Buying Twitter made Musk "king of the sandbox," allowing him to promote free speech, but not at the cost of his own ego.
  • Elon Musk purchased shares of Twitter after unsuccessfully petitioning the CEO to remove a Twitter account tracking his private jet.
  • Musk’s personal gripes played a key role in his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
  • Musk banned the account after promising not to, highlighting his prioritization of getting his way over free speech.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/ttBv9

  • BillSchofield@lemmy.worldEnglish
    60·
    9 months ago

    I’m having trouble figuring out the math for this. My assumptions lead me to divide $30b by 8b people, which is about $4/person. I’m not confident that people can eat on $4 for a year.

    What am I getting wrong?

      • CALIGVLA@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        18·
        9 months ago

        They clearly stated

        food and freight to feed every human on Earth for a year

        It’s a shit load of money, but let’s be honest you need way more than that to feed everyone. If Musk decided to donate all of his fortune, then maybe that’d be true.

        • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          Musks fortune was only 340b at its peak, and the moment he tried to access 44b of it for Twitter it collapsed the price.

          Even 340b is still only $41 a year for everyone.

          • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            4·
            9 months ago

            Yea even assuming the 340b a 25 pound bag of rice was about 22 bucks when I googled it and about the same for cheap beans. Maybe between the two a person could survive a long time but it wouldn’t be pleasant. I’m sure if you buy in those bulks you could get it for way cheaper too but still, math doesn’t add up.

            • sundray@lemmus.orgEnglish
              3·
              9 months ago

              Based on the prices I looked up you could feed everyone on Earth 1,800 kcal of potatoes for one day for around 40 billion USD. So… lets do it! Global spud day! Don’t ask me where to get a pot that big for boiling all them taters though.

              • Uriel238 [all pronouns]English
                1·
                9 months ago

                You do make a relavant point. Prices have doubled in the last couple of years and I think the statistic is from the early 2010s.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]English
      2·
      9 months ago

      That the costs scale down the more massive the production. If you’re in the industrialized world, the money you pay for food is almost all profit. Not the cost of agriculture, not the cost of harvesting and packaging, not freight time, maintenance and fuel, not logistics and accounting. Profit.

      Most of our money spent is bribes goes in the pocket of each of the capitalists along the way taking their bit of rent.