I'm assuming that part of this settlement was that some of his funders told him that they wanted the embarrassment to end. This whole process has made him and all of his co-investor friends look like assholes and idiots, and I'm sure they didn't like that.
Back in middle school the "F" word for a bundle of sticks was often used as a derogatory term directed at people you didn't like, regardless of their sexual orientation. That doesn't make it okay for me to call someone that on the public stage because as an adult you are supposed to know better and keep up with changing public opinion
Just because you did something stupid and wrong as a kid doesn't mean you should be able to get away with doing it as an adult.
A lot of people think that Elon Musk was the modern Nikola Tesla or (yes) Albert Einstein. These texts let them know that he is actually the modern PT Barnum.
He is musk, there isn’t a great historical analogy because globalization has truly enabled him to rapidly impact the entire world with his antics and successes.
Having a very brief look at the world of the ultra rich through an acquaintance of a friend, Im pretty sure that "reputation" to those people means a very different thing than it does to us. The key thing to remember is that these people live a very luxurious lifestyle that they can fund without ever having to work a day in their lives, so funding stuff like that to them is pretty much entertainment.
If you watch the expert testimony from the Depp v. Heard trial, you can see a little bit about how "reputation" is measured and how much it can matter to the rich and famous. It is a lot more like how companies measure "brand equity" than how normal people think about reputation.
(I had to look this up) Musk is worth ~$240B, ~1000x more than Depp. Honestly, I'm impressed that a (and I say this with love) junkie actor could do so well.
Not only that, but Depp is notoriously irresponsible with his wealth. Before he had to liquidate some properties because of the trial, he had an excess of houses, condos, boats, cars, and all kinds of expensive to maintain personal holdings. I don't know for sure, but from what I've seen of Elon Musk, he is a lot more conservative with his wealth—even considering the Twitter deal.
Elon Musk is conservative with his wealth because it's mostly on paper - he would need to sell shares to get access to it. Johnny Depp's wealth was mostly in cash.
I wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk only had about $1 billion liquid (aside from whatever goes towards paying known obligations, like the Twitter deal and tax bills), making him only 2x richer in cash terms than Johnny Depp at his peak.
I don't really know or care about the fine details of Musk (or Depp's) wealth. All I'm pointing out is that Musk seems to have a more moderate lifestyle. He doesn't live like the archetype of a rockstar or billionaire.
Byproduct PMU foals cost less than a purebred kitten or puppy sold by a breeder, sometimes as low as $125. With two acres for grazing, annual cost of feeding can be as low as $100-$300 a year for an adult horse.
But, I believe, you are largely correct. I don't think rich people rescue PMU horses.
His co-investors are the Saudi royal family, Larry Ellison, and the Murdoch family. These do not strike me as a group of people overly concerned with the opinions of ordinary folks.
