'd be particularly hard to turn into assets owned
| by a local proxy entity, since they move around so much.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Perhaps it's just a general sense of disillusionment, but
| I've come to see that "court orders X" and "X happens" are
| entirely orthogonal. I will be personally surprised if Musk
| pays a single cent.
| heartbreak wrote:
| Levine's take is based on how Musk's previous encounters with
| court orders have gone.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| No, it isn't. It's completely disconnected from reality.
|
| There isn't even one single court imposed fine which he
| hasn't paid.
| dragontamer wrote:
| How goes his court ordered Twitter sitter that's supposed
| to prevent Musk from Tweeting about material effects
| related to Tesla?
|
| That's what I thought. Musk just ignores the law and gets
| away with things on a regular basis.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That was a stupid order that would never survive scrutiny
| under prior-restraint doctrine. Specific performance is
| something different, though... I can't think of any
| constitutional problems that might block enforcement of
| that.
| slotrans wrote:
| But he has agreed to SEC sanctions and then subsequently
| ignored them...
| daenz wrote:
| >the court will take his assets to compensate.
|
| How do you seize billions of dollars of stock without
| affecting share prices?
| Spivak wrote:
| You don't care and keep seizing and selling off assets
| until you hit the target number or you run out of things to
| seize.
|
| You're acting like the asset value at all matters to the
| courts.
| daenz wrote:
| Couldn't other shareholders sue the government for
| tanking the stock and essentially "stealing" value from
| them?
| parineum wrote:
| > without affecting share prices
|
| Why should that be a concern?
| hedora wrote:
| They could simply keep selling Elon's Tesla stock it until
| they had the money to cover the court order.
|
| Why should the court or Twitter care if they end up
| converting 10x more of Elon's stock to cash?
|
| I guess some day traders would get rich (and people that
| had to sell for the day or so when the stock tanked would
| take a bath), but that's the biggest problem I can come up
| with.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| It doesn't matter if they're affected. A judgement is going
| to be for a dollar amount. A court will rule that Musk must
| pay twitter X billion dollars. Twitter can then pursue
| Musk, taking basically anything he owns in terms of
| business.
|
| They could contact the broker holding his shares and
| restrain them, order them sold, and collect the proceeds.
|
| They could seize and sell at auction the real property of
| any of his businesses. SpaceX rockets? Office chairs?
| Servers? Anything.
|
| All of this enforcement costs money. Twitter would account
| for the money spent seizing assets and charge those
| expenses to Musk as well.
|
| Assets seized in this way (including stock) are often sold
| for much less than they're ideally worth. It's Musk's
| problem. Twitter would be empowered to seize seize seize
| until they've raised enough cash to cover the judgement
| plus expenses.
| gpm wrote:
| > They could seize and sell at auction the real property
| of any of his businesses. SpaceX rockets? Office chairs?
| Servers? Anything.
|
| They could not, because he does not own those businesses
| outright. Doing so would violate the other owners rights.
| They can seize his shares in SpaceX, but not SpaceX
| property.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| Sure. The particular way the assets are seized depends on
| a number of different technical details.
|
| But the end result is always the same. You can either
| voluntarily liquidate and pay your judgements or you can
| have someone else do it for you.
| amyjess wrote:
| If they take all of Musk's shares in SpaceX and acquire a
| voting majority, they can then use those shares to vote
| to sell off the company's assets at the next board
| meeting.
| gpm wrote:
| That would almost certainly be a breach of fiduciary duty
| to the minority shareholders.
| moomin wrote:
| This is why going behind on a mortgage can absolutely
| ruin a regular person.
| chartpath wrote:
| It's not like the shares are destroyed or immediately sold.
| If anything, they are prevented from being sold under pain
| of contempt, so could increase prices by limiting the
| supply.
| pg_1234 wrote:
| You just continue seizing assets until the accumulated cash
| value realized from the sale of the assets matches the
| value of the financial judgement against the guilty party.
|
| The drop in share prices as you do this is not your
| concern.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Don't invest in a company ran by a lunatic?
| jollybean wrote:
| Could ask him to pay the $1B fine in the deal for walking away?
| russdill wrote:
| The $1B is it he walks away and Twitter is ok with it.
| Another clause allows Twitter to force the deal to close so
| long as they are operating in good faith.
|
| The purchase price of 54.20 per share would net a lot more
| than a billion given the current share price.
| eftychis wrote:
| No. The $1B clause does not involved the two contractual
| parties pulling out of the deal.
