Musk is a big fan of the author. The cargo included a digital copy of the author's classic work: the Foundation trilogy. The Mule, a telepath who uses his powers to inspire fanatical loyalty and upend history, is one of the main characters in that series. Everyone knows that Mr Musk wants to own the future.
He wants to make humanity a multiplanetary species by nuking the Martian polar ice caps to release carbon dioxide and warm the red planet. Mr Musk has made promises that have never been fulfilled. His brain-machine interface is behind his competitors. The car industry has been disrupted by the invention of the billionaire inventor. In the public imagination, he is an iconoclast.
Mr Musk has a large ego and billions of dollars to burn, and inspire such fervour in devotees that his utterances cause stampedes into many worthless investments. The world's richest man is willing to bet his fortune on his instincts. Mr Musk is a good engineer, but he is even better at fostering a cult of personality so large that fans invest in him, not his products.
Loyalty has benefits. The deals are more celebrated than the questioning. The fidelity of the faithful is being tested by Mr Musk. Wall Street banks lent a quarter of that amount, and the rest is cash from Mr Musk and his co- investors. To what purpose? In terms of revenue and users, it's a minnow. He earned that sobriquet when he lied about taking the company private. Mr Musk stepped down as the chair of the company.
Mr Musk has called for Ukraine to give up occupied land for peace and pledged to reverse Donald Trump's ban on social media. They don't bode well for democracy. Big advertisers might be scared off by such utterances. The $400 million gap between its revenues and debt repayments won't be bridged by his plan to charge 300,000 users.
Mr Musk says buying the social networking site will help create X, the everything app. This sounds like a prophecy that will not be fulfilled. It is feared that that may be what Mr Musk is mostly about. His fortune is the result of his work. The company's shares are down from a year ago. Competition from Chinese companies threatens the bottom line of the company, as well as Mr Musk's inability to satisfy regulators that his cars can be used safely. Many of Mr Musk's ambitions are more fiction than fact.
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