At the end of the Hollywood blockbuster "Kingdom of heaven", there is a classic plot in which the protagonist resists and surrenders control of Jerusalem to Saladin, asking the immortal lord of the Arab world what Jerusalem is.
Saladin replied to him, Nothing, and then left, and a few seconds later turned back again, Everything.
Yesterday, Musk, the world's richest man, agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion, ending a month-long battle for control of Twitter.
The so-called "poison pill plan" previously carried out by the Twitter board was ultimately just a pretense of "having to add money", creeping in front of Musk's ultimatum.
A friend asked me, is Twitter worth this money?
I asked him a question, how much do you think it is worth in the Beijing Evening News IPO?
After my friend fell into deep thought, I added another question, if we allow the US Democratic NGO to buy and privatize the Beijing Evening News, how much do you think the NGO thinks it is worth?
As a business logic is replaced by a political logic, friends instantly understand.
Twitter is worth the price only if someone who is ready to change (subvert) the world buys it, and it's not worth the money at all in the hands of others.
So Twitter shareholders aren't stupid either, knowing that they'll never get a better price than Musk.
And this is also the strength that many Chinese investors have not come elsewhere.
Remember the moment when the Internet industry developed the fastest and the highest valuation was the so-called BAT wheel, and the Sun Zhengyi Zhang Lei behind it to finally take over?
If the final buyer of pharmaceutical enterprises becomes the Ministry of Health, the final buyer of education and training enterprises becomes the Ministry of Education, and the final buyer of real estate enterprises becomes the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, then no matter how well these enterprises do, they must not be valuable in the capital market.
This difference in valuation exists not only in businesses, but also in the realm of ideas.
Marx's theory of Capital, placed in capitalist countries, where values tend to be close to Nothing, but in socialist countries ready to break the shackles of capital, is a Bible of ever-all values.
So, back to the twitter question, in the view of the government office, this deal may change the world.
Musk has already put together a money bag (Dogecoin) and a gun (Tesla), and with the pen (Twitter) in place, the world's richest man will also start to build his ideal country.
Based on the rise of the last industrial revolution in the United States, there is the Federal Reserve in charge of monetary and financial, there is Hollywood in charge of ideology, there is the steel and oil in charge of industrial production, and the dream is to build global free trade with the fleet.
And here in Musk, Dogecoin is his new version of the Federal Reserve, Twitter is his new version of Hollywood, Tesla is his electric version of the sickle axe, and the dream is to colonize the universe with SpaceX's rockets and star chains.
Twitter not only connected Musk's various products through data, but also established an online social network.
As he turns Twitter into a private company, it will become a platform for different people in the Western world to express different opinions, a place for politicians from all walks of life to publish their opinions, and the main arena for the 2024 presidential election.
For Musk, Twitter is a manifesto, Twitter is a propaganda team, Twitter is a seeder, a weapon to make his mind spark.
From the French Declaration of Human rights and citizenship in 1789 to the Constitutional Amendment in the United States in 1791, the Western world regarded freedom of speech as the most important civil right.
What Musk bought at great expense this time is not just a Tweet, but a Jerusalem in the spirit of many Westerners, and a cornerstone that can gather thousands of troops and horses to build a new empire for the common ideal.
In the future, the business value created by Twitter may be Nothing, but for Musk, the subversive of the ecosystem he is building, this is Everthing.
Life is impermanent, the large intestine wraps the small intestine.
Perhaps, this acquisition marks the official opening of the Musk era, but it is more likely that this acquisition also sounded the elegy of Musk and Tesla stock prices...