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| Why do you think it's mutual when Twitter is suing him for
| backing out?
| kgwgk wrote:
| Why do you think he thinks it's mutual?
| paulgb wrote:
| The phrasing could be read that way "No. The $1B clause
| does not involved _the two contractual parties_ pulling
| out of the deal." (Emphasis mine)
|
| I think OP may have intended to say "one of the two
| parties"
| eftychis wrote:
| The deal can be stopped by a third party which is not the
| case at this point. See another grandchild comment that
| expanded on that.
| jollybean wrote:
| ? It's my understanding that if Musk walks, he's supposed
| to pay $1B and visa versa.
|
| So he's using the 'bot' issue to find an excuse for a deal
| he wants out of.
|
| [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/elon-musk-
| twitter-1.6432315
| imustbeevil wrote:
| It seems like a common misunderstanding because the
| reporting around this is so bad.
|
| > Musk and Twitter agreed to a so-called reverse
| termination fee of $1 billion when the two sides reached
| a deal last month. Still, the breakup fee isn't an option
| payment that allows Musk to bail without consequence.
|
| > A reverse breakup fee paid from a buyer to a target
| applies when there is an outside reason a deal can't
| close, such as regulatory intermediation or third-party
| financing concerns. A buyer can also walk if there's
| fraud, assuming the discovery of incorrect information
| has a so-called "material adverse effect." A market dip,
| like the current sell-off that has caused Twitter to lose
| more than $9 billion in market cap, wouldn't count as a
| valid reason for Musk to cut loose -- breakup fee or no
| breakup fee -- according to a senior M&A lawyer familiar
| with the matter.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/13/elon-musk-cant-just-walk-
| awa...
| jollybean wrote:
| What did I misunderstand?
|
| Yes, I get that if there are 'material issues' maybe he
| can walk (even though he apparently waved a lot of that).
|
| He can't just walk away for 'no reason' and not pay the
| fine.
|
| The crashing price is probably not a legit reason.
| kgwgk wrote:
| The point is that paying the 'fine' doesn't give him the
| right to walk away for 'no reason'. If he does he may end
| paying damages for much more than $1bn.
| avalys wrote:
| No, it's worse than that.
|
| He can't just walk away and _pay_ the fine.
|
| He is obligated to close the deal and Twitter can force
| him to do so. If some external force stops the deal from
| happening - or if he can show that Twitter egregiously
| violated the agreement - he can get away with not buying
| Twitter, but he still has to pay them $1B.
| jollybean wrote:
| Hey Zeus.
|
| How could Musk possibly have done this, which must have
| been against the advice of his Bankers?
|
| "I'm sending men to mars, ergo, I know more about M&A
| than i-bankers?
|
| This is the kind of hubris that takes people down.
| tveita wrote:
| It would be perfectly fine terms if he _actually wanted
| to buy Twitter_ - at a silly price but hey, it 's his
| billions of dollars.
|
| That's presumably what he told people and not "hey I'm
| just joking around, make sure to write the terms so the
| deal never actually completes"
| np- wrote:
| Assuming that is the appropriate penalty (I know nothing about
| Chancery law), why exactly can't they just issue a warrant for
| his arrest and put him in jail? He doesn't have a private
| militia or anything like that
| hollasch wrote:
| And who do you imagine would do the arresting bit on behalf
| of the Delaware court?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Other states will enforce a lawfully issued arrest warrant
| from another state. It happens literally all the time.
