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Comment by BulgarianIdiot | Hacker News Reader

We don't like it, but he keeps testing his power and getting his way. Sometimes I don't even know how. But truth is law and order stop applying when you have power or wealth.

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He definitely did not “win” anyway being forced to buy Twitter for $44 billion and now it’s worth half that and losing advertisers left and right.

Didn't Fidelity value it at $15 billion[1]? Musk bought it at $44 billion. That would mean that it's worth almost a third its original value so not even half

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/31/tech/twitter-value-fideli...

Money is just numbers on a screen.

He spent $30B on his personal worldwide megaphone. Less than 20% of his savings. That's like a normal rich person buying an expensive house during a real estate bubble.

He fought tooth and nail not to buy Twitter at the price he paid. He wanted to walk away.

Calling his Tesla stock "savings" and using market cap to determine its liquid purchase power is astoundingly ignorant. Tell me, if you have, say, 100 million in savings, and you spend 20 million, does the remainder magically shrink also to 20 million, like happened with Musk in 2022?

Also do you realize he paid about 1/4 of the value of Twitter. The rest is loans and other investors burning cash by trusting him and rolling over.

Tell me why did a wealthy man who merely spent "20% of his savings" take on high-interest debts worth over 13 billion?

I don’t think he got his way when forced to buy Twitter. He was trying to pull the same nonsense after announcing the deal and closing it.

I think there's a distinction to be made. The powerful to exert their power without making public noise are probably more likely to get away with it. But the ones who proudly (stupidly?) publicly proclaim their misbehavior tend to fare less well.

There's a very high profile example of this right now in the US, and I suspect it will demonstrate the difference between silent abuse of power vs overt public abuse of it.

Are you referring to the man who successful ignored the law for 76 years, got filthy rich in the process, whose name becoming a colloquial term for extreme luxury living, and might face consequences by age 80?

For the non-US persons among us, who are you referring to? :)

Donald Trump.

Thanks, that wasn't actually obvious from the above description. At least, not to me. :)

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