Elon Musk said he was joking about the nickname technoking, but he got serious when he decided to buy Twitter for $44 billion. Such Musk is making a lot of people worry. It is because he, who is only an individual, acts as if he is a government. This is the first part of the column published by the Washington Post (WP) on the 26th (local time). As such, many US media outlets are critical of Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Here is the WP summary.
Many of the stories surrounding Musk’s and the people around him’s wealth are ranked in a way. In the case of Twitter, however, the story is quite different.
The $44 billion acquisition of Twitter is 55 times the amount the U.S. government has provided to the Ukrainian government. That’s 22 times the cost of the coronavirus test strips the U.S. federal government gave U.S. homes for free at the beginning of the year.
Of course, most of Musk’s fortune is stocks, not cash. However, his fortune of $240 billion (about 303 trillion won) is equivalent to the 13th largest sovereign wealth fund in the world after Dubai Investment Company and Singapore Temasek.
Musk can be viewed as a super-rich with a variety of hobbies. Super-riches dig T. rex dinosaur fossils, play tennis, build multi-billion dollar mansions, and even build superyachts the size of a village.
Such actions can be viewed as vulgar and ruthless compared to buying up social media. Social media is a business that generates revenue. But none of that is cheap jewelry compared to the $44 billion Musk pays. With this money, you can buy 2,327 Bugatti La Voiture Noir Coupes and 335,621 Tesla Model S Plaid cars. That’s 88 times the amount a Norwegian billionaire would spend to build the REV Ocean, a giant yacht-shaped research vessel for undersea exploration.
But Twitter is very different from these things. There’s a reason Musk spends a lot of money.
When Musk announced his acquisition of Twitter, he described it as “a digital plaza where issues important to the future of humanity are discussed.” It sounds like you’re investing for public purposes and not as private assets. This is where Musk is concerned. An individual has more resources and more power than the state.
Given Musk’s online addiction, it’s natural to worry about how he will rule his new estate. Advising your wife to try drugs with the podcast Joe Logan is historically meaningless compared to the eccentricity of a powerful man. Musk, a geek with a lot of mistakes, deserves to feel dangerous about having power. Although there are limits to his taking over Twitter by taking on debt. Or, another country could control the operation of Twitter by law.
Musk has been seen as a public function outside of the Twitter acquisition. When the U.S. abandoned manned space exploration, Musk’s privately held company SpaceX filled the gap.
Musk’s ambition to colonize Mars will not come true while he is alive. But his vision made it possible to see that private companies, not states, could create states on Mars. It’s like the Spanish conquistadors carried out their conquests without the help of the Spanish Empire.
Future novelist Kim Stanley Robinson uses the concept of “meta-states” frequently. It refers to a large corporation that has its own overseas or offshore business with the country as its customer. But Robinson’s dream of installing a private space elevator and sending an ambassador to Mars doesn’t include an individual with as much money and power as Musk.
One thing to remember is this. Even the king of technology will face the basic reality of dealing with bureaucrats and solving the problems they demand.
Musk’s ability and excessive pride alone cannot magically satisfy the needs of countless Twitter users. You can tweet to increase Tesla’s market value, but you can’t tweet about going to Mars. Musk’s “town square” may be a reference to a nice discussion forum, but in the real world, Twitter can be a place where people kill people at the end of an argument.
If you wear a crown, your head is heavy. Musk, who buys Twitter, seeks happiness, but carries another burden.
[서울=뉴시스]
