Is Free Speech a Business Model?
The birth and death of industries, and how to build Goliath.
The End of An Era
After Becoming the richest man in the world and now at the peak of his career, Elon Musk who has been at the forefront of the technology industry his entire career sought to do it again with another company.
From Zip2 to Paypal, Tesla, and SpaceX, he had created billions of dollars in value for investors and his customers in sub-sectors of the tech industry. From Geographic Location Software to Financial Services, Electric Cars, and Re-Usable Rockets he had foreseen and dominated every gold-filled mine he laid his hands on. So when he became a co-founder and part-investor in OpenAI it was clear to the world that another gold-mine had been found by the industry giant. But his next moves were shocking.
A $44B acquisition
He chose to step aside from his relentless pursuit of furthering the human species to purchase a software company previously known as Twitter for an amount far greater than what it was worth. His purchase was motivated by the fact that the country that had made him wealthy was now under attack from supposed First Amendment relativists, denying the right of its citizens to freedom of choice, also because this problem seemed to be affecting his personal and family life which hampered his goal to further humanity as a species and populate the earth.
Since his take-over of the platform, Twitter (now X) has seen a significant increase in customer satisfaction, seeing its numbers in viewers surpass those of other social media networks like Instagram, Facebook, Truth Social, and Threads. Still not shying away from his Artificial Intelligence pursuits, Elon launched xAI to improve the prospects of his platform outpacing other competitors.
As a result, he retained his position in 2023 as the world’s richest man with over $200 Billion to his name. Still, the internet is not without questions as to the leakage in value of his company citing the obvious disparity between the price paid for the platform and its actual value (the gap is quite wide).
This is causing many to ask; “is free speech a business model”?
Laying the foundation
As it is my nature to notice trends, I couldn’t help but notice the cyclical flow of captains of industries at the forefront of the global economy, from the steel industry to the oil industry to the dot-com mania, down to finance and investing and back into technology. Certain individuals find value where others fail to look and work hard enough to create even more value that would benefit not just them, but everyone that is conscientious enough to work in that sector.
Although most people fail to notice it, once an industry has been identified and properly capitalized, the work done in that industry/sector sets up the infrastructure needed to do work in another industry that would further the development of humanity. Like the steel industry led by Andrew Carnegie laid the foundation for the oil industry led by John D Rockefeller, so did the oil industry lay the foundation for the automobile industry led by his majesty, Henry Ford.
I see you’re starting to get the picture. Lovely!
Buy American, I am.
Taking this into account, it should not come as a surprise to the reader when In 2008 Warren Buffet became the richest person in the world, dethroning Bill Gates who had been named the world’s richest man for 13 consecutive years prior according to Forbes Magazine.
Although he held the spot for just one year, with Gates taking over the top spot after they both suffered losses in 2009, Warren Buffet’s influence on the world’s consciousness in the 2010s remained similar to Gates’ in the 2000s until the emergence of Tesla and SpaceX in the 2020s when the real-life Iron man came to the forefront of his industry.
Not to digress any further from America’s darling; Warren Buffet, It is safe to say that the unhealthy excesses from the prosperity created by the internet and dot-com era laid the foundation for Buffet’s investment philosophy to be proven right. A philosophy that he acclaimed years before which involved buying into companies that had what he calls “Moats”; a significant competitive advantage that would keep the competition away for decades. In simpler terms; he prefers to assess the durability of a company’s competitive advantage rather than the company’s effect, on society.
This was and still is, a summary of what his business model(s) entail. But compared to this rather simple business philosophy, free speech (two words) seems rather complex, don’t you think?
Just a Rather Very Intelligent System
Elon’s business philosophy although not expressed in words by the real-life Iron Man, can be observed to involve four things: cost obliteration, value invention, profit acceleration, and one more thing which I am not at liberty to share.
In running his companies, he focuses on building systems that cut down the cost of production to the most insignificant amount, and in doing so, he then invents 10x more valuable products than had existed prior, working from impossible to available for order (zero to one).
In 2003 Musk split his $100m payout from Paypal into two companies; Tesla and SpaceX which he co-founded running them simultaneously through hell and high water as Chief Executive Officer (dubbed Technoking). Since its IPO in 2010, Tesla produced and delivered thousands of cars throughout the next decade and in 2021 reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion, becoming the 6th company in the United States to do so [CNN].
With this in mind, I would like to ask the reader this: if Elon can turn less than half a billion in value into a trillion within 10 years, how much do you think $44 billion invested in X would be worth in another 10 years? I believe the evidence speaks for itself and as time passes, humanity will be grateful for Elon’s great sacrifice in refusing to pursue more wealth with OpenAI, choosing instead to protect humanity’s right to free speech.
Landing the suit.
Since Twitter/X is a media/tech company are we likely to see another tycoon emerge from the media and tech sector?
This is a very interesting question and there are so many others like it but just like you, I do not wish they should be answered in one sitting (even though they can) so I will ask you to join me in another essay, where these questions will be explored in greater detail.
Like many things in life, I can’t promise I have all the answers but the good news is: that’s where you come in.