| nabla9 wrote:
| This is a second time Musk has offered to buy a public company in
| bad faith.
|
| His reputation as a sufficiently reliable counterparty is gone.
| anonu wrote:
| Musk doesn't care about that one iota. He has more money than
| god. And he's done that by being fairly effective as the head
| of two big companies.
| theonemind wrote:
| Reality doesn't care if Musk doesn't care. For certain
| purchases, there's a probability that Musk will simply find
| that his money is no good. Not for sale to Elon Musk at any
| price.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >He has more money than god.
|
| Yeah ok ... <cue the Titanic sinking>.
| mLuby wrote:
| The guy has 15X more money than god (using the Vatican's
| wealth as a proxy).
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| His money will keep on talking tomorrow, unfortunately.
| nabla9 wrote:
| His dollar is worth 70 cent after this.
|
| It's likely that this will be the most expensive manic
| episode any individual has suffered.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| He's got enough dollars that even if his dollars were worth
| a penny he'd have a lot more than almost anyone else.
| prox wrote:
| Yeah, I am worried he has a mental imbalance that makes him
| unsuited for some decisions. If he is wise he should just
| focus on a few things and do it right. I admire what he has
| done for space travel for example, but hopefully he doesn't
| have to many yes men around him that make him to do much
| unstable things.
| loufe wrote:
| Let's not forget that this is a take, not an indisputable fact.
| Whether ostensible or true, he has cited potentially valid
| reasons for both cases (he DID have investors lined up to take
| it private and there WAS a lack of openness to investigate
| Twitter). I'm not saying he did or he didn't, I just find this
| kind of assertion (indeed the whole tone of the article) to be
| a bit flippant and more of a channeling for dislike of someone
| then for honest unbiased speculation of what is going on.
| TedShiller wrote:
| It's good he exposed Twitter as biased
| kukx wrote:
| So now there is a widespread support for Musk buying Twitter?
| Okay, he may end up owning Twitter whether he likes it or not. It
| is so funny and ironic. Whatever the outcome I agree.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Musk holds a key piece of America's future in space in SpaceX. I
| wonder if it's only a matter of time before he starts dangling
| that to get what he wants in cases like this. I still am
| generally favorable toward Elon, but I think we're seeing him
| transform into a villain
| roca wrote:
| The "cave diver paedophile" incident made it abundantly clear
| to everyone willing to see that whatever else he may be, Musk
| is a malicious clown. It was always only a matter of time
| before that had greater consequences.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| Exactly this. The mask slipped for a moment.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I see in Elon a trait I also have, which is to pick up random
| things, get interested in them for a while, and start to do
| things, and then realize you're not interested in it at all and
| drop it. I'm thinking of tunnels, neuralink, AI, taking Tesla
| private, child saving cave submarine, things like that. I can
| easily imagine he thought one day that he wanted to get into
| social media, went full steam ahead, and then realized he
| wasn't all that interested.
|
| It's bad, clearly, when this has negative externalities. A
| better Elon would stop himself from hurting people with these
| adventures - but, I also think it's possible that without this
| trait, whatever you call it, Elon wouldn't have made the
| progress in the areas he has. On net I think he's still done a
| tremendous amount.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| Sounds like ADHD hyperfixation
| sroussey wrote:
| I think it's called the shiny ball syndrome, common to many
| startup founders.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| The day he starts threatening US homeland security with SpaceX
| might be the day he finally understands his place.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| > I wonder if it's only a matter of time before he starts
| dangling that to get what he wants in cases like this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
| aseipp wrote:
| I suspect any hypothetical scenario where he dangled SpaceX in
| front of a suit, presumably from some natsec POV, wouldn't end
| in the Iron Man 2 Tony Stark speech about "It's my property"
| and befuddled politicians. It would end with him being forced
| to bend the knee behind closed doors (and consequently watching
| over his shoulder for the rest of his life.) Or he would simply
| have a bullet put in him, and his remains would be grounded
| into a fine, meat-like paste.
