Well, not quite. If we accept the premise that he didn't want any of this, then it is probable that elon wanted to do his usual market manipulation thing, leveraging his popularity and wealth to take advantage of opportunities normal people couldn't, I presume. He was insufficiently careful and his bluff was called, which is an inherent risk of gambling.
That isn't a lack of desire, that's called fucking around and finding out. Why should the subject of manipulation (twitter administration) just quietly bend over and take it after being rocked so badly? If Elon successfully pulled out of the arrangements, it would look terrible for Twitter.
> So it is “good” for a company to destroy the thing it spent 15 years building, put all employees out of a job, and harm society in the process, because “shareholder value”
Companies are legal fictions that exist as proxies for their shareholders. Is it good for the shareholders to do things that serve the shareholders shared financial interests? Sure.
Is it good for anyone else? Well, notionally its good for the purpose on the other end of the deal, in that person’s estimation, or the deal wouldn’t exist. “But Musk wanted out of the deal,” you say? Sure, and so maybe in this case it wasn’t good for the counterparty; but its good that we enforce contracts, because people expend resources based on agreements, so its good that people are discouraged from entering into them without due consideration, and enforcement is a key means to do that.
Is it good that we have a system where companies are basically just proxies for capital owners (in some systems, this is not the case, and either employee or public interests are directly represented in firm governance, not just capital ownership)? Maybe not, and that debate is worth having, but this is the system we have.
To be fair, Elon forced it by creating an offer with zero wiggle room, no possibility of backing out and a billion dollar penalty. Nobody made him do that and no sane lawyer would have allowed it unless specifically instructed. Once that was done the board had a fiduciary responsibility and they basically had to hold him to it.
> So it is "good" for a company to destroy the thing it spent 15 years building, put all employees out of a job, and harm society in the process, because "shareholder value"?
Isn't that something to consider before taking a company public? I understand disagreeing with Musk's management, but from what I can see, the company did the best they could for the shareholders, which is by definition their job as a public company. If someone or some group placed a greater value on the company, they could have bought it. It's definitely a callous system, but it comes with the territory of being a public company, and is part of the reason why many good companies avoid public markets. Anger against the board and shareholders is misplaced
That isn't a lack of desire, that's called fucking around and finding out. Why should the subject of manipulation (twitter administration) just quietly bend over and take it after being rocked so badly? If Elon successfully pulled out of the arrangements, it would look terrible for Twitter.