this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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He really does not almost literally have all the money.
He has stock, that if he tried to sell it all would collapse its value. It was on full display when he was selling shares to buy Twitter.
He would still be a multi billionaire, but it would be a fraction of what he has on paper if he tried to turn it all into money.
What he does have is power from wealth. But that's different.
No. I see this claim made very often to downplay how obscenely wealth is concentrated, and it's one of the Big Lies that sound superficially plausible but just plain isn't true. There has never been a case of a stock "collapsing" solely from a stock holder trying to liquidate it with no other factors at play; at worst it's a few percent that regain themselves after a few days. Billionaires sell stocks all the time without a blip; Bezos for example has unloaded over $50,000,000,000 in AMZN, of which $13,000,000,000 was just in the last year, all without incident.
A lot of things contributed to the TSLA drop, and it was nothing like a "collapse" - it was in the middle of a record spike (meaning he was able to sell unusually high, hmm, nothing suspicious there) with the supposed "collapsed" value never dropping below what it had been less than 9 months previously. If anything the example you give proves that not only is he entirely capable of raising extremely large sums of money selling stock, he's also adept at pumping the stock just before he does to snatch even more than we thought he was worth.
But, even if we did accept that he "can't" sell his shares because it would collapse the company, that suggests something even worse about his wealth - that it's so obscenely high that even the combined wealth of the global stock market doesn't have enough money in it to offer him a fair valuation.
(edit: oh wait I just noticed how much Musk simping you do all over lemmy. GTFO)
It wouldn't collapse the company, it would collapse the stock price if he tried to sell it all. The company would be mostly fine.
His shares are in a sense, out of supply, and when there is an injection of new shares, the price goes down as there are now more shares available to be traded. Its very simple supply and demand. There's no way he'd be able to maintain a sustained sell and have even half of what he has, unless he did it over a very long period of time. (edit: very late edit, but less than half and then he'd lose almost another half of that to taxes so maybe around 1/4 value and thats probably optimistic if done as fast as possible)
I am pro Tesla and pro SpaceX yes. All you online folks get some much wrong about the companies, sometimes blatantly wrong, and I do try to correct people on those matters at times because you're acting no fucking better than how the MAGA people you all think act terribly act.
This is a good example of me probably simping according to you: https://lemmy.world/post/42908537/22057585
You don't have to like the companies because of who runs it, that's fine.
That's what makes it sound so plausible and how the Big Lie has managed to get such traction, but it's not simple at all and just doesn't play out that way.
Ok those last two remarks make me think you're not the useful idiot I thought you were, but actually a full-on SEO stock pumping bot.
Do i get a medal or award for being called a bot? I think this is the first time?
Certainly if you're not a bot, you should use it as a cue for a bit of introspection that your posting habits seem to follow the exact patterns of an astroturfing bot. Not really something to be proud of.
Or maybe all those posts claiming Musk was the cause of all those Ukrainian deaths because he didn't block Russia sooner, are the bots?