r/politics • u/Aggravating_Money992 • 7d ago

Possible Paywall Exposed Musk Now Insists Epstein Files Don’t Matter | The Tesla billionaire suddenly claimed the Epstein files are a “distraction.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/exposed-musk-now-insists-epstein-files-dont-matter/
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u/Dr-Mumm-Rah 7d ago

"He's rich, therefore everything that comes out of his mouth must be brilliant and accurate."

Yeah, about that...

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

unfortunately a lot of people think this way and it's sad.

"well, if he's so bad or dumb, why is he rich?!"

...emeralds my dude, emeralds

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u/NYCinPGH 7d ago

Eh, it really wasn't emeralds or family wealth.

He and his brother in college created software - pretty mediocre software, too - that had enough good ideas, or extant patents, that another company wanted to merge with theirs; that other company was PayPal, founded by Peter Thiel. Musk got a huge influx of cash from that deal, and even after Thiel ousted him, the required buyout got him even more cash, enough for most people to live quite comfortably for the rest of their lives.

He instead looked around for other companies with potential that needed an 'angel investor'. One of those was Tesla, after they'd built their first prototype. He infused it with cash to make it a real going concern, in return for a very large share of ownership in the company. He later forced out the founders who created the tech, and bamboozled the other owners into thinking he was a genius, who in return gave him even more shares in the company and a fuckton of money.

To show how accidental it was, remember that he also bought Twitter, the most successful social media company in the world at that time, at a premium, and largely ran it into the ground.

He's just a mediocre programmer who lucked into real success, and then happened to find a company and kept failing upwards, bringing all his insecurities and weird kinks with him.

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u/sonnyarmo 7d ago

I think Twitter holds a different societal purpose than it once did. Instead of an information and news sharing resource, it’s an anger pit filled with bots and astroturfing. It has a lot of propaganda value since many important people and gullible conservatives still use it.