EU considers calculating X fines by including revenue from Musk’s other firms
Musk could face DSA fines of up to 6% of global revenue—including SpaceX sales.
WOW. That's interesting. Kinda brilliant if it works. Wouldn't work in the US, unfortunately.
It's the same thing Brazil did.
He's rich enough that he's kind of a parent corporation by himself, so:
X was previously accused of violating the Digital Services Act (DSA), which could result in fines of up to 6 percent of total worldwide annual turnover. That fine would be levied on the "provider" of X, which could be defined to include other Musk-led firms.
But yeah, American law has been limited so the buck stops at the company which declares bankruptcy and the money starts a new company.
Not everyone else system is as shitty
so important to realize this. laws are just what this group of people said. another group of people say they're this. in the end, what they do is all that matters. it's almost like you could just skip them, grab him by the collar, and shake him down to the tune of 'whatever it takes to make you sit down, shut up, and stop your BS'.
fine the fucker for 20% of his net "worth", that should give him some pause
Not really billions is beyond being halved
(Was drinking when I wrote this, was saying billions is a so much money it’s difficult to conceptualize, seems like folks understood for the most part, but someone said musks money is in stocks etc which is a factor, anyways be well)
Do it. The crimes are almost entirely by him personally, and had unprecedented damage. He should be responsible with all his money - a Twitter-sized blow would be a slap on the wrist as the platform is worth just $5B or thereabouts.
Less considering more doing
How about making them such a high percentage that it would genuinely impact their bottom line and not a measly amount calculated as "cost of doing business"
4% of gross revenue is not a negligible amount. For no company.
Probably, but it would depend on how much gross revenue they make on said practice, and how often they get a fine.
Start at 100% and work down from there?
That would be extra funny, considering at least some motivation behind his initially bidding on Twitter, was to cash out his absurdly overvalued Tesla stock, without causing it to crash.
Clearly he signed that initial Delaware contract while he was still riding high on mania, but still, his desire to convert his overpriced Tesla stock played no small part. The remaining rationale was mostly drug-induced psychosis, but I digress.
So, calculating fines based on his overpriced assets, forcing him to sell off a bunch of those shitty assets, and risking their price falling closer to their true worth, would be hilarious.
It's also why I am skeptical that they'll do it, or at least I'm skeptical they'll do it in a way that would trigger a domino effect, or market contagion.
It's finally time to hold the people hiding behind the companies accountable!!
woohoo!
break his ability to finance the orange felon
I mean he is leveraging his Tesla stock
For twitter, he actually isn't. That was the original plan, but he moved away from it and got additional external financing, and then put up more cash himself by selling additional Tesla stock.
Not sure about boring company / neuralink.
DO IT!
Do it if you're bad
and this is why we dont fuck with the chinese wall
As much as I hate musk, I don't think this is correct, or even legal..?
He's free to leave the EU at anytime. They are allowed to create appropriate punishments to deter further misuse. They are saying here that they need to be able to punish more to deter him, as he's an asshole who says fuck you to everyone.
legality i don't know, but guess who has an infinite supply of lawyers? Musk was able to secure loans for his Twitter misadventure based on all his other shit. Everything he does is entangled with his other stuff. The Hyperloop? lies.
he's the one whose blurred the lines between the businesses.
taking funds from one to pay for the other regularly.
I'd say the EU has every right to do it this way.
While I have no idea about legality, it is quite obvious that X/Twitter is not really run as a company run as a public communications platform, but rather as a fever dream of Musk.
Especially the Eli Lily Co. disaster should've been a wake up call for X of how much harm the fake checkmarks can bring, yet nothing was done. Most likely because Elon Musk didn't care. He basically runs it like it's how little service that he fully owns and controls with full disregard to anything but his own vision.
Therefore including his other businesses makes sense, as the fine that is only based on X's income would probably be negligible in his opinion, as he runs it on a loss anyways. Only bigger fines would actually have any effect in my opinion.
I still can't believe nothing substantive came of that.
It was incredibly harmful to the reputation and stock value of multiple pharmaceutical companies as well as Twitter. And then the greedy pharma assholes had to publicly announce they were still price-gauging people for life-sustaining medicine, making the reputational damage even worse.
Who cares about legal if it hurts republicans?
Is the EU just going to bet that none of its companies ever have to do business outside of the EU?
Eh?
Because retaliation on behalf of domestic businesses is something Europe freaking invented.
Why would they think that?
Haters gonna hate
I'm comfortable saying I hate Elon Musk. He's a petulant man-baby who's become one of the most problematic stains on the earth
You know he doesn’t care about you at all, right?
It would be a pleasant surprise to see someone in his class receive a punishment (that is completely deserved) that is more than "a slap on the wrist."
Yeah because he's totally innocent.
It’s easy to support when Elon is the recipient, but is this a good precedent to set?
Unironically, yes. You shouldn't be able to shield your actions under a different corporate umbrella.
"Oh, guess we can't fine them much because Twitter is a money pit, so they'll get to continue breaking the law for cheap"
Nah, make the fine off of his entire net worth, make him cash in some of that stock so he can finally pay taxes and fines. Make it hurt enough for him to consider not breaking the laws of countries he wants to do business in.
Sounds good in principle, but isn't the one of the main purposes of creating an LLC or Corporation to shield your personal assets from the company's finances? Everyone cheers for these policies until you're the one they're coming for. I hope you're as cheerful when the government wipes your personal bank account as consequence of your company's affairs.
Absolutely and without question yes
Yes. Next question.
Why not? Which person owning multiple companies would be disadvantaged in a way that could be considered unfair in this way?
Shipping companies setup separate LLC's for their ships so of they have an accident the ship goes bankrupt and they keep their profits shielded.. that kind of stuff is bullshit
They also lose any claim to the cargo as well if they bankrupt the ship. It's the same idea as buying an umbrella insurance policy, if you suffer a major loss, you lose the asset, but you don't lose anything else.
But I agree, we should probably have tighter standards on what qualifies for liability protection, as well as a record of past abuse of liability protection to prevent future abuse (i.e. your LLC application would be denied if you've bankrupted too many prior companies). So we should be stopping this at the source, not retroactively removing the liability protections because the government made a stupid contract.
Yes. Like every system, there are those who abuse it. But you must be careful so that while trying to punish those abusers, you don't end up creating avenues to also punish those who don't abuse the system, but simply make a mistake. This sets a precedent so that the government can target the assets of the owner of the company if they're not satisfied the company punishment, which doesn't sound as cool when the company in question is your family's bakery or your neighbor's paralegal office.