| ta8645 wrote:
| I don't know about a villain, but he definitely isn't a
| saviour. Was hoping he'd follow through in reforming Twitter.
| But it turns out, even with all his resources, he's actually
| pretty weak in comparison to the forces set against him.
| sroussey wrote:
| Elon is the force against himself. No conspiracy required.
| almost_usual wrote:
| I see a similar trajectory as OJ Simpson..
| theptip wrote:
| There's been a lot of speculating around here on exactly what it
| would take for Musk to get out of this deal; here's the TLDR of
| the analysis from Levine:
|
| > Musk cannot get out of the deal just because one of Twitter's
| representations is false. He still has to close the deal unless
| the representation is false and it would have a "material adverse
| effect" on Twitter. This is a famously under-defined term but it
| generally needs to be a pretty catastrophic effect. If the bots
| are 6% of mDAUs, whatever. If the bots are 75% of mDAUs and
| Twitter has been knowingly misleading its advertisers, and Musk
| can expose that scam and advertisers flee and Twitter faces legal
| trouble for its fraud, then, sure, material adverse effect.
|
| As to whether there is any evidence of a false representation
| (not even addressing material adverse effect due to that false
| representation):
|
| > The only basis for the claim is that "preliminary analysis by
| Mr. Musk's advisors of the information provided by Twitter to
| date causes Mr. Musk to strongly believe that the proportion of
| false and spam accounts included in the reported mDAU count is
| wildly higher than 5%." Notice that Ringler does not say that the
| analysis shows that the bots are "wildly higher than 5%" of
| mDAUs: That would be a factual claim that, I suspect, Musk's
| advisers know is false. They make only the subjective claim that
| Musk "strongly believes" it.
|
| And then, perhaps the better grounds for Musk to prevail:
|
| > The second pretext is: Twitter is not giving Musk enough
| information about the bot problem. This is a better pretext, for
| technical legal reasons, which we have also discussed previously.
| In the closing conditions to the merger, representations are
| qualified by "material adverse effect"; just finding that a
| representation is false would not give Musk the right to
| terminate the deal unless it caused an MAE. But covenants are
| qualified by "all material respects": In the merger agreement,
| Twitter promised to do certain things between signing and
| closing, and it has to do those things, whether or not there
| would be a material adverse effect from not doing them. So if
| Musk can prove that Twitter hasn't complied with its obligations,
| he can get out of the deal.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > If the bots are 6% of mDAUs, whatever.
|
| It seems like the purchase price should be of the order of 6%
| less in that case.
|
| 6% of $44 billion is not a trivial amount of money.
| govg wrote:
| These are figured that Twitter has been filing with the SEC
| for ages. How does it make sense if the purchase was agreed
| upon when all this was public information?
| theptip wrote:
| This isn't how "material adverse event" works, which is the
| term that was written into the contract that Musk signed.
|
| Normally "is the mDAU figure correct" is the kind of thing
| you answer before you sign the merger agreement and lock in
| your purchase price.
|
| Also note that the baseline in SEC filings was 5% bots, so 6%
| is only 1pp higher. The claim was never that it was zero.
| russdill wrote:
| Do public statements before he signed the deal that imply that
| he was aware that Twitter has a bot problem and already
| suspected that the number we much higher than reported by
| Twitter have any effect?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| wasn't that literally the reason he claimed he wanted to buy
| it for in the first place? I remember him going on about
| verifying every human on twitter and improving our discourse
|
| the thing he's pretending to ditch the deal for was the thing
| he allegedly wanted to fix
| sroussey wrote:
| And wrote it in the SEC filed docs.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's kind of a moot point; Levine is reading tea leaves about
| what a judge will think hearing all of this, but the fact is
| that Musk waived the right to condition the acquisition on
| Twitter's bot statistics, pretty much in black and white.
| theptip wrote:
| Levine certainly thinks this is true.
