Putting aside the fact that musk is an asshole, the value of $100 to him is probably less than what 1 cent is worth to most other people, and I can imagine that if most people owed someone 1c, they would probably never get around to paying it.
It's a different world for the ultra rich, and even more so for the ultra ultra ultra ultra richest.
That's because you don't have a billionaire's brain. They're somewhere between "I don't give a damn about these people" and "LOL! Look how I stiffed these losers!"
My understanding is that it potentially isn't illegal, because you weren't being paid to vote explicitly, and weren't being paid to vote for a specific candidate for sure, but you were (supposed to be) paid to sign an agreement that you would vote, and I think it also said you support a certain candidate but I'm not totally sure on that.
Basically, he was paying for people to say they'd vote (maybe for a certain candidate) but legally that wasn't actually required, so possibly barely skirts the law if a judge is being very generous to him.
That's because he didn't say he will pay them for voting. He said he would pay them to sign a petition that supported a certain candidate. I think that's technically not illegal?
I know right? Whatever would have given them the idea that he has ever done anything he's promised? All the failed promises with Tesla? The boring company?
@admiralpatrick@lemmy.world The spam ban on the OP of this post seems heavyhanded (at least from the outside). Can you review or offer additional context?
TL;DR is the account has a history of leaving spam-like posts in its wake. Instead of deleting posts, they edit the title and URL to gibberish and leave them up. The comment I linked above is me asking OP to not do that (at least in this community), so they have been warned. Looks like they left two more gibberish posts early this morning which is likely what triggered the other mod to issue the community ban.
Per the comment I linked, I'm assuming that is why OP has been banned from so many other communities.
Consider that Trump had something like a 47% approval rating on the day of the election.
Also, yes. People are broke af, hate their neighborhood, hate their country, and hate everyone who has governed it since JFK. If someone offered you $100 for a pile of shit, you'd take the deal, too.
The joke of it all is that they believed a career con-artist would pay out, not that they gleefully pawned the broke down jalopy of a nation-state at the first opportunity.
Do not think for a second that they won't try to do it again.
When one of the two biggest black holes for cash on the entire planet promise to make things better for you if you just do this thing they want to happen, you shouldn't be surprised if at the end of the process you have less money and they have more money. Elon Musk is expert at making money move from you to him. So is Jeff Besos. It doesn't have to be direct from you to them via a payment, just know that they are sucking up the money, and if you ever, ever, ever do something they want you to do, you can be 100% sure it's because after they're done, you have less money and they have more.
Maurice: 'To my right, heh, to everyone's right in fact, we have congressman Alex Shrub; the youngest state congressman to ever be elected by Vice City and now a respected man in the capital. Mr. Shrub got elected because he has great hair and says things that make you nod your head. His campaign appealed to the wealthy because he set all of us at ease by confirming, "It's okay to be rich, as long as you say you care about the children." Mr. Shrub, welcome!'
Alex: 'That's not entirely true, Maurice. My campaign also appealed to the poor... who were too stupid to understand what I'm saying, so I held up pretty pictures and then I gave out candy bars to appeal to their most base insticts.'
So the only question really is whether it's more the case that he's not paying because there's a chance that he could be prosecuted for buying votes or if he's not paying just because he's a lying sack of shit who doesn't keep promises.
IANAL, but I don't think so, unless they managed to make a charge of fraud stick, which would require proving that he never had any intention of paying them.
Without something like that, his failure to pay up is a civil matter rather than a criminal one.
Because of course he wouldn't pay up. The man could literally afford to take more money than any one person could ever spend in their life, put it in a pile and set it on fire, and not be any more than a fraction of a percent poorer, but he's still such an unfathomably awful cunt that he just has to stiff people anyway.
To all the comments and replies asking Isn't this or that aspect of what he did illegal?: Yes of course, for us it would be illegal, but it doesn't matter. For oligarchs the legality of anything they do is irrelevant. They do whatever they want and get away with it. Sometimes it costs them a small fee, but they don't notice that.