Apr 26, 2022 05:36
Elon Musk has fans, 85 million people who follow him on Twitter, 2 million who bought his cars, and enough who buy stock in his car company to make it "worth" a trillion dollars. I can't stand him, but he has fans. Fans and $268 billion -- the richest person in the world, if you don't count the undisclosed wealth of the OPEC+ dictators.
I saw one of his fans write that "Elon has done more to save the climate than any single person in history" ... um ...
First, we haven't saved the climate, global emissions are getting worse, so nobody gets to take credit for saving the climate yet.
Second, electric cars are not going to save the climate. If you have to buy a new car, and if you're going to drive a lot, then an electric car will create fewer limetime emissions than a gasoline car, but you could also buy a used car and drive fewer miles, or take public transit instead. A world in which each of 8 billion humans drives an electric car is not a Green world -- all that concrete & asphalt we use for roads, parking lots and parking garages creates a lot of greenhouse emissions also. Sigh.
Third, Musk didn't invent the electric car! Electric vehicles have been available for purchase since the 19th Century. And his company sold fewer than 1/4 of the total global volume of electric cars in 2020. There are lots of other electric car manufacturers! T bought a (used) BMW i3, for example, and he's quite happy with it.
Elon Musk is a great showman, he's used his celebrity to create a huge bubble in Tesla stock, which in turn has made him the richest person on the planet, but only because people are willing to pay $200 for $1 of Tesla earnings, whereas they'll only pay $3 for $1 of Ford earnings, or $6 for $1 of GM earnings, or $10 for $1 of Toyota earnings, or $4 for $1 of BMW earnings. Usually car companies aren't valued highly because cars are a hypercompetitive cyclical business that is vulnerable to recessions and higher interest rates, but people have convinced themselves that Tesla is worth 50x what BMW is worth because they love Musk.
The Tesla stock price will fall back to earth someday, every bubble pops eventually. Meanwhile, Musk has a lot of money to play with, and now he's going to play with Twitter, having offered $44 billion to buy Twitter and take it private. The more money you have, the more expensive the toys.
twitter,
and people are stupid,
bubbles,
toy time