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Elon Musk may very well be placing Tesla folks in an actual pickle, and never within the methods you might be pondering. Or perhaps it’s only a not-very-thought-out “yeah, let’s do it!” after some combination of imbibed potions however would by no means truly occur. Both method, since he’s put it on the market and there are probably causes he’d go that route, let’s shortly discover just a few eventualities for Musk and Tesla.
First, what the heck are we speaking about?
A pair of days in the past, Elon Musk posted this:
I’m prepared to serve pic.twitter.com/BJhGbcA2e0
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2024
That was within the midst of many different right-wing posts, together with claiming that Donald Trump didn’t name neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville “very fine people” in 2017 (oy vey) and lamenting that gun emojis look increasingly more like toy weapons slightly than actual weapons.
The purpose of this tweet embedded above seems to be that Elon Musk would fortunately serve as the top of a “Division of Authorities Effectivity” (DOGE). Naturally, that’s a reference to the Dogecoin cryptocurrency Musk overrated for years. So, there’s a query of whether or not that is all a joke, however that appears unlikely since he says “I’m prepared to serve” and has indicated elsewhere that he might work in a Trump administration on this kind of factor.
The primary issues that got here to thoughts for me with this have been:
- Tesla followers and shareholders could also be proud of Musk entering into authorities under the belief that he might affect issues from there to assist Tesla in numerous methods.
- Nevertheless, Musk would want to chop again considerably on his Tesla work if he took that job, and most Tesla followers and shareholders nonetheless see him as important to progress within the firm. (There are various others who’ve come to conclude the other, however the current shareholder vote appears to point these individuals are within the minority.)
Would the identical individuals who could be comfortable about Musk getting that job be comfortable about him stepping again from Tesla (to not point out X, Neuralink, SpaceX, The Boring Firm, and no matter different ventures I’m forgetting now)?
Nevertheless, I wasn’t even pondering deeply sufficient about this. As CNN factors out, “Something’s potential, of course, in a Trump 2.0 White Home. However to tackle any main position in that administration, Musk would have a mountain of conflicts of curiosity to climb.” Ah, yeah, you may’t simply work within the US authorities whereas operating a enterprise — there are conflicts of curiosity with that. (To not say Trump wouldn’t work to dismantle them, however that’s the story right now.)
“By regulation (and by widespread sense), you may’t work on authorities issues that might have an effect on your personal private funds. That’s a giant drawback for somebody like Musk, whose $245 billion fortune is essentially tied up in shares of Tesla, SpaceX and X (previously Twitter), alongside along with his holdings within the fields of biotech, synthetic intelligence, satellite tv for pc communications and highway infrastructure tasks.”
Sure, and, except for Tesla, which is regulated by numerous authorities businesses identical to different automotive firms, SpaceX will get enormous contracts from the US authorities. How would Musk disentangle himself from all of that? By promoting his shares in these firms? Hahaha, that’s not occurring. “A lot would rely on what the job is and the way it pertains to his financial curiosity,” mentioned Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Regulation College. “Is there something that wouldn’t relate to his financial pursuits? I’m unsure what that might be.”
It appears to me that is one other not-very-thought-out concepts from Trump and Musk aimed toward two issues: getting extra consideration and assist for themselves. On the identical time, each are comfortable — if not keen — to interrupt guidelines, even legal guidelines, and spend the implications of that using extra attorneys. So, who is aware of what they might push and check out? Nonetheless, simply as Dogecoin by no means went to the moon like Musk hyped for months and even years, don’t anticipate Musk to enter authorities service.
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