Elon Musk - the world's "greatest" spiv?

nw1 · 15 Jan 2026

Giugiaro said:
As a designer, I do way more tasks now than a team of designers, technicians and engineers did in the 80s, while not being an expert on none of those fields.

The tools of the trade have also changed. I can't draw as well as the old school designers, but I 3D model and work on virtual environments in a way the older designers couldn't imagine being able to do back in the day.

Also, it does happen that companies and societies demand increasingly more out of our professionals. An old school mechanical engineer couldn't bring themselves to accept the amount of tasks a modern mechanical engineer is expected to know and do, including skills and knowledge that would've been offloaded to other professions back in the day.

And yes. It does feel ridiculous a lot of times. But if an engineer refuses to do accounting after hours because the company refuses to hire an accountant, then they'll fire or dismiss that engineer and find a younger engineer that accepts to do that job for less pay.

Is it good though? It all sounds deeply troubling to me. And what about labour laws? Is what you describe in the highlighted paragraph even legal in the EU (looking at your home location)?

It just highlights one of many reasons why I dislike the political Right with a passion. If they're not going on about the populist nonsense that Musk appears to be into, they're forcing people to work more hours for less pay, or supporting actions which will increase company profits but also increase the number of unemployed. It's sad that too many people just seem to blindly accept it, and not vote in a more employee-rights-inclined way in elections.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 15 Jan 2026 ==

styles said:
As an employee, probably not.

As a consumer, probably yes.

This argument plays out in the public space all the time. The most relevant example for this forum is driverless trains. Employees and their unions will fight hard against driverless trains or driver only operation; but the wider public wants more automation and cheaper services (yes I'm aware there's disagreement here about whether DOO/autonomous trains would reduce fares but I'm not advocating either side).

Is this the case? Bear in mind "consumers" and the "wider public" are mostly employees themselves, and might fear for their own jobs if automation becomes too much the norm. I'm really surprised that more people don't see job security and employee rights as king - because at the end of the day, having a secure, not-excessively-stressful, and well-paid job is the best way to avoid problems in life.

I'd usually support actions which retain jobs, and on the railway that would include retaining guards. No good services being cheaper if more of us are unemployed, and more of us are unable to use them...

styles said:
Consumers do however want good quality AI, not crappy chatbots which fail to answer a question properly.

Or, customers want real people to talk to.

RailUK Forums

Egg Centric · 15 Jan 2026

nw1 said:
Is it good though? It all sounds deeply troubling to me. And what about labour laws? Is what you describe in the highlighted paragraph even legal in the EU (looking at your home location)?

It just highlights one of many reasons why I dislike the political Right with a passion. If they're not going on about the populist nonsense that Musk appears to be into, they're forcing people to work more hours for less pay, or supporting actions which will increase company profits but also increase the number of unemployed. It's sad that too many people just seem to blindly accept it, and not vote in a more employee-rights-inclined way in elections.

Many from the political right of course dislike the left's policies for the opposite reason - they recognise that low wages/poor working conditions are a signal from the market that someone's job is adding limited value to society; and that fighting for the employment rights of blacksmiths and chimney sweeps, while perhaps better for them in the short term just makes everyone worse off in the end.

(And then you have wooly vauge centrists like me who can see merits and flaws in both arguments)

brad465 · 20 Jan 2026

Musk is now trying to get revenge on Michael O'Leary buy floating the idea of buying Ryanair now:

Elon Musk floats idea of buying Ryanair after calling CEO ‘an idiot’

Tesla boss clashed with Michael O’Leary when airline boss rejected installing Starlink technology on aircraft

www.theguardian.com

Elon Musk has floated the idea of buying the budget airline Ryanair, escalating his public spat with the Irish carrier’s boss, Michael O’Leary.

The two outspoken businessmen have locked horns since last week, when O’Leary was asked whether he would follow Lufthansa and British Airways in installing Musk’s Starlink satellite internet technology on his fleet of 650 aircraft.

The Ryanair chief executive rejected the idea, saying that adding antennas to the jets would result in “2% fuel drag”, adding an extra $200m-$250m to its $5bn (£3.71bn) annual kerosene bill.

Musk said that interpretation was “misinformed” in a post on his X platform, prompting a tit-for-tat exchange of insults, with each calling the other an “idiot” and then the Tesla and SpaceX CEO saying O’Leary should be fired.

On Friday, the world’s richest person asked his followers on X whether he should buy Europe’s biggest airline, which is valued at €30bn (£26bn), posting: “Should I buy Ryan Air and put someone whose actual name is Ryan in charge?”

He followed it up with a poll asking whether he should “Buy Ryan Air and restore Ryan as their rightful ruler”. More than three-quarters of the nearly 900,000 respondents said yes, three hours before the poll closed. Tony Ryan, the Irish billionaire businessman who co-founded the budget airline in 1984, died in 2007.

