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Comment by latexr | Hacker News Reader

So Musk amplified an unsubstantiated tweet making accusations of “his main partner in 25 countries”, which not only made him “lose 7 billion dollars” but also “an investment of 22 billion dollars”? And this is the guy people are trying to convince us is some kind of business genius?

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People forget that Elon impulse bought twitter and tried to reverse the deal through the bogus bot angle [1]. The only way in which the acquisition has been a success is as a way to force his political agenda.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-twitter-inc-technology-...

Do people forget that? It was highly publicised and he even admitted he only went through with it because he thought he’d be forced to. The political angle is clearly something he hadn’t realised at the time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43077177

> Do people forget that?

If you mean people on HN, maybe not. If you mean people in general, then a lot of people don't know it at all let alone forgetting it. The vast majority of people do not pay attention to what CEOs do, if they even know who they are. The vast majority of people don't want to be tuned in like that and are using social media to deliberately check out. It's one of the reasons they are so susceptible to the algos

Thank you. I got this Nate Silver article in my inbox on how Musk is some sorta special genius because he was born to wealth and won the PayPal lottery, and thought I was going insane.

https://www.natesilver.net/p/elon-musk-and-spiky-intelligenc...

And factually inaccurate. Musk in no way founded or co-founded PayPal. The trademarks were registered, the MVP was running, when the company building it merged with Musk's failing online banking plan.

He was then made CEO by virtue of being the biggest shareholder. For four months.

Four months later, the Board fired him in his absence on the morning he left for his honeymoon.

How badly do you have to fuck up to not be asked to resign but fired, and fired two days after your wedding, leaving for your honeymoon? Well, Musk tried by insisting the Java app that was up and running was trashcanned and PayPal was rewritten in Classic ASP, because Musk understood that and not Java - that'll do it, apparently.

Musk wasn't even born to wealth...

Perhaps not egregious wealth, but the average person does not have >£320K.

https://www.independent.co.uk/space/elon-musk-made-money-ric...

That's well within something you can earn without being an exec

None of those points are accurate. He is not his main partner in 25 countries. He did not lose 7 billion dollars from anything related to this. That is a completely made up story.

Carlos Slim is literally a bit player authorized reseller. There are no major investments this guy has made in Starlink.

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