Twitter accepted a deal to be bought out for $44 billion on April 25 by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk, who said he wants to protect and enhance free speech. However, this buyout is a disgusting waste of money in a world full of real issues for real people.

Much of the public views Musk as “the people’s billionaire;” he makes marijuana jokes and gives controversial opinions to perpetuate the culture war.

Musk is also seen as charitable. He donated receivers of his satellite internet, Starlink, to Ukraine, donated $480,350 to Flint, Michigan, so schools could install water filters and offered to donate $6 billion to the United Nations’ World Food Programme.

Understandably, Musk seems like a great and brilliant man who is relatable, charitable, entrepreneurial and sustainable. Who cares if he buys a social media platform? Clearly he has earned the right to do whatever he wants with his money, right?

I tend to view these aspects of Musk’s personality as a carefully curated brand image – the best money can buy.

If one looks outside Musk’s “charity,” his greed shows.

Musk donating Starlink receivers to Ukraine is a good thing. This has helped provide internet service to the country, which is crucial. However, it is also a great way to plug in SpaceX technology on the global stage.

Musk has a history of inserting himself on a global stage. He tried to build a kid-sized submarine to rescue the 12 soccer boys and their coach who were stuck in a cave in Thailand. His kid-sized submarine proved unhelpful in that situation, but Musk did gain the opportunity to train the Thai military to use the submarine technology.

These instances seem to be business moves along with charity; they expose the greedy within the good.

Musk donating $480,350 to Flint, Michigan, is generous. However, a man with a $264.6 billion dollar net worth who has the power to spend $44 billion on a Twitter buyout could have done much more. He could have created new infrastructure by purchasing contracts from private companies to help clean the water and donate water filters to more than just schools – all of which would leave little impact on Musk’s net worth.

According to an article by CNN, Musk also told the U.N. that if they could come up with a plan, with open-faced accounting so that it was financially transparent, to solve world hunger, he would sell $6 billion in Tesla stocks. U.N. World Food Program Director David Beasley mapped out a $6.6 billion plan. We have yet to hear from Musk.

These acts of philanthropy are not synonymous with a man aimed at making the world better; they are synonymous with a greedy billionaire who wants to promote his public image and his products. If Musk wanted to make the world better, he would start with his own companies.

Tesla factory workers work arduously long hours, doing manual labor unfit for human bodies to be doing for long periods of time.

An article by The Guardian highlights the suffering of Tesla factory workers.

“Michael Sanchez once had two dreams: to be an artist and a car service technician,” the article states. “Now Sanchez has two herniated discs in his neck, is on disability leave from work, and can no longer grip a pencil without pain.”

Billionaire Musk’s innovative solution to his laborers’ pain and struggles: sleep on the floor of his factory so that he could experience “worse pain.”

“The reason I sleep on the floor was not because I couldn’t go across the road and be at the hotel,” Musk said in an interview with Tom Randall for Bloomberg, “it was because I wanted my circumstance to be worse than anyone else at the company on purpose. Whatever pain they felt, I wanted mine to be worse. That’s why I did it. And it makes a huge difference to people.”

Maybe, instead of buying Twitter, Musk could have used $44 billion to hire more employees and pay them higher wages to meet the overzealous demands of capitalist production.

Maybe, instead of buying Twitter, Musk can make good on his claim to fund the U.N.’s food program and prevent 42 million people from dying of hunger.

The list of ‘maybes’ is long. However, none of these ‘maybes’ has the opportunity for Musk to bolster his multi-billion dollar portfolio by competing in the media landscape where he can gather consumer data on millions of users.

In a world full of dire problems for everyday people, the world’s richest man bought a social media company.

But hey, at least I can count on the world’s richest man to tweet a good pot joke every April.

Ben Hogan can be reached at hoga1306@stthomas.edu.