Oh, hi. The summer Shakespeare program that my family runs ended yesterday, and I am fucking beat. Things were a mess this year from a tech standpoint, but the students were great. I recorded one song with a student, which I should be done mixing soon. Sad to be back in a quiet house again, but I am not missing the dirty dishes on every available surface. I'm moving, again. This time to Brattleboro VT, only about two hours away from my family, into a three-bedroom apartment that costs less than $1000 a month. Teaching preschool, making music, same old same old. Great little art scene that I'm looking forward to becoming a part of. I'm sort of running on empty these days. This summer took a lot out of me, and sadly I don't have time to rest before moving. Still, found the time to make a banjo-ukulele. Tamborine, scrap wood, recycled plastic hit with a heat gun to shrink it. Expect to see a bit more of me after the move. [PS: kleinbl00, anyone else with an opinion: I have been sitting on a bit of Tesla stock since 2015, and have been dying to get rid of it for almost as long because Elon Musk is a terrifying crazy person. What do you think are the odds of him actually sticking to all this going private talk?]
Musk isn't crazy, but he certainly isn't a stickler for rules, either. In my opinion, stock markets are one of the worst innovations in the history of economics because they pervert your core business from "making money" to "making people think you're making money." Things may have been different before Welch and "shareholder value" but that predates my investment experience by decades. Either way, the logic of taking things private makes perfect sense to me - tire-kickers don't get to tell you what to do, assholes like Carl Icahn can't swoop in and upend your business model because they have sand in their vagina, and you don't have to report shit to no one. Considering SpaceX isn't modeled after Boeing or ULA but after the Korolev Design Bureau I certainly see where he's coming from on the whole "gone-private" thing. Is he serious? Damn skippy. Will he get away with it? Less certain. I've been hanging onto a few shares since...err... March? Which means I think I'm in at about the same strike as you are. I'ma ride it out 'cuz the crazy fucker is approaching profitability for the first time and having worked for public vs. private corporations the private ones are hella more efficient. Maybe the asshole will even hire a designer. I mean, it breaks my heart that he bought a fuckin' McLaren Mk I but his cars look like the default avatar from a generic Korean sedan appreciation forum. Anyway. According to the WSJ the SEC is now sniffing around his anus about those tweets but I really doubt Elon Musk gives a fuck what the SEC sniffs. If he can get away with it he will. And in order to get away with it he need only prove he had an investor at the time of the tweet who told him they'd finance the thing at $420 a share. He doesn't need to prove they weren't lying, he doesn't need to prove they didn't do it so they could scoop up a bunch of shares prior to the announcement and then dump them immediately after. I'll bet he does it. PS. Thy banjo? 'tis dope.
You've said it better than I ever could have. Musk is trying to demonstrate that the entire valuation system for companies is broken. WalMart is successful because they pay people less than a living wage, and the government picks up the slack. The entire assets and future of Tesla is not now, and never will be, worth $420 a share. But the idea of Tesla? The goals of Tesla/Musk? I'll buy that shit at $1000 and be pleased as fucking punch to have a tiny a part in it. I think Musk's whole idea is to destroy Wall Street and the rapacious culture of "profits over people", and force people to weigh the entire benefit/impact of a company and their products and culture, rather than solely basing value on quarterly earnings.
I know this is just an off-hand comment, but it's not right. There are a gajillion ways he could make money, and by no measure is any of his businesses profitable right now. So they are not Making Money... they may, at some point in the future, and that is the intent. But they aren't. Anyone can make money. I think Musk is trying to make a Difference.