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Comment by TheAlchemist | Hacker News Reader

Except, these are not mistakes. This is every single Musk's company modus operandi.

Completely made up or inflated numbers, unrealistic timelines etc. Customers or investors buying into it, but if you look under the hood, outside of government subsides and contract, there is pretty much 0 money made from ALL of his businesses.

He's just using the same playbook now, except when people will realize that the 5000$ DOGE checks are bullshit (btw, 5000 x ~150M taxpayers = 750 Billion $...) they may finally wake up.

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> but if you look under the hood .. there is pretty much 0 money made from ALL of his businesses.

There are many valid criticisms of Musk. Saying that he has not added any real value in his ventures, or that he doesn't really know how to make money, just destroys your credibility.

How so ?

Which company is making money ? Especially if you exclude government subsides and contracts ?

Tesla lost tons of money, and only recently (and probably for a very brief period of time) was profitable - mostly from various government subsides and help (through carbon credits, IRA for Tesla buyers etc). SpaceX so far did not make any profit (or more specifically they said they achieved profitability last year, but you would need to trust Musk with his word on that...) and is 90% dependent on government contracts. Twitter is a money furnace, so is Neuralink, Boring Company and xAI.

I didn't say he did not add 'real value'. Obviously these companies would not exist without him. I'm just saying that profitability wise, so far (and it's been a long time for most of them) they are not or barely profitable.

They won't be able to cut checks unless congress approves. They'll say they will cut checks, get sued and lose. They'll blame the judicial system and it will probably be a pretense to undermine that branch of government.

So far they have found pretty much no resistance. The few judges raising their voices are threatened with jail to make examples. Do not put too much faith in the strength of your institutions.

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