Ryanair’s X account also mocked Musk, posting in response to an X outage across the US last week: “Perhaps you need Wi-Fi @elonmusk?”

Musk wrote in a reply to a post from the airline teasing him: “How much would it cost to buy you?”

All this may look like idle talk, but the billionaire has followed through on such threats before. In a social media exchange in 2017 he tweeted that he loved Twitter and when a journalist suggested he should buy it, Musk replied: “How much is it?” He bought the platform almost five years later in a $44bn deal, later renaming it X.

However, movements in the airline’s share price on Tuesday suggested investors were not taking the idea of a takeover seriously, with Ryanair shares closing nearly 1% down.

Musk was born in South Africa and, after a stint in Canada, now lives in the US. Airlines based in the EU must be majority-owned by EU nationals or citizens of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein under the bloc’s rules.

The row began when O’Leary spoke on Irish radio on Friday, telling an interviewer that he would take no notice of what the Tesla CEO had to say about installing wifi on Ryanair planes.

There was a brilliant comment on the FT suggesting he should add an "A" to the start of the name.

m0ffy · 20 Jan 2026

I never thought I’d see myself siding with O’Leary, but here we go.

Egg Centric · 20 Jan 2026

m0ffy said:
I never thought I’d see myself siding with O’Leary, but here we go.

They're both right about each other, it's hilarious. I love a good pig mud wrestling match.

brad465 · 21 Mar 2026

A court has found against Musk in misleading Twitter investors when he bought it:

Elon Musk misled Twitter investors, jury finds

A San Francisco jury concludes Musk’s claims in 2022 were damaging to a group of Twitter investors.

www.bbc.co.uk

Elon Musk was misleading in his public statements during a crucial period of his 2022 Twitter takeover, a jury has found.
After two days of deliberations, a jury in San Francisco federal court decided in a unanimous verdict against the tech titan, who was sued by a group of Twitter investors arguing they had relied on his statements.
While testifying in court earlier this month, Musk argued that he did not mislead investors and that people simply read too much into his public comments and tweets.
The jury instead found that certain of his public claims of problems in Twitter's user metrics, and that he was possibly backing out of the $44bn acquisition deal, were intentionally misleading.
Lawyers for Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did lawyers for the investors, led by Brian Belgrave, a small-business owner from Oregon.
This is not the first time Musk has found himself in legal trouble for his tweets. But he was able to beat a 2023 lawsuit brought by Tesla shareholders claiming the CEO had misled them with posts about the car company.
In Friday's verdict, the San Francisco jury found that Musk had artificially lowered the price of Twitter's stock by a range of roughly $8 per share to $3 per share between May and October 2022 because of his public statements.
That could mean each investor in the class is poised to receive thousands of dollars in damages for their losses.
Monte Mann, a trial attorney focused on business litigation at Armstrong Teasdale, said the verdict against Musk "sends a clear message".
"If you move the market with your words, you own the consequences."
Musk began around May 2022 to tweet about Twitter's purported issues with fake accounts, or "bots," and said the deal was "on hold" before announcing he wanted out of the deal entirely.
Twitter took Musk to court in order to force the multi-billionaire to abide by the deal, and in early October Musk did so, taking over Twitter at the originally agreed upon price. The following year he renamed the social media platform X.
Those months proved to be financially damaging for Twitter investors like Belgrave, who bought and sold shares of the company during that time.
Belgrave told the jury earlier this month that he sold thousands of Twitter shares in July 2022, believing that Musk was no longer going to buy the platform because of his public posts and comments.
Belgrave's sale price was less than what he'd purchased the shares for a few months earlier, and significantly less than the $54.20 per share Musk eventually paid.
"I got screwed," Belgrave said. "I got cheated."
During Musk's testimony before the jury, he was more combative with lawyers representing the class of investors.
He eventually refused to answer questions with a simple "yes" or "no", arguing multiple times that the lawyers were trying to mislead the jury.
"If this was a trial on whether I've made stupid tweets, I'd say I'm guilty," Musk conceded at one point.

Kite159 · 24 Mar 2026

I see Musk seems to have increased the number of adverts on twitter lately, adverts which still pop up even if you block or mute the account in question.

As some of the adverts are rubbish.

styles · 25 Mar 2026

I made a load of cash on TSLA, but I won't be investing again.