| victor106 wrote:
| Elon's going to get away with this. Even though he shouldn't.
|
| The rich play by different rules and the law lets them.
|
| If the rest of us did the same we would have to pay ridiculous
| fines and/or spent time behind bars.
| frankohn wrote:
| My idea is that Elon Musk is just leveraging it's wealth and
| public visibility to gain a lot of money easily tricking the
| markets. Especially those market where people are more easily
| gullible.
|
| I think he did it with bitcoins when it declared Tesla will
| accept Bitcoin payments on the same basis of ordinary payments.
| Just later he abruptly dismissed the whole thing because the
| operation was terminated. In the meantime I guess he just
| acquired a lot of bitcoins before the public announcement and
| just sold them when the price was much higher.
|
| I think that stock market and Bitcoin market are easily gullible
| by wealthy people because a lot of people investing are
| inexperienced and are easily influenced by press communication
| without ground truth basis.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| Did anyone think he would actually be allowed to buy it? Twitter,
| as a weapon for propaganda and a tool for information collection,
| is too important and powerful to just let someone like Musk do
| what he wants with it.
| fwip wrote:
| What? Elon is trying to back out of the deal, not Twitter.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| Nobody is trying to stop Elon Musk from buying Twitter except
| for Elon Musk himself.
|
| Twitter, the banks lending him money, and the other investors
| Elon lined up are all trying to make the transaction go
| forward.
|
| So the answer is clearly that yes, Elon musk is "allowed" to
| buy Twitter if he actually wants to. He may even have to buy it
| based on the agreement he signed even if he no longer wants to.
| labrador wrote:
| I believe he was sincere, but found out quickly that a lot of
| people had strong feelings about his plans for the platform. It's
| possible he was in danger of losing people he really needs for
| his other businesses. I don't blame him for bailing out on a
| lose/lose situation.
| checkurprivlege wrote:
| Correct
|
| a tide of hatred turned against him
|
| Musk correctly reacted by withdrawing and not wanting any of
| this
|
| you can keep the social media and deal with your hatred
| yourselves or your therapist
| rabite wrote:
| paulgb wrote:
| > but all he needs to have defense standing might be a single
| one of the millions of accounts Twitter has claimed is an
| active monetizable user to be shown to be a bot
|
| There's some good discussion in the article (whose author has a
| law degree) about why that's not the case.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hartator wrote:
| > that it has knowingly been massively understating the number of
| bot accounts in order to trick companies into buying Twitter ads
| and shareholders into buying Twitter stock
|
| Wasn't Google Ads 80% fake clicks on some studies? It won't be
| surprising Twitter Ads is actually worse. There is so zero
| incentive to clean it up and so many shady reasons to do it.
| anonu wrote:
| Fake clicks and bot accounts are two distinct things in my
| opinion. Bot accounts are bad, fake clicks are much much worse.
| hedora wrote:
| It depends on your perspective. As far as I'm concerned the
| whole target advertising industry is a blight on society. The
| more click fraud undermines it, the better.
|
| On then other hand, bot accounts help get bozos elected,
| encourage mass shootings, etc.
|
| Come to think of it, I don't think it depends on your
| perspective. Bot accounts are a much bigger issue than click
| fraud.
| bmitc wrote:
| Tesla bots are some of the most active on Twitter, or at least
| some of the most efficient in achieving their goal of
| manipulating Tesla interest, sentiment, and ultimately stock
| price. Musk knows this. I wouldn't be surprised if he knows who
| controls these bots.
| tptacek wrote:
| That might actually hurt Musk's argument, because Google is
| incredibly lucrative despite the belief that ad clicks are
| overwhelmingly fake. The rule of thumb Levine (an attorney)
| gave a few posts ago for MAE's in Delaware courts is
| "sufficient to cause a 40% drop in profitability". Not stock
| price, not mDAU numbers, but income statements.
| adventured wrote:
| Musk wasn't pretending to buy Twitter, the article is using a
| sort of simpleton interpretation of Musk's behavior. That's the
| interpretation someone would take if they dislike Musk and get
| overly emotional about his behavior.
