Voters Set $400M of Elon Musk's Money on Fire | Hacker News Reader

Voters Set $400M of Elon Musk's Money on Fire

wired.com

Isn't it the equivalent of someone with a $1m networth spending $400? I think the value he got from his spend working out two years ago, makes it a calculated gamble that he won't lose sleep over. People keep bringing this up as a talking point a lot today and it probably doesn't matter.

If he actually had $1 trillion in cash, maybe. But he doesn't, the vast majority of his wealth is paper wealth. To spend that money he has to borrow, sell assets, or tap into whatever his cash reserve is.

It's not equivalent because $400M is an insane amount of disproportionate power and influence. In this specific instance it broke down likely due to the cultural zeitgeist and general dissatisfaction with costs and Trump but in a less tumultuous political environment, that amount of spending should always be corralled and limited.

> power and influence.

What influence did it have?

But the only thing novel about it in this case is it was blasted all over the media. The rich have been influencing politics like this for decades, at least as long as since Citizens United.

Acting like this is new or specific to Elon is either misleading or naive.

No but it gets people thinking about how much money the rich has on influencing politics. I don't think taking Citizen's United as the status quo for how we should run society is ever a good thing and persistent reminders that just because it has been this way it doesn't need to remain this way is always a social good.

I agree that it's best that as many people as possible understand what's going on and think critically about it.

> taking Citizen's United as the status quo for how we should run society

I hope you're not implying that's what I meant.

I didn''t know if that's what you meant (though now I know it wasn't) but I think one possible and likely popular takeaway of a comment being dismissive of this article is that this is actually an okay thing. A more ideologically pro-capitalist reader might have that takeaway and there's certainly a lot of those here on HN.

I'm not sure how one can converse curiously when they presume so much about another person's belief system from such a short comment.

Judgement blocks curiosity.

Also pro or anti capitalism has nothing to do with what is going on in America. I know a lot of people like to think it does, but the reason all the wealth is transferring from laborers to asset holders is due to the specific implementation of the US economic system that has existed mostly since coming off the gold standard. It's not capitalism, it's the petrodollar and US banking system. Lots of other countries harness capitalism in other ways and don't have the problems the US has. The US government is subservient to the financial industry...

That's the thing, is these issues are really complex, and you have an opportunity on a site like this to be curious and inch closer to the truth but that won't happen if you sit in judgement, because judgement blocks curiosity.

No. The rich haven't been influencing politics like this for decades. George Soros has been the boogeyman for conservatives for decades for his money in politics. Elon spent more in one year on midterms than Soros in his lifetime. AIPAC has been dropping tens of millions of dollars on candidates in the middle of nowhere. In a midterm. This is not normal. At the very least it's an extreme increase in money in politics.

I agree with this...

> it's an extreme increase in money

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/m2sl

I would agree that we should draw attention to the fact that this kind of money in politics is likely not a good thing, but my feeling is that making the discourse about "haha musk lost money" distracts from that.

Worth pointing out that he has also lost net worth as a result of the midterm loss. By about $25 billion.

As others point out he doesn't have cash to hand like this, that's not how net worth works. It's also a pyramid of smaller investments from other people in effect. And investors watching a guy sink almost $400 million into something and failing to get the result they want, and making a 60x loss on it, will reduce their faith in that person to make money on their behalf.

Now, Musk's companies fluctuate near to this scale daily, at this value there's no way they don't. But, this will make it more likely that those companies make a similar loss on day's when Musk is shown to be behind a big decision - if investors do see this as black mark on his decision-making.

So, it's pretty huge deal that really does matter.

Both companies have bubble valuations. They trade on vibes. It is impossible to deny that Elon has levitated these valuations successfully across transitions that would've humbled other overvalued companies. But now the hi wire act has no net.

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