I think governments use Elon to push boundaries on things normal public corporations cannot push forward on due to typical corporate governance and VC companies would be too small to scale meaningfully. He attracts stupid public capital because of his persona and doesn’t care enough about the rules to adhere to them. And the government gives him a pass because he is working their priorities…
He is CEO and chairman of all (??) of his companies. He does what “he” wants but all of his companies rely heavily on government subsidies for viability across all of them.
Also, in his early days, he tried to get CEO/board influence and he got told to GTFO by PayPal and others’ boards. SPACEx and Tesla was his big break for board influence…because he owned 100% of SpaceX and was the only VC money to bite on Tesla.
I wrote a paper in bschool on him … pretty fascinating doing the diligence on HIM as a person…he is not very likeable nor considerate of others and early on those who had power over him didn’t entrust him with power. Also, he hasn’t been particularly successful in delivering any sort of sustained operational success (again, without insane, continued subsidies from governments).
Hard pass for me … he’s a hype master … very fiat.
cc: @jack
Whether intentional or not, he is forcing ppl to choose. And maybe that’s his roll here.
maybe a dumb question, but choose what? fiat vs btc? n how so?