Will Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, go broke with X? | Letters

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It ain’t X making Elon Musk rich

Some $44 billion was Elon Musk’s purchase price for Twitter. He now claims it is worth $19 billion as X.” X” indeed. That is a 56.8% loss of value, in about a year, under his control. Impressive. Assuming this represents X’s trajectory, by October 2050 it will be worth $441. But, this assumes a stable and predictable future decline based on this past year’s performance.

But, even this grim prediction may, in fact, be unrealistically optimistic. Because terms like stable and predictable are rarely applied to Elon Musk, and in most ways that matter, he and X are projections of each other. So, the other day on X he announced in broad pixelated illumination his dark antisemitic sentiment, causing several major corporate advertisers, which is nearly the exclusive money spigot for X’s profits, to shut off from the platform. $441 could become an overpriced bid for X far sooner than 2050. Musk has proven he is a genius in some things. But he has made equally clear that his judgement and impulse control are subpar – for anyone, let alone someone currently called the richest man in the world.

Marty Ginsberg, Boynton Beach

A better idea for Elon Musk: Inner space | Opinion

You don’t get the money if you don’t apply

The Nov. 11 editorial “Minority firms get but a tiny slice of county deals – fix this” uses statistics to argue that the county’s assistance program for small businesses is failing minority owners: “Firms participating in the program account for 27% of county contracts, with Hispanic-owned businesses at 3.8%, women-owned firms at 2.8 per cent and Asian owned firms at 0. 6 percent. Between 2019 and 2022, 16 of the 21 participating small businesses that graduated from needing county assistance were white-owned. Two others were owned by Asian-Americans and another three by Hispanics. No black-owned firms graduated during that time.”However, the editorial omits an important percentage: What fraction of the applicants for the county’s Equal Business Opportunity Ordinance are minority-owned? The program cannot create applicants: It can assist only those who apply.Richard Handelsman, West Palm Beach

Congress can regulate gun ownership

Amendment 2 of our Constitution refers to a “well regulated militia” as part of the right to bear arms. This phrase becomes invisible in all regulatory action regarding gun ownership. There is, however, in Section 8, “The congress shall have power…,” another reference to a militia, as follows: “To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States…”

If this constitutional duty were applied to the Second Amendment, gun ownership would by law be more regulated, part of a structured federal organization, define weapons to be owned by Militia members and control individual rights of non-militia gun owners, regardless of the NRA. It’s time for Congress to review this constitutional task, connect it to the militia referred to in the Second Amendment and consider its potential impact on our “anyone can own a gun” society.

Harold Gittler, Lake Worth

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