Peter Mugridge · 29 May 2026

Musk's Starlink is under heavy fire now... link and partial quotes below:

New Campaign Group Accuses Starlink of "Predatory Broadband Bait-and-Switch"

A new legal action portal called Starlink Sucks has been launched by Nik Fox, a UK broadcast technology expert, which accuses the popular satellite broadband pr

www.ispreview.co.uk

A new legal action portal called Starlink Sucks has been launched by Nik Fox, a UK broadcast technology expert, which accuses the popular satellite broadband provider of hitting consumers with a “predatory … hardware trap” — an allegedly “calculated corporate strategy” where subscribers are said to have been locked into “expensive, non-transferable physical equipment” before their service plans are stripped away.

“Recently, Starlink has begun unilaterally downgrading users to severely capped alternative options like the “Standby” plan without consent—only to issue automated notices weeks later inflating the price of those unwanted plans while setting their incoming support emails to bounce,” states the website. Indeed, Standby Mode did suddenly double in price from £4.50 per month to £9.

The Standby Mode feature allows customers to remain connected to the service – even if they aren’t currently planning to use it for anything heavy, at a significantly reduced speed (0.5Mbps) for unlimited data (handy as a quick backup mode). But in fairness, aggrieved customers can still cancel and then restart the service at a later date, but that process is a bit more laborious and some people do want Standby Mode to be active.

Nik Fox, a UK broadcast technology expert and founder of the portal, told ISPreview:
“Starlink is acting as if its internal corporate terms of service override national statutory laws. They trap you into a high-cost hardware investment, wait until the standard return window closes, and then rewrite the contract to your severe financial detriment. When you try to reject it, you are locked inside a broken, automated AI app loop that deliberately stonewalls human escalation. It is wholly predatory behaviour.”

Click to expand...

Nik, who is a Principal Consultant Engineer at Cotswold Group (Cotswold Comms), believes that Elon Musk’s Starlink service may be at risk of having breached the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (Section 50 and Part 2) and potentially other notable rules.

Click to expand...

Alleged Breaches of UK Consumer Law

➤ Consumer Rights Act 2015 (Section 50): Core pre-contractual plan details form a binding term of the contract. They cannot degrade the service description without breaking the contract.

➤ Unfair Contract Terms: Any term allowing a trader to significantly change a contract while a consumer is trapped using locked, proprietary hardware is legally deemed an “unfair term” and cannot be enforced.

➤ Fitness for Purpose: Because Starlink dishes cannot be transferred to alternative service providers, modifying the contract renders your expensive physical dish completely unfit for purpose, creating grounds for a full equipment refund.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

JKF · 29 May 2026

I suspect that sort of thing will affect caravaners/boaters who might want to use it seasonally then mothball for winter months without the hassle of restarting a contract.

jon0844 · 29 May 2026

Thunderf00t did a video explaining the costs of Starlink some time ago, explaining the huge cost of launching the satellites, and the need to replace them over time.

The more subscribers the worse the service per user, so you need to invest more to maintain a good level of service and that then means you need to charge more. A bit like railways having to spend a fortune to cope in the peaks.

Like much of what Elon does, the company likely isn't making a profit but has a market value that's even more atmospheric than the satellites.

Don't get me wrong, I know people using the service who like it, and phone networks are now using Starlink to provide coverage where they otherwise couldn't, but it has limitations and seems to keep getting more expensive.

Tesla has also bumped up EV charging prices for non Tesla owners in the last week or two. Perhaps a plan ahead of launching its own energy provider service, whereby customers will get the lower prices.

Crithylum · 29 May 2026

jon0844 said:
Like much of what Elon does, the company likely isn't making a profit but has a market value that's even more atmospheric than the satellites.

Starlink is the only profitable division of Space X AI. Although they aren’t including depreciation in their expenses. However, their margins are quite high so it may be profitable (just a lot less) once factoring this in.

Peter Mugridge · 29 May 2026

Crithylum said:
Although they aren’t including depreciation in their expenses.

Is that legal?! I thought depreciation was a key part of honest and good accountancy...

JamesT · 29 May 2026

Peter Mugridge said:
Is that legal?! I thought depreciation was a key part of honest and good accountancy...

They are including it. Looking at their prospectus for the IPO - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026036936/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm

Connectivity segment’s cost of revenue includes depreciation (inclusive of launch, satellite, and ground infrastructure costs), Starlink Kit costs, shipping and handling costs, ground operating expenses, employee compensation costs (including salaries, benefits, and share-based compensation) for our engineering and operations teams, payment processor fees, warranty expense, inventory excess and obsolescence, and customs and duties. We expect Connectivity cost of revenue to increase in absolute dollars as we grow our revenue, and to decrease as a percentage of revenue as we continue to drive efficiencies in our next-generation satellites, Starlink Kits, and ground infrastructure.

They made $4.42bn profit on revenue of $11.39bn for Starlink last year.

Egg Centric · 30 May 2026

jon0844 said:
The more subscribers the worse the service per user, so you need to invest more to maintain a good level of service and that then means you need to charge more.

