That they did, but SpaceX at least achieved some success compared to other commercial space attempts.

I don't think this article is interesting because a flaw was discovered. It was over how stupidly Copilot handled the assignment.

Patents were supposed to allow cheap medicines originally. To protect the original investment that might not have happened otherwise.

Though an LLM might have gotten my closing <quote> tag right.

Just for fun, I asked Gemini and it says:

For him personally, it doesn't have to be profitable. He can spend the company money, lose a lot of it. But then realize all of his other shares. He would come out somewhat ahead even if it puts the company into debt.

A percentage fee to be paid back with the loan if the loan is taken for personal use based on stock valuations. And a relatively low percentage fee because the loan will likely be repaid by another loan and so on.

I think that the gains should just be indexed against inflation. It's not a real gain so it shouldn't be taxed. It's either maintaining value or possibly even losing value if the price increase doesn't match pace with inflation. My home has increased in "value" by 25% since I moved here if I were to sell it. I haven't done anything to it. A dollar is just worth less than when I moved here.

I think he kind of did establish a cult, even if it's informal and unofficial. The members are even posting on this thread in places.

Even just founding a real estate company that only built affordably-sized apartment units would be a good move. For any multibillionaire. But since he likes failing at tech so much, he could found a company to 3D print the buildings and connect them with underground tunnels.

Anything would be more reasonable than flying to Mars and building housing there. It might be decades before we find out this was really the final solution to the homeless problem. Concentration camps in space.

That one time they did put him in charge he tried to rename PayPal to X. Other than that, the only thing he did was get bought out to not hold back a competitor. It gave him a lot of money, though.

It's pretty close to a zero sum game. On one side you have fake valuations that will never match reality, but on the other you have inflation from printing money to somewhat match pace with it. Every action he takes has a balance somewhere else.

I think that a 0.5% total interest (or more) should be applied to any such loan to recoup income taxes that will never be paid. I give a low rate because the loan will likely be paid off with another loan later anyway again and again rather than tangible income.

And in this context, a bad investor for the most part. SpaceX and Tesla are fairly successful where he didn't screw things up but he could accidentally do a lot of good for the world via pathological behavior that actually got results.

"Vote for Pedro" (don't vote for pedro).

You don't actually have to spend the cash. You just threaten to do it. Much easier than trying to have the liquid funds needed to actually spend it. Except that time he accidentally bought Twitter.