And honestly, that's the part that I've enjoyed the most. Musk's faux "Tony Stark" shtick was always PR. But it was widely believed PR, and it gave him an incredibly low cost of capital and oceans of free marketing.

But basically from the moment he tried to buy Twitter, he's been ruining that reputation. It started with the business press, who have more of an incentive to see through the BS, and who quickly pointed out that it was a clown show of a takeover even before the Delaware courts forced him to buy it. That alone put a major dent in Tesla's stock price.

Now everybody has gotten to see how bad he is at running Twitter. Most of us didn't know shit about launching satellites, but a lot more people understood Twitter. By objective measures, things have gone terribly, and there have been waves and waves of stories showing that Musk is not half the genius he was painted as. Which has caused a lot of questions being asked about all of his businesses.

So now we're entering an age of electric cars, with global intent to switch. But Tesla, the nominal leader, has a stock price down 40% from its peak, and with widespread questions about how well it can really do. And part of that is definitely brand damage from Musk; I recently saw a Tesla with a bumper sticker that said, "When we bought it, we didn't know he was an asshole." Surely that has something to do with weakening sales despite previously unheard-of discounts.

Maybe Musk will get it together, and mainly for the sake of others, I hope so. But if I had to bet, it would bet that his launching a bid for Twitter will be seen as a turning point where he began a long slide into irrelevance.

Would Musk really lose $40 billion (or is it $46b), if he dumps Twitter? He could sell it to someone, Microsoft for example, at a loss e.g. $25b or $30b, which covers the loans, and write off the rest.

That said, his historical pattern is not to sell out so quickly, but rather to keep iterating until he and his team get it right.

Yes, pride -> fall, I get it. Although it's the celebration of the fall from the sidelines that I'm questioning. I can feel the spite in your words--towards me, towards Musk, and the "other side", which are a faceless group you call the Volunteer Musk Defense Brigade, of which I'm apparently an unknowing member, I guess because I don't think some technical glitch is that big of a deal. You seem to feel lots of spite for people you've never met. I think there are plenty of tragedies written of people destroyed by their spite--maybe Notes from the Underground qualifies.

And in an irony of ironies, you crawl through my post history and take objection to me expressing my lack of empathy for those that make repeated bad financial decisions, but you're not only defending that very sentiment, but taking it a step further: enjoyment of the suffering. I hope you find peace, brother. I'm going to put my robes back on and get those last few meditation hours in now.