I bailed. The richest person on the planet (at the time), buying up a premier media platform and then actively posting political content like how to vote in an election was the nail in the coffin for me.
I don’t want to support an owner who uses their platform in that way any more than I’d want to watch political opinion shows on TV or subscribe to a political opinion Substack.
If Musk was the richest person on the planet, then FTX actually had billions in assets holding onto their FTT tokens or whatever made up tokens they had. Is a person actually "the richest person in the world" if there's not enough liquidity in the world to realize their holdings? If Musk sells his Tesla / SpaceX shares, can he really do it at CurrentSpotPrice x NumberOfSharesHeOwns?
Sure, but when you call someone "the richest person in the world" this is just what you mean. And you're generally referring to power and influence in the world rather than literally how much physical cash he could come up with in 24 hours. I think the normal way of counting the richest people in the world is pretty reasonable.
Meme stocks are fairly liquid, somewhat by definition of their memetic popularity. Musk was not in a position to liquidate his entire net worth, but nobody with an appreciable net worth is.
I was mainly referring to those FTT tokens, but the problem with a meme stock (or similar) is that those buying and selling it are fickle and it's a bubble, it's a liquidity issue in the future not now. Due to the memetic popularity _today_ you can buy and sell very easily. Whether you can do that tomorrow is a different question. If Musk goes on a selling spree, how long will it take until the bottom is hit?
If someone owned thousands of very rare collectible beanie babies in the late 90s, on paper worth hundreds of millions, do they actually have hundreds of millions of dollars? Sure they could find one buyer, ten buyers, but thousands of buyers? What can such a bubble handle?
People hate Musk, I get it, but the guy is not the wealthiest in the world. He's sitting on a pile of rare collectible beanie babies.
> the guy is not the wealthiest in the world. He's sitting on a pile of rare collectible beanie babies.
Beanie babies are a novelty. Stock in market leading companies is not.
Gates, Bezos, etc. have handed over control of their companies to the extent that yes, they could liquidate without impacting the company’s ability to operate. Musk is not far from that if he chooses. Tesla and SpaceX have mature products that plenty of capable CEOs can manage.
I get what you’re saying that the act of mass selling on the open market decreases your net worth. But stock can be used to purchase companies, secure loans, etc., so it’s still a productive asset without needing to convert it to cash. And, if he chose to sell Tesla or SpaceX the acquiring company almost always pays a premium over the market price. It’s not like he would just dump his shares on the market without a strategy. Just like you wouldn’t list your house until it’s staged properly. But your house is still part of your personal wealth even if you couldn’t sell it for a fair price by midnight tonight.
Plus, it’s nearly impossible to rank wealth on any other metric like cash on hand as that information is not public.
People also always ignore the whole "Controls giant corporations" thing. You have significant leeway to direct companies you control into things you want without falling foul of regulations. Consider Musk bringing in Tesla software developers to Twitter.
Just because that power can't always be converted to cash 100% in a second doesn't mean it doesn't exist
Capitalism is a farce and a complete house of cards. Remember when we realized during the pandemic that the most important people in society were grocery store clerks and gas station attendants? We learned nothing from that. Broken system.
I don’t want to support an owner who uses their platform in that way any more than I’d want to watch political opinion shows on TV or subscribe to a political opinion Substack.