With the Twitter deal, Elon Musk's ‘technoking’ title is no joke

If you're Elon Musk, it's good to be technoking.

While that title – Musk's preferred one at Tesla – may sound like a joke, it's an apt term considering the scale at which he's operating, most recently in his $44 billion (R694bn) takeover of Twitter. And it also explains why Musk gives so many people the jitters: He's a private individual, but he's acting like a government.

Much of the conversation around Musk's wealth and that of his fellow centibillionaires focuses on ranking them in relation to one another. But in the case of Twitter, different comparisons are more revealing.

Musk's $44 billion deal for the social media company is 55 times the value of one of the tranches of aid the Biden administration sent to Ukraine to help fend off Russia’s invasion.

It's 22 times the cost of the coronavirus tests mailed to Americans for free earlier this year.

Most of Musk's fortune is in Tesla stock, rather than in cash. But if his roughly $240 billion fortune were liquid, he would have as much money as the 13th-largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, just after the Investment Corporation of Dubai and Singapore's Temasek.

One way to look at Musk is as simply another super-rich person laying down an obscene amount for a diverting hobby. The rich have always found imaginative ways to spend their money, whether they're snapping up T-rex skeletons and tennis tournaments or building billion-dollar mansions and super-yachts the size of neighbourhoods. Those purchases might feel gaudier or more self-indulgent than a social media service, which after all is a revenue-generating business.

Yet the most expensive among them seems like a bauble compared with the $44 billion Musk is paying for Twitter.

That money could buy 2 327 Bugatti La Voiture Noire coupes. It is 88 times the amount a Norwegian billionaire is investing in the REV Ocean, an enormous research vessel whose mission is to save the world’s waters.

Announcing the acquisition, Musk described Twitter as “the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated”.

That makes the service sound more like a public good than a private asset. But Musk is erratic and eccentric enough that watching him accumulate power feels risky, even if he might ultimately be constrained by the debt he took on to buy Twitter, or by the laws other countries are passing to govern its operations.

Musk's Twitter purchase also isn't the first time he's embarked on something that feels like a public function. As the United States has de-emphasised human exploration of space, Musk’s Spacex has stepped in to fill the gap.

Musk's ambitions to colonise Mars may not come to fruition in his lifetime. But his vision raises the prospect that a private company might beat a nation state to the Red Planet. But it's worth remembering this: Even technokings have to cope with entrenched bureaucracies and the basic realities of the problems they're trying to tackle.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. In buying Twitter, Musk may be chasing his bliss. But he’s also adding to his burden. | The Washington Post

¡ Rosenberg writes about the intersection of culture and politics for The Washington Post's Opinions section.