If I spent 30% of my net worth I could buy a condo in the bay, possibly. Although odds are it would be worth close to that if I needed to sell it.
But many people spend 30% of their net worth trying to start businesses with almost no traction. Musk spent 30% to buy something known internationally.
That sounds like one of the least interesting things I could do with $44bn.
With that sort of money I could fund 1000 Twitter rivals, and after a couple of years combine the successful and interesting ones into a single rival that would actually do something better than Twitter.
You could fund The Manhattan Project ($21Bn).
And the Panama Canal ($13Bn).
And the Concorde project ($2.5Bn).
And the Hoover Dam ($0.8Bn).
And an Eiffel Tower, a Statue of Liberty, and a statue of Christ the Redeemer. ($100s of M)
Buy yourself a B52 Stealth Bomber (~$2Bn).
And a Hindenburg ($100M), and a Titanic ($400M).
And still have a couple of billion left over.
Musk spent 30% of his net worth on it then immediatly burned 90% of the already questionable value it had.
What Musk did was just bad business.
citation needed
[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65084254
[1]: https://twitter.com/ZoeSchiffer/status/1639737042828673024
That doesn’t make it a good idea.
I actually find it perverse.
Further he was misled by someone feeding him incorrect information and promptly apologized for the confusion. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1633253950198624257
Given he continues to talk with the man at times (he replied to one of his tweets the a few days ago) and there's no evidence to support the idea that he did it for monetary reasons, other explanations are much more reasonable. Namely that it was a simple mistake.
I like Musk because he doesn't appear to be a woke tool. Is he a tool of a different kind? Probably. But I don't like woke, so I stick up for the non-woke. Is he perfect? No. None of us are.
1. I care pretty strongly about the truth. When I see people actively spreading incorrect information whether through malice or their own misunderstanding I think it’s important to correct it to prevent the deception of others, especially when it’s happened on such a wide scale. He himself doesn’t seem to understand that it’s important to correct this type of thing early so there’s no other option.
2. I care because a lot of the future depends on the success of Elon’s companies and people use tearing down Elon as an excuse to attack his companies. They’re doing amazing things for the future while being constantly attacked for it.
So it’s a double-whammy of self interest and my own internal mental obsessions.