|
| Musk is x y z. Oh my god, did you see the tweet he sent out!?! I
| just hate Musk, blah blah blah. He's such a terrible human. This
| one time he called a person a really bad name. - That's the type
| of person that reads Musk's Twitter acquisition attempt the way
| the article is.
|
| I don't care much about Musk one way or another, but this is not
| a complicated context and the author is plain wrong.
|
| What happened is the market for hyper overvalued stocks has
| crashed. He was faced with the scenario of paying double for
| Twitter vs what it was really worth. Remove the Musk prop and the
| stock collapses. Next up, the stock is heading south of $30 /
| share. It might be worth taking over for $20-$25 / share at most.
|
| Musk didn't want to pay $20 billion more for Twitter than he had
| to, even for him that was a bridge too far. Particularly while
| his own paper bubble fortune is just as at risk of implosion as
| the rest.
|
| It was really, really, really dumb timing. That was Musk's actual
| issue.
| kcplate wrote:
| This to me seems the most reasonable explanation and explains
| most of the behaviors involved on both sides. I don't buy into
| "it was just a joke that went too far" theory.
|
| Musk doesn't want a turd.
|
| Twitter, essentially made a deal with the devil (from their
| perspective). Despite being initially opposed to this deal,
| they now has to sue to try and make it happen, because I
| suspect if it doesn't "south of $30" is going to be more like
| "around $20" and there are a whole bunch of folks that might
| get interested in a takeover at that level with far more
| villain potential than Musk.
| tailrecursion wrote:
| I'd like to learn how to read billionaires' minds. Anyone know a
| good book I can read so that I can have the skills of this
| opinion writer?
| TillE wrote:
| There's reams of Musk's direct thoughts about this topic and
| many many others, coincidentally available on twitter dot com.
| It's not overly difficult to get a sense of who he is and how
| he thinks about things.
| anonu wrote:
| Matt Levine is a lawyer. Nothing to do with understanding a
| billionaires mind. A solid legal understanding, especially of
| corporate finance, M&A, etc is what you're looking for here ...
| tveita wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Internet comment threads.
|
| No, seriously. Just keep finding better ones.
| jollybean wrote:
| They are of the same mind as any other person with a bit of
| arrogance and hubris they just have more money.
|
| Imagine some lowly millionaire putting a bid in for a piece of
| land / cottage he wants, and the karma that can come from that.
| Same thing, different scale.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| "I want more"
|
| You're welcome.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I met an almost billionaire once; I mentioned how a million
| dollars would cover me for the rest of my life and she
| followed with a 10 minute speech on how money is horrible and
| she can't sleep at night for their concern. I was moved but I
| confessed I'd still want that million dollars to fall out of
| the sky. It didn't feel like she "wanted more".
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I used to 'hang' with a billionaire friend of the family
| and, maybe that might be dutch, he was incredibly frugal
| (drove a crappy old but not classic car, lived in a rather
| small house etc) and yea was obsessed with making more. He
| would ask me out for a coffee and ask to split the bill (or
| just pay his part and walk wait for me to pay my part) even
| though I usually just paid as I don't like going dutch. He
| spent almost no money during his life. Guess that is all
| good for making fortunes.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Warren Buffett reputedly lives frugally and clips
| coupons.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| How did you meet her? Were you at a zen meditation retreat
| after retiring from remunerative employment?
|
| On a semi-related note, one of the most predictive factors
| of stress in any primate societies is inequality, but one
| of the more surprising factors is that stress increases for
| everyone, even those at the top of the heap.
| metadat wrote:
| Un-paywalled: https://archive.ph/5nLiC
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32027341 - July 2022 (1361
| comments)
| georgia_peach wrote:
| This is politics masquerading as legal analysis. Twitter, by its
| own admission, lied about their user count for years. Elon will
| either go without penalty, or take a slap on the wrist. Levine
| spends a lot of time shilling on bots because he knows that's a
| weak spot for the Elon haterz club.
