Unfortunately, that's all you need to become a billionaire in this country (besides a massive inheritance).
Every subsidy and tax credit Tesla ever got was earned through fraud and deception.
When Teslas crash on self-driving mode, they turn off self-driving mode nanoseconds before the crash so the driver can be blamed.
Elon literally purchased the title of "Founder" from the actual founder of Tesla.
He got sued into buying Twitter after trying to back out, and now acts like it was always his master plan.
Emerald mines? What emerald mines.
Rocket explosion? It was supposed to do that, look at all my engineers clapping and cheering knowing they'll be fired if they don't.
Nobody wants to pay for a checkmark? Of course they do, look at all the check marks he's buying for them.
This man's entire career has been him screaming "I'm not owned, I'm not owned, you're owned." And it works. Because capitalism is the exact opposite of a meritocracy.
You could write Elon in a dystopian cyberpunk novel and critics would be like "nah, not believable too laughably evil".
"There's no way the government would trust this guy with the entire space program, ridiculous."
:my-hero: is the ultimate failson, failing upward ever onward. Look at how many management failures he's had recently yet valuation of his bazinga bullshit continues to soar.
If I went back in time to the early 90s and told younger me that Damien Knight had nothing on 2020s real life versions, younger me wouldn't believe it.
For real, a lot of evil secret plots in Shadowrun are just day to day business for contemporary billionaire vampires and even when their secret evil shit is exposed :epstein: ... nothing happens to any of them and they keep on keeping on.
Just imagine how bleak a Shadowrun campaign with a 2020s understanding of corporate hegemony would be, @LGOrcStreetSamurai : "We got the paydata, chummers! Now we can show the press what Fuchi is up to..."
"Oh drek, Fuchi's most popular sponsored influencers are doing reaction takes to the paydata. They're saying Fuchi's medical experiments on d-word children are based, actually." :heated-gamer-moment:
It it weren't so upsetting that'd be rad as hell plot twist. Great narrative hook tbh.
Usually one of them is picked to be the fall guy, ala Bernie Madoff I like to think that Epstein was the Madoff of the elite billionaire pedophile world.
I agree with you. It's what we don't know about for sure that is almost certainly worse and even more widespread. :doomer:
And when the fall guy goes down the stupid public is like "oh okay, problem solved!" and the show goes on behind the scenes.
They're so smug and arrogant that they can be outright sloppy and do sloppy shit like the "suicide" shenanigans with :epstein: too.
It's not enough to have a fall guy. Need to have a bumblefucking where all the actual surveillance data is mysteriously lost, both in the prison cell and on the island. :sus:
I would bet good money that he's having the corporation pay for those as advertising for a tax write off
Emerald mines? What emerald mines.
This, but unironically. His dad was selling paper promises.
Rocket explosion? It was supposed to do that, look at all my engineers clapping and cheering knowing they’ll be fired if they don’t.
Insane how quickly the :reddit-logo: crowd has just decided exploding rockets are good, Aktuly.
If Musk had tried even one of these things in China he'd have been arrested and given lethal injection by now
I took some coding classes when I was in college and I was pretty mediocre. I still take some confidence in the idea that there is a good chance I am probably a better engineer than Elon Musk.
At least the Steven King one was just a fuck you. King had been vocal about how he was never ever going to pay for Twitter and I am willing to bet money that Musk actually insisted on paying for it. He could of course just give out a free account without any money changing hands, since he owns Twitter, but I am certain that he is actually paying himself $8/month in the name of King's Twitter account just to spite him. Since King is also rich and clearly doesn't want this there are going to be lawyers and bankers involved and the total cost that Musk is paying for this little stunt is probably not really $8/month, but rather enough money to completely support an entire family for like a century.
Even better: He could get sued for this for implied endorsement.
:inshallah:
So basically it's back to square one, when public figures and celebrities had verified account but now it's more convoluted, incoherent and stupid. Wow Elon is true innovator.
