Economics: I confess that the model of Elon Musk by which he chooses to do the thing that is simultaneously the funniest and the stupidest thing is looking better and better. Donald Trump has placed Musk squarely in his crosshairs: nearly every Trump speech these days has “electric cars are really stupid, and we should get rid of them” as one of its major applause lines. And Musk has responded by placing himself in the crosshairs of the left by having Twitter play lots of footsie with real fascists. And now he is both going to (a) show everyone who works for him that if he gets pissed enough he will pour out money like water to try to break his contract with you, while (b) pouring out money like water defending a federal-court suit that he is almost surely going to lose plus having to pay costs. Elon Musk seems to me to be a man who needs friends to help him figure out what he wants to do with his life, and yet does not have any:

Matt Levine: Twitter’s Executives Want Their Money: ‘Few CEOs have ever deserved their severance package more than Parag Agrawal. This is not a commentary on his performance running Twitter: That performance was, you know, bad enough that Elon Musk bought the company. But a severance package is not a reward for good performance as CEO! A severance package is a reward for getting out of the way and letting someone else take over. And few CEOs have worked harder, or had a more unpleasant time, getting out of the way. He earned his millions. But then Musk didn’t pay him, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-04/……. Musk fired them immediately after the takeover… and claimed it was for “cause.” The supposed “cause” was things like the executives paying lawyers to sue Musk to make him close the deal, which Musk argued was a waste of corporate resources…. Twitter’s old executives were working on behalf of its old public shareholders, and they got a good deal for those shareholders. But to do that, they had to work against its new owner, Musk, so they got him a bad deal. And the public shareholders agreed to the severance package, but Musk has to pay it. Of course he doesn’t want to!… <bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-…>