|
| https://nairametrics.com/2022/04/28/twitter-says-it-inflated...
|
| edit: Not an Elon fan BTW. Just don't appreciate this Levine's
| axe-grinding masquerading as impartial legal analysis.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| And to the _georgia_peach_ haterz, who can 't be bothered to
| back their downvotes up with a comment: keep on believing in
| that free legal education you're getting from Goldman M&A.
| hartator wrote:
| If "serious" business led us to wars like in Ukraine, I'll take
| Elon Musk's expensive jokes any day.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| BTW, to those who don't know -- Money stuff is free if you
| subscribe to it as an email newsletter.
|
| Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff
| vitorsr wrote:
| Plus, as prominently displayed in a Pinned Tweet on Levine's
| Twitter:
|
| https://twitter.com/matt_levine
| [deleted]
| slotrans wrote:
| and you _absolutely should subscribe_ because it is fantastic
| and hilarious
| dang wrote:
| (We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32036815.)
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I don't understand why we need to make things personal: a
| multibillionaire with practically unlimited resources is
| negotiating with a multibillion dollar corporation with
| practically unlimited resources.
|
| It's clear that the offer Elon got stuck with has an unrealistic
| price at this point (and Elon just want a reason to get out of
| the deal), just like it's clear that Twitter's management is
| incompetent in the last few years.
|
| I just hope that there will be a lawsuit with juicy details so
| that I can get my popcorn, but I believe the 2 parties will
| settle.
| roca wrote:
| Twitter management probably didn't have much choice but to
| accept the deal. Turning down an offer significantly above the
| stock price sounds like a trigger for a shareholder lawsuit.
| bambax wrote:
| > _It's clear that the offer Elon got stuck with has an
| unrealistic price at this point_
|
| But that's not how it works. That's why we have contracts, and
| covenants, etc.: it's so that, if conditions change, one party
| cannot say "oops, sorry, changed my mind" and walk.
|
| (Also, the offer "Elon got stuck with" is his own, and even
| bears his childish signature of a weed joke.)
| addicted wrote:
| Elon only got stuck with it because he explicitly waived the
| right to due diligence which would have protected him from all
| this.
|
| He tried to act badass but came out looking like a dumbass.
|
| Everything since is his effort to get out of this (which he
| will...one of the nice things about having a lot of money is
| that it's very hard to lose, no matter how illegal whatever
| you're doing is), but is also trying to pretend he didn't do
| something really really dumb.
|
| I see absolutely no reason to help Elon rewrite history
| especially when he could very well paid the penalty and walked
| away like he contractually agreed to, which would have ended
| the matter right there.
| refurb wrote:
| Pretty much.
|
| It's like selling a house and buyer makes an offer with no
| contingencies.
|
| Sure, you can sue them to close the deal but the juice isn't
| worth the squeeze. Does Twitter want to be locked into some
| multi-year court battle?
|
| They'll settle and the news will move onto something else.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Suing to close the deal can be a way to get leverage for the
| eventual settlement.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Sure, you can sue them to close the deal but the juice isn't
| worth the squeeze.
|
| LOL, I'm sure the juice will be worth the squeeze on a $44
| billion dollar house.
| refurb wrote:
| Nope. Years of court battles distracts the company and
| keeps other buyers away.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Does Twitter want to be locked into some multi-year court
| battle?
|
| Delaware courts are pretty fast. The court case could
| conceivably be finished before the end of this year.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Also, if we're talking dozens of billions of dollars, yes,
| it totally makes sense for a company to engage into a
| multi-year battle.
| refurb wrote:
| Presumably Musk's legion of lawyers can find some way to
| drag things out.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Why do you presume that?
| refurb wrote:
| Court decisions can be appealed.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| And those appeals can be ruled upon and then the case can
| reach a conclusion. It's not like the lawyers can just
| take _any_ case with _any_ facts and keep the case from
| _ever_ reaching a conclusion.
