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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35955 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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The problem is that no one has $1bn plus in cash, gold, or liquid assets that can be accessed without distorting the market. It is tied up in stocks, in companies, in financial instruments. Zuck or Elon or Bezos can't just sell all their Meta, Tesla or Amazon shares and access the full value. And by the time their plans became public, their digital wealth would be easily seized. And $1bn probably doesn't get you anywhere near where you need to be.

Now if you took the income and started a cult, that could get you somewhere. Start recruiting young followers, get them moving in the right direction, go to it.

$1 billion is a puny amount of money easily monetized. Musks has sold well more than that amount of stock multiple times this year to prepare to pay for twitter.

I do agree $1 billion is not enough. Musks could easily raise enough to do this though. I just doubt it’s worth it to him to make Haití a country versus go to mars.

How long does Musk have that in folding money vs digital assets easily seized by an unfriendly government? I'd guess never. Musk cannot raise that much money without the cooperation of the global financial/governmental system.

He can’t go to war with the US obviously. But in terms of raising cash for anything not against US geopolitical interests he can raise as much money as he wants.

He could raise $100 billion in 24 hrs even in this market if he had some good idea he could convince people to do.

The problem is that no one has $1bn plus in cash, gold, or liquid assets that can be accessed without distorting the market.

The total market cap of all listed US stocks is in the tens of trillions. Pulling out a billion dollars isn't going to tank the market. Bezos and Musk each sold $10 billion in stock last year.

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