Elon didn’t start a new social network, he took over Twitter. You don’t need to start a new city, you can take over existing ones by just moving there en masse and voting for your candidates. You don’t even need 44b. This is hard to do, but it’s easier than moving all the intellectual capital out of SF. Network effects are hard to disrupt.

I actually like the analogy a lot but there is a major caveat:

You may not need $44B, but you do need a lot of capital, but not all capital is financial. You may need $44B worth of social capital (relationships, networks) or $44B worth of story capital (charisma + vision), but it's a high-investment endeavor.