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Scott Alexander’s review of a 2015 biography of Elon Musk. Elon Musk, to me, is one of the world’s most confusing people. He’s simultaneously both one of the smartest people in the world, creating billions of dollars of value in companies like Tesla and SpaceX, and one of the dumbest, in burning billions on Twitter. Scott’s review I think is a good explanation of what’s up with Musk.
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Notes -
I don't think Twitter was a mistake. Converting money into influence is very expensive. His timing was awful, and he probably could have gotten a better deal if he'd waited a few months, but I expect (at least when you consider the influence gained) that that purchase will turn out profitable in the end.
I’m skeptical of how useful the influence will actually be to him. If he was the Chinese government, Twitter servers would be worth their weight in gold. But I don’t see how he’d actually turn that influence into utility for himself, at least not given the way he’s currently running twitter
He's currently facing politically motivated prosecution and persecution from the Biden government and has every reason to expect more of this treatment in the future. Twitter was one of the most effective tools for getting Trump elected previously, and the previous owners/administrators of twitter wanted to make sure this didn't happen again (like they did in 2020 with the laptop suppression). Given his extreme wealth, spending the amount he did on twitter and acquiring both cultural influence as well as the ability to influence the upcoming election gives a far greater return in actual utility than any sort of financial investment he could make (after your first 240 billion, how much utility do you get out of the next five?). While Trump doesn't particularly like Musk (and wrote a hilarious takedown of him) there's a world of difference between a mean tweet and prosecuting someone for not hiring enough illegal immigrants in a workplace where illegal immigrants are forbidden from working by law.
Of course he also claims to actually enjoy using twitter and posting in ways that the current censors/moral busybodies don't like (this seems true given his posting/liking history), and he could very plausibly have gotten a return on his investment in terms of enjoyment and fun that similarly blows any financial considerations out of the water.
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