|
| The real question you should ask yourself is, if $44
| billion is on the line, how long would you continue to
| pursue the case in the face of lawyers who are just
| trying to drag it out? Even if it went on for years (it's
| not assured Musk's lawyers could drag it out past a
| year), I can think of 44 billion reasons to continue with
| the case.
| refurb wrote:
| I think you underestimate the burden on a company of
| multi-year litigation.
|
| They won't get any more buyers while it's happening and
| it's a massive distraction.
|
| I've worked at companies like this and it brutal on
| employee morale. People just leave.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I've worked at companies like this and it brutal on
| employee morale. People just leave.
|
| Who cares? If you think you're going to win, it's just
| Elon causing his future employees to quit. It's not going
| to affect your payday of $54.20. Similarly, no other
| buyers will make lower offers. Those are, by definition,
| worse than just suing.
| TillE wrote:
| It's not like there's another buyer out there offering $44
| billion. Twitter has no reason to settle, unless maybe the
| stock price goes way up.
| refurb wrote:
| It's like a divorce. You can either reach a settlement or
| spend a ton of money fighting for years.
|
| You imagine how distracting it would be for Twitter to have
| this in their quarterly updates? They certainly aren't
| selling the company until it's resolved.
|
| My prediction - lots of public tough talk, then a quiet
| resolution.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > It's like a divorce. You can either reach a settlement
| or spend a ton of money fighting for years.
|
| There's basically no way they could possibly spend even a
| tiny fraction of the overall deal's worth fighting this
| even if it went on for years. Not spending that money to
| fight this would really be stupid.
| edgyquant wrote:
| The answer is almost certainly yes. It isn't Twitter sitting
| in a court room for nothing they're getting higher than the
| stock price was when the deal was announced.
|
| It's a profitable venture for twitter
| MrMan wrote:
| Analogies don't work with corporate law
| jollybean wrote:
| Twitter management is not incompetent, Musk set his own price.
|
| He should definitely pay a fine.
|
| You can't walk into a situation and cause major chaos -
| literally executive turnover, stock going crazy, all sorts of
| turmoil - and then walk away on bad faith and excuses.
|
| Also - he does not have unlimited resources. He literally
| cannot afford this deal right now.
| kzrdude wrote:
| He can afford it, but not without causing further chaos to
| himself and his companies.
| eftychis wrote:
| He practically bought it; it's unlikely an agency or third
| party to intervene / object; only thing to "save" him is
| stating he doesn't have the monwy/funding was pulled due to
| lack of information. Even then, I doubt he would avoid it.
|
| Of course they can drag each other to the bottom until one
| gives up. I doubt Musk will and Twitter might have
| existential issues if it doesn't get bought with rumors
| related to their user base quality.
| jollybean wrote:
| The user base quality thing, irrespective of what the real
| answer is, is mostly a canard. The only way it could
| possibly get used is by Musk in the public commons to trash
| them.
|
| Other than that, this will be a side-show court battle now,
| unless one party has reason to continue arguing about it in
| public sphere.
| hey2022 wrote:
| Twitter is a public company. We can not ignore the effect this
| situation has on the investors (regardless of whether someone
| thinks "they deserve it", or something equally irrelevant).
| shalmanese wrote:
| Contracts matter. The ability for two parties to create a
| contract and to have reasonably secure knowledge that the state
| will still in and enforce the terms of the contract, using
| violence if necessary, is a massive foundational element to
| free market capitalism.
|
| We see in states where such an expectation is not present, that
| it becomes an enormous invisible drag on all business activity
| and degrades the civic functioning of society.
|
| One of the crowning achievements of Western Liberalism was the
| concept of "rule of law" and that there would exist an
| impartial, powerful judiciary independent of political power
| that could bring massive resources to bear to enforce
| contracts.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Can you please elaborate on what makes it clear that Twitter
| management was incompetent in the last few years?
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