[ExI] disinfecting sunlight

[Adrian Tymes]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 7:45 PM Mike Dougherty via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> I tried Twitter years ago and couldn't understand what felt to me like
> yelling into a hurricane, so still don't understand...
>
> But what if this is just how whales swim in an ocean of money-as-influence?
>
> Posturing a bank account of $45b to drive speculators wild, then fail to
> complete the deal because reasons... make more money on the artificial up
> and the resettle down.
>
> Or is Twitter actually a profitable production with a short-term ROI?
> Where does a $45b valuation come from?
>
> Can someone explain how money even works at this level,  either generally
> or in this specific instance?
>

A thing is worth what people are able and willing to pay for it.  Nothing
more, nothing less.

Profitability and other "it should be worth $X because Y" factors only
matter insofar as they influence what people are able and willing to pay
for it - though, granted, there is usually a loose correlation between a
company's earnings and the total value of its stock.  Some people were no
doubt buying stock just to have a part of such a large enterprise; some
others to try to influence Twitter's sizable global voice.  Most Twitter
investors were probably, as is usually the case, intending to sell it later
on to someone who would buy it at a higher price than they bought it for.

There is no way that either Musk or the Twitter board were not well aware
of the effects their respective public statements would have on investors.
Indeed, it is likely that Twitter's board factored this into planning their
statements.  (Musk may or may not have: it doesn't generally fit his MO,
but then, he has not done acquisitions on this scale often enough to have a
large company acquisition MO.)
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