The billionaire, often critical of the tech mecca, is saddened to see downtown San Francisco empty out.
Between Elon Musk and San Francisco, it’s a story of ‘I love you… neither do I’ to use a song by French singer Serge Gainsbourg.
The billionaire businessman has a complicated relationship with the mecca of technology. He criticizes it very violently because it represents, according to him, the bastion of the “awakened mind virus”, which he has set out to defeat.
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For the serial entrepreneur, the “awake mind virus” is made up of new progressive ideologies, often aligned to the left of the Democratic Party. This is manifested through the promotion of ESG, gender identity or pronouns.
He believes that ESGs and pronouns are expressions of awakening that lead to nullifying culture, that is, to intolerance and the dictatorship of thought.
ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance, while “pronouns” points to the gender identity debate. It means that people have to stop assuming that gender is binary and accept that everyone has the right to decide what they want to be called: he/his her/him, her/her/them/them/them.
attacks
San Francisco, as the flagship tech city of the progressive state of California, is therefore the center of this “awakened mind virus,” according to Musk. As a result, in late 2021, the billionaire notably moved Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas. He, too, has moved from Silicon Valley and now lives near Austin.
But the tech mogul was recently forced to spend more time in San Francisco, after acquiring Twitter for $44 billion. He has been spending a lot of time at the platform’s headquarters in the heart of the city. He was quick to attack the township which is held by the Democrats.
“So the city of SF attacks companies that provide beds for tired employees instead of making sure kids are safe from fentanyl,” the billionaire posted on Dec. 6 with a link to an article about a father. who revealed that her 10-month-old baby accidentally overdosed on fentanyl at a San Francisco playground. “Where are your priorities @LondonBreed!?”
Musk’s attack came as the San Francisco City Council was investigating reports that the businessman had installed beds at Twitter’s headquarters for employees he had asked to work long hours. The billionaire, who had laid off 5,200 of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, had decided to transform certain rooms into dystopian bedrooms.
His mistrust of San Francisco had prompted him, in January, to request, through his lawyers, the transfer of his civil trial to Texas, a trial taking place in the tech city and linked to 2018 tweets.
“For the past several months, the local media has saturated this district with negative and biased stories about Mr. Musk,” Alex Spiro, Musk’s attorney, wrote in a court filing, referring to the firings on Twitter.
“It is likely that a substantial portion of the juror pool…has a personal and material bias against Mr. Musk as a result of recent layoffs at one of his companies, as individual prospective jurors, or their friends and family, may have been personally impacted”.
The request was rejected and the trial was held in San Francisco. The verdict was handed down on February 3 and cleared Musk of fraud allegations made against him by certain investors related to the billionaire’s tweets in the summer of 2018 about Tesla, which was then on the brink of bankruptcy.
‘Tragic’
Musk was quick to react, hailing the wisdom of the people.
“Thank God, the wisdom of the people has prevailed!” the billionaire tweeted. “I am deeply grateful for the unanimous jury finding of not guilty in the Tesla 420 private taking case.”
Then a Twitter user asked him to “take back” the city.
“Take back San Francisco and the waking mind virus will be gone forever.”
“You’re right,” replied the billionaire.
Musk seems to be becoming more interested in the city. He has just been moved by a video posted online, showing what appears to be empty streets, offices and buildings in downtown San Francisco, the city’s business hub. The creator of the video claimed that the city has become a ghost town.
“San Francisco is getting emptier and emptier,” said the Twitter user. Last time I went a man was peeing in the Twitter building and the only people on the street were angry press trying to take photos of @elonmusk. Sad what happened to this city and scary they think they know best for the world”.
“Tragic”, Tesla (TSLA) – Get a free reportcommented the CEO. “I hope SF comes back from this void. It’s such a beautiful city with so many amazing people.”
Office vacancy in San Francisco is among the highest in the nation, and space in the city is depleting the fastest, according to the San Francisco Business Times, citing Cushman & Wakefield. The city’s vacancy rate grew from 5.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 24.1 percent at the end of 2022, an increase of 346 percent.
San Francisco is a victim, like other big cities, of remote work. Many tech companies have notably embraced remote work permanently, in the face of many employees refusing to return to work. Add to this the fact that most tech companies are slashing costs to adjust to the economic downturn.
