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Comment by pclmulqdq | Hacker News Reader

I'm assuming that part of this settlement was that some of his funders told him that they wanted the embarrassment to end. This whole process has made him and all of his co-investor friends look like assholes and idiots, and I'm sure they didn't like that.

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Musk burned his reputation. His handshake or verbal agreement is worth much less going forward. Without trust he can't move fast.

Someone like Warren Buffet can make a one phone call and the deal gets closed in few days because his word can be trusted.

Well it's too late, I'm convinced all of them are assholes and idiots.

Of course, I thought this even before the Twitter fiasco started. I just believe it even more strongly now.

A lot of people think that Elon Musk was the modern Nikola Tesla or (yes) Albert Einstein. These texts let them know that he is actually the modern PT Barnum.

Musk is modern day Howard Hughes.

Brilliant man who worked in aviation and aerospace and did many things. Eccentric person with serious mental issues.

He’s the modern day John Ernst Worrell Keely.

He is musk, there isn’t a great historical analogy because globalization has truly enabled him to rapidly impact the entire world with his antics and successes.

For me it was Elon Musk calling a rescue worker a pedophile and then doubling down on the claim.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk...

I found it surprising to read that some of Elon’s high school classmates confirmed that slang word was used to mean ‘idiot’ in their locale.

I have some family members from SA… very interesting culture to say the least!

Back in middle school the "F" word for a bundle of sticks was often used as a derogatory term directed at people you didn't like, regardless of their sexual orientation. That doesn't make it okay for me to call someone that on the public stage because as an adult you are supposed to know better and keep up with changing public opinion

Just because you did something stupid and wrong as a kid doesn't mean you should be able to get away with doing it as an adult.

Having a very brief look at the world of the ultra rich through an acquaintance of a friend, Im pretty sure that "reputation" to those people means a very different thing than it does to us. The key thing to remember is that these people live a very luxurious lifestyle that they can fund without ever having to work a day in their lives, so funding stuff like that to them is pretty much entertainment.

If you watch the expert testimony from the Depp v. Heard trial, you can see a little bit about how "reputation" is measured and how much it can matter to the rich and famous. It is a lot more like how companies measure "brand equity" than how normal people think about reputation.

Depp would not be considered ultra rich. Depp has a net worth of 650 million at peak, which is tiny compared to Musk, Bezos, etc.

(I had to look this up) Musk is worth ~$240B, ~1000x more than Depp. Honestly, I'm impressed that a (and I say this with love) junkie actor could do so well.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/012715/5-ric...

Not only that, but Depp is notoriously irresponsible with his wealth. Before he had to liquidate some properties because of the trial, he had an excess of houses, condos, boats, cars, and all kinds of expensive to maintain personal holdings. I don't know for sure, but from what I've seen of Elon Musk, he is a lot more conservative with his wealth—even considering the Twitter deal.

$44 billion for Twitter is not being conservative with wealth.

Elon Musk is conservative with his wealth because it's mostly on paper - he would need to sell shares to get access to it. Johnny Depp's wealth was mostly in cash.

I wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk only had about $1 billion liquid (aside from whatever goes towards paying known obligations, like the Twitter deal and tax bills), making him only 2x richer in cash terms than Johnny Depp at his peak.

I don't really know or care about the fine details of Musk (or Depp's) wealth. All I'm pointing out is that Musk seems to have a more moderate lifestyle. He doesn't live like the archetype of a rockstar or billionaire.

You must not know a lot about Musk's lifestyle either, then.

And that’s without even bringing up the coterie of concubines (defacto, not de jure). I wonder what THAT child support paperwork looks like.

Horses are expensive.

Byproduct PMU foals cost less than a purebred kitten or puppy sold by a breeder, sometimes as low as $125. With two acres for grazing, annual cost of feeding can be as low as $100-$300 a year for an adult horse.

But, I believe, you are largely correct. I don't think rich people rescue PMU horses.

Musk cashed out $9 billion of TSLA stock earlier this year. Now, it might all get sunk into TWTR, but who knows.

He seems to have plenty of cash

My understanding was that there were two big bills coming due for most of Musk's recent sales: a tax bill and the Twitter purchase.

His co-investors are the Saudi royal family, Larry Ellison, and the Murdoch family. These do not strike me as a group of people overly concerned with the opinions of ordinary folks.

If you add Peter Thiel to the list you get most of the contemporary villains in just one place.

What a great outlook for Twitter...

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