Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

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He certainly figured it out, which is why he worked so hard to back out of the deal.

Though he never really expected it to earn its price back. As a large-fraction-of-a-trillion-aire, he may well have found that having trolls, clowns, and morons to enjoy his adolescent antics is worth $44B in pure enjoyment. He was buying a chance to put a significant thumb on the finger of world culture.

Musk has so much money that he doesn't really care if there's a net positive return to his purchases. He spends money to enjoy it. Which I actually find bizarrely refreshing, compared to the ones who want to use it for the purpose of acquiring more money, plus the occasional conspicuous consumption that seems more like a performance than actual enjoyment (e.g. megayachts).

Too bad he's such an asshole, though.

> he may well have found that having trolls, clowns, and morons to enjoy his adolescent antics is worth $44B in pure enjoyment

This is the most disappointing part. I have a hard time imagining that any of these billionaires are "good people" in a way that I would recognize. But before this Twitter thing I felt like at least I can respect the things Musk chooses to spend his time and money on. How much would that $44B have moved the needle on on his Mars dream? Seems like a waste to me.

> How much would that $44B have moved the needle on on his Mars dream

It would make 0 difference, SpaceX is already moving as fast as possible, throwing money at them would not make things go faster. In the future when actual ships start flying to Mars Elon will still have plenty to fund that personally if he needed to.

In other news, the first flight test of the largest rocket ever built is scheduled for Monday the 17th

Forget about Mars, what about spending that $44B to lobby the government to end poverty for children in the US, feels like a noble cause. Senators and Congressmen/women are bribed, excuse me, lobbied, for peanuts (< millions).

For $44B, he could have just given every child $2,000. Not enough to end poverty, but surely enough to keep them fed for a year.

I realize that this isn't practical; the causes of poverty are complex and just giving people money won't solve all of it. But it does give some notion of the scope of what could have been accomplished directly.

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