Matt Levine was, clearly, being snarky. Especially considering that such activity would be illegal.
As for "suboptimal", if you're trying to maximize financial or other gains regardless of societal impact or human suffering, maybe what you describe is correct, but it also requires the person to be a bit of a sociopathic asshole to choose that path.
It may take a long time for the ship to turn, but it has turned. John McAfee was indicted by the CFTC for doing this sort of pump & dump. I think anyone as high profile as a CEO would find themselves in the same boat.
Separately from that is the way Musk keeps Tesla in the public eye through various stunts etc., which is a little different than a pump & dump. How much of that is his personality, and how much of it is deliberate strategy? I don't know. I'd speculate that some of it started as personality, and when he saw the results he leaned into it hard and it became strategy. On that aspect of things, you have a point in that a CEO who can do that should probably take advantage of it, and I wouldn't necessarily attach sociopathic tendencies to that behavior as a requirement for acting that way: it doesn't seem to hurt anyone. At least I think it doesn't? Who suffers if TSLA is overvalued? And that would require a good way of determining if it actually is overvalued, something I don't think is straightforward. I guess short sellers suffer, but they could simply have been wrong about TSLA being over valued, and that's on them.
I don't think all CEOs should give it a try though. First because, well, most just don't have whatever quality is necessary to make it work. Second because if everyone tried it, it would just become so much noise, and probably drown out the efforts of those like Musk who can actually pull it off. In Levine-esque speculation, I wonder if Musk would have a legal case against those CEO's if they made his own antics worthless? Some type of tortious interference maybe?
Wasn't McAfee personally trading though? I'm not as up on his more recent insanity.
+1 agreed on the rest. It's an interesting thought problem. Capital was less formal during the late 19th century monopoly era in the US, but it makes me wonder if there were schemes where Morgan or Rockefeller publicly circulated market moves.
As for "suboptimal", if you're trying to maximize financial or other gains regardless of societal impact or human suffering, maybe what you describe is correct, but it also requires the person to be a bit of a sociopathic asshole to choose that path.