17 better ways Elon Musk could have wasted $446 million

<figure> <img alt="Elon Musk frowns, surrounded by all the things he could have bought and didn’t" data-caption="Dream bigger, babe. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/11/268859_How_the_tech_right_could_have_spent_all_the_money_they_burned_on_the_midterms_CVirginia.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" /> <figcaption> Dream bigger, babe. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images </figcaption> </figure> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">One of the basic problems of spending too much time on social media is that you are cooking your brain by reading posts from <a href="https://www.theverge.com/24058356/trolls-social-media-commenter-lurker-reply-guy-threads">a pack of attention-seeking lunatics</a>. If your social media of choice is the site formerly known as Twitter, and <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-06187-8">it is your main source of contact with the outside world</a>, you may delusionally throw away nearly $500 million dollars on midterm elections, just like Elon Musk.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">In particular, $47 million of that money from Musk's America PAC was aimed at defeating Texas Democrat James Talarico, who trounced Musk's preferred Senate candidate, Ken Paxton, with 55 percent of the vote. Talarico even made Musk's influence <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/23/james-talarico-campaign-ad-elon-musk-texas-senate-election.html">a cent …</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1026878/not-even-good-at-being-rich">Read the full story at The Verge.</a></p>