I don't understand this unless the costs scale according to some power law or something?

DoubleLemon · 1 Jun 2026

there can't be a massive market for satellite broadband in the UK particularly as Openreach roll out of fiber to the premises is moving along pretty decently, and turning up in more rural areas.
I pay £33 for 900Mbps down and about 200Mbps up. I live in a large ish village.

JamesT · 1 Jun 2026

DoubleLemon said:
there can't be a massive market for satellite broadband in the UK particularly as Openreach roll out of fiber to the premises is moving along pretty decently, and turning up in more rural areas.
I pay £33 for 900Mbps down and about 200Mbps up. I live in a large ish village.

It's fairly variable. I live on the outskirts of a city and there's no fibre to the premises here yet. Even if the government achieve the 99% target for gigabit class broadband, that's still a reasonable number of properties without. Then you add mobile applications where someone wants good internet in the middle of a field, or those who want a backup to their broadband.

bavvo · 2 Jun 2026

Egg Centric said:
I don't understand this unless the costs scale according to some power law or something?

Each satellite has a fixed amount of bandwidth, so if more users are connected simultaneously, then there is less bandwidth per user. To resolve this they would need to add extra capacity, which means another launch.

JamesT · 2 Jun 2026

bavvo said:
Each satellite has a fixed amount of bandwidth, so if more users are connected simultaneously, then there is less bandwidth per user. To resolve this they would need to add extra capacity, which means another launch.

Starlink have been improving the capacity of their satellites with each generation. As their orbit means they only last around 5 years, they'll put up a bigger one when it needs replacement.

Egg Centric · 2 Jun 2026

bavvo said:
Each satellite has a fixed amount of bandwidth, so if more users are connected simultaneously, then there is less bandwidth per user. To resolve this they would need to add extra capacity, which means another launch.

Right but that doesn't mean you need to "charge more" as presumably you're amortising fixed costs across more satellites while marginal costs remain the same or (in this stage of the business) come down.

DoubleLemon · 3 Jun 2026

looks like the uk is using starlink for the new 4g replacement to the emergency services system in very rural areas

RichJF · 12 Jun 2026

The first "trillionaire". WTH ?

SargeNpton · 12 Jun 2026

RichJF said:
The first "trillionaire". WTH ?

Only on paper. If the shares tank, his perceived wealth goes down accordingly. Probably also doesn't cover the loans that his assets are mortgaged against.

RichJF · 12 Jun 2026

SargeNpton said:
Only on paper. If the shares tank, his perceived wealth goes down accordingly. Probably also doesn't cover the loans that his assets are mortgaged against.

Yep. Trillionaire in name only not tangible weatlth. Course that won't stop him or his fanboys/girls bragging annoyingly.

brad465 · 12 Jun 2026

RichJF said:
Yep. Trillionaire in name only not tangible weatlth. Course that won't stop him or his fanboys/girls bragging annoyingly.

This level of "wealth" is several times the amount one could possibly ever spend in their lifetime. All the super-rich want at this point is to win a massive willy-waving contest.

takno · 12 Jun 2026

brad465 said:
This level of "wealth" is several times the amount one could possibly ever spend in their lifetime. All the super-rich want at this point is to win a massive willy-waving contest.

I'm not sure they even want to win. The main priority is that everybody else loses

AlterEgo · 12 Jun 2026

Musk is deeply problematic but Starlink and SpaceX could prove to be utterly revolutionary. SpaceX almost monopolises the global private launch market.

takno · 12 Jun 2026

AlterEgo said:
Musk is deeply problematic but Starlink and SpaceX could prove to be utterly revolutionary. SpaceX almost monopolises the global private launch market.

Both of these are serving really quite niche markets, and have other companies only a couple of years behind them. That isn't the fundamental problem though.

The problem is that AIUI the vast majority of the completely unbelievable future revenue is actually predicted to be from xAI. That is, to put it mildly, not credible.

125Spotter · 13 Jun 2026

takno said:
actually predicted to be from xAI

and the ludicrous idea of "putting datacentres in space", which nobody seems to have stopped to consider whether it's sensible.

I wait to see how those machines will be cooled, or how the components will be serviced when they fail (or likely not, and just gradually left to die and route around the dead components, such death accelerated by them spending their operational life sweltering in their own heat). Vanity.

dosxuk · 13 Jun 2026

A bigger issue with the data centres is they haven't worked out where to put them. They've said "space is big" and "obviously they won't be in low earth orbit" like Starlink. But they've also said they're going to have sub-ms connectivity to Earth.

I guess they're using the same physics that will let them get those sub-ms connection times to the Moon. "But they're using lazers" cry the fan boys...

Elon Musk - the world's "greatest" spiv?

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