Elon's award is tied to growing Tesla's market cap - it's pretty transparent that he's just trying to ball-of-mud together everything he can to hit that target and grab the bag.
It's a game for him, but so ridiculous. While Tesla was pushing electrification and SpaceX pushing rapid rocket re-use I kind of tolerated Elon's antics, but since he got involved in politics and DOGE I can't bear it anymore.
It counts and it's not wrong.
Sure, the Tesla award takes into account any M&A but growing a 2T company to 3T is a 50% increase. While growing a 1T company to 2T is a 100% increase so it's expected to be easier for him to hit his award targets with the companies merged as opposed to not merged.
The goal is to give Elon his 2012 award package but making it his 2018 one.
For Tesla ops milestones they would be waived, this is fine because accusition is a chance for Tesla shareholders to cash out at that price.
The text written in the link you did not read, states "Notwithstanding Sections I, II and III above, in the event of a Change in Control, the Operational Milestones shall be disregarded".
And that doesn't get any more by 50% increase with the same dilution.
I took a look at the proxy statement as they have it outlined in this [0] document (Proposal 4). As currently formulated, Musk has 12 operational goals (like ship 1 million robots or hit 50 billion EBITDA) and 12 market cap goals. These need to be paired together for the shares to vest; so, if he reaches the first market cap number, he also needs to fulfill an operating goal for the first set of shares to be earned. These earned shares vest in ~5 years.
This comes with a huge caveat. If Tesla changes control, those operational goals go out the window and his stock award is based solely on market cap (along with the shares immediately vesting). The share price for this is the greater of:
1. The last traded Tesla price prior to the acquisition, or 2. The per share price outlined in the acquisition.
The "easiest" way to take advantage is to IPO SpaceX (which he did), pump up the market cap, acquire Tesla for a sizable premium, and vest as much of the stock award as you can. It means you get to avoid the operational goals entirely and vest a bunch of Tesla (but soon to be SpaceX) stock.
[0]: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000110465925...
[0] The Doctrine of Fascism is available, for free, in several places. Start there.
Is Musk wielding the apparatus of state to ensure that any speech that he disagrees with is suppressed, e.g. on college campuses?
He does not need to do that, he has his army of people like you that go around on all socials and wherever you can to post praise, defend him and attack any critics as he was some sort of uber genius savior of mankind. The Musk cult is real.
The whole thread (and to be fair, Musk himself most of the time) has lost the plot, since the phrase "freedom of speech" is about the government not restraining or punishing speech. Honestly, what Twitter allowed or not before or after Musk is entirely irrelevant to the concept of free speech. Twitter/X is still just some guy's website.
The Trump administration spent considerable effort strong arming colleges on account of speech that they did not like. Even if you subscribe to FIRE’s “Chicago Statement”, you should find the government interfering with colleges like this a break-glass scenario. “Individual Rights in Education” surely include the right to hold beliefs and teach in a way that the current administration is uncomfortable with.
So yes, these are fascist activities wholly consistent with the other fascist activities that MAGA movement is engaged in.
> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments
I'm not sure HN is for you.
* He suspended multiple journalists from Twitter/X in December 2022 after they had reported on or criticized him [0]
* He has been accused of retaliating against critics and employees through threats, lawsuits, or firings, rather than tolerating dissent. [1]
* He selective enforcing Twitter/X platform rules. Here's 10 examples: [2]
He tolerates speech he likes and often punishing speech he dislikes. That's not being a "free speech" absolutist.
[0] https://truthout.org/articles/free-speech-watchdogs-condemn-...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/free-speech-absolutist-elon-...
[2] https://gizmodo.com/10-times-elon-musk-censored-twitter-user...
One doesn't need to be a free speech absolutist to not be a fascist, far from it; and the exceptions prove the rule - those examples are the definition of exceptional. "10 times…" I can remember people getting banned en masse for changing their profile pic to an NPC character. The difference is night and day.
> If Tesla changes control
Does selling Tesla to SpaceX actually satisfy "changing control" if he remains the largest shareholder?
If you're writing a prospectus right now and want a lot of large institutional investment you put AI between every letter. We are in a bubble, I don't think there's any disagreement about that, when the bubble will pop nobody knows - but while we're in this bubble everything is AI. I think it's unwise to read that prospectus in good faith given all the other factors (the court case against OpenAI, the race to IPO first, Google's additional stock grant, Elon's history of corporate bailouts) that are pretty plain to see.
The radiators on the ISS radiate maybe 200kW all up. That's _one rack_ in a normal earthbound DC.
Not saying I think it's the best idea, but it is theoretically feasible.
To say that this is pure folly is an understatement. It is not folly, and it is not foolishness. It is fraud.
One of the most cited papers: https://starcloudinc.github.io/wp.pdf
Does not contain the word "nuclear". Instead its just breathless gushing about how much more efficient the solar power is.
What is "hostile distillation" please?
I LOVE puppies, but if I had a trillion of them the last thing I'd want is another puppy.
Some people aren't motivated by money, they are motivated by reputation, or pathology.
The things they're trying to accomplish require extreme amounts of capital.
This could really cut either way. Like assume you mean he’s trying to do something good or noble (lmao) but the other obvious way to read this would be that he’s interested in becoming wealthy/powerful enough to bend the will of a nation before him and burn the world for a laugh.
It’s just funny how the markets seem to want to value him as some sort of AI visionary when his companies are not even in the top 5 for AI, despite his endless resources.
The only answer is the dude is a self-service piece of shit. He has no principles and is not trying to accomplish anything other that exploit for the sake of exploitation.
"You know how every once in a while you read one sentence and it snaps your whole perspective into place? I remember reading that book “Going Clear,” about Scientology, and there was one sentence about how if famous people aren’t treated in a certain way, it makes them think they’re not as talented as they wish they were. Like, if I go to a restaurant and I have to wait 20 minutes for a table instead of them just seating me right away, am I not as talented as I thought I was? If someone has a nicer hotel room than me on the press tour, does that mean I’m not as good an actor as I thought I was? I think that’s how a lot of famous people interpret how they’re treated."
I think the same applies to Musk. The money is a proxy for how much everybody thinks he is a special genius. Anything in his life that makes him feel less special requires more validation that he is, and money is the easiest validation he is able to acquire.
Also, dude was raised by terrible rich people and turned out to be...a terrible rich person. Color me shocked!
He won.
Let's move on.
Speaking just for myself, I've lost respect from Elon Musk. I admire Musk's accomplishments, especially Starship and the Falcon rockets. But I don't respect Musk's personal judgement, his moral integrity or his ethics.
He doesn't know me, and he doesn't care about my opinion (or care about ethics for that matter). But there are a lot of people like me who used to respect him and no longer do. He's surrounded himself with fawning sycophants. At some level he's got to know this, and that the people pretending to pay him respect aren't themselves worthy of respect.
Is that winning?
I think you're over-complicating this.
It's literally just Score Points.
That's all he cares about.
D'oh.
Their motivations are often cartoonishly superficial and... well... stupid. Stupid in ways that are baffling to most people (even most other neurodivergent). The kind of stupid that drives somebody to secretly pay pro-gamers to play games for them so they can pretend to be a pro-level gamer, only to then expose their own fraud by playing the game themselves on a live stream, without knowing how to actually play it. And then pretending to have connection issues when people start noticing.
I have no trouble believing Musk has simply internalized the identity of being the world's richest man and now has a pathological need to maintain that status, no matter what
I agree, and most people do too, yet he'll get away with it. We're in the kleptocracy phase of the fall.
So just increasing market cap won’t do it alone.
Even if he merged them, they still have to produce WAY more than they are now.