My friend Lukas thinks Trump's idea of having Elon Musk audit the US government seeking efficiencies is a good idea. He also correctly predicted that I would disagree.
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I like the idea of a successful good person from the business world coming into politics. Michael Bloomberg was a very successful businessman who ran for mayor of NYC as a Republican. He won in the heavily Democratic city and did such a good job they suspended the two term limit to allow him a third term. (His Presidential bid in 2020 was a giant crash and burn, but I digress.) The point is that I am not opposed to people from with a business background going into politics.
Trump bothered me in that he was not a successful businessman. Had he taken his inheritance and placed into index funds he'd be much wealthier now and not have declared bankruptcy four times.
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Lukas is right that I do not believe Elon Musk is a good man. Disowning his 20 year old transgender daughter is his most recent personal failing. But I'll set aside his personal issues.
His purchase of Twitter exemplifies how someone's arrogance/ego can eclipse intelligence/judgment.
For those who don't follow let me summarize:
He offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share. ($4.20 was a joke about marijuana.) The problem? Twitter was not worth anything close to the $44 billion he was paying. When he realized he drastically overpaid he tried to back out. Since he had signed a contract the Twitter board held him to it so he reluctantly agreed. He convinced investment banks to pony up $13 billion in loans. Details here. The tl;dr? Twitter (now X) has seen its revenue decline so much that it is not making enough to even make the interest payments on its debt.
When Musk took over he eliminated 80% of the employees and Twitter was able to keep functioning. Some in Silicon Valley hailed his cost-cutting as visionary and it did start the trend of tech layoffs. While other CEO's like Zuck at Meta (Facebook) cut fat, Musk's cuts were flesh and bone. Sure it cut costs quickly but it resulted in a platform that became a toxic stew that advertisers abandoned.
He fed his seed corn to the livestock. It was great for an initial boost but very destructive in the long run.
A year ago he told advertisers and Disney CEO Bob Iger to go fuck themselves:
I won't go into his odd rightward lurch except to make to two observations:
Tesla, the solar company he founded, and SpaceX all became possible due to massive government subsidies. California leads the way in EV stations thanks to state and federal grants. Because California also taxes capital gains he moved to Texas and is moving his company headquarters from Delaware to Texas because Texas rules will allow him to do anything he wants.
Secondly, Elon has no problem following rules of rightwing governments like India. But when Brazil's leftwing government imposes rules Elon shut it down rather than comply. It will be interesting to see how the EU handles. X/Twitter is not complying with their rules (the safety people were part of the 80% Musk laid off). It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
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Musk is very anti-union. For many in the business community that's a plus. Given that roughly 30% of the government workforce is unionized there is no reason for them to remain silent when he goes after their jobs first.
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Bottom line? Elon Musk is not the right person to give advice on finding ways for the US government to save money. His horrible stewardship at X proves that his expertise in some domains does not translate well to social media.
A few weeks ago Elon decided that the companies that stopped advertising should be sued. His reputable law firm wouldn't file the case so he hired a lower tier law firm. He instructed X CEO in name only Linda Yacarino to put out this incredibly cringe-worthy video explaining it. It's worth 2 minutes of your time:
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