10 ms·
I personally think this is excellent, in the great scheme of things, maybe this will open a real discussion about the real oligarchic nature of the US political
by paganel 5y ago
I personally think this is excellent, in the great scheme of things, maybe this will open a real discussion about the real oligarchic nature of the US political and societal life at the top.
I mean, with tech titan (and second wealthiest man on the planet) Bezos owning the WaPo, the moment the tech titan (and the wealthiest man on the planet) Musk will put his hands on Twitter hopefully will also be the moment of some "enlightenment" for the educated masses. Or maybe I'm just day-dreaming.
- BeKindAndLearn 5y agoOligarchs controlling every form of my mass communication can only make things worse, though.
- jesusofnazarath 5y ago
- SteveDR 5y agoIsn’t that the current state of things? If musk makes this purchase it won’t centralize power any more, but it will draw attention to how centralized that power is. Which is a good thing
- sohdas 5y agoYou're saying that oligarchs taking control is good because it will cause more people to realize that oligarchs are taking control?
- addingnumbers 5y agoHe's saying that ownership by a loud, conspicuous oligarch generates more public scrutiny than a quiet, inconspicuous one.
- quickthrower2 5y ago2016 called and wants it’s loud conspicuous oligarch back.
- dragonwriter 5y agoNo, I think he is saying an oligarch that has a lot of focus on the rest of the oligarchically controlled media taking control of this piece of media already controlled by the haut bourgeois oligarchy will draw more public attention to the oligarchic control of the media without actually changing the fact of that control one bit. Which is still, IMO, foolish, given, among other things, the degree to which large swathes of the public have parasocial relationships with the particular celebrity oligarch in question, but it's not saying that making the problem worse will draw attention.
- rajin444 5y agoFor whatever reason people think we live in a democracy and not an oligarchy. I guess it’s in the oligarchs best interest to keep that facade up.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adamrezich 5y agosearch news.google.com for "oligarch" and see the pattern of how the media has propagandistically twisted this word to only mean a specific kind of person now, conveniently excluding those that control our (Western) societies.
- res0nat0r 5y ago
- mdoms 5y agoPeople I don't like are racist!
- res0nat0r 5y agoActually no, all of the racist and sexist rightwing memes he keeps shitposting on Twitter are in fact the issue.
- k1ko 5y agoHave heard a lot of criticisms of Musk but first time I'm seeing racist. Congrats you win the reddit award.
- res0nat0r 5y agoHave you paid attention to his Twitter feed at all in the last few years?
- cryptonector 5y agoIs that like a level below Godwin's Law?
- jquery 5y ago
- mdoms 5y agoCan you post some examples of "all of the racist and sexist rightwing memes he keeps shitposting on Twitter"?
- Jotra7 5y ago[dead]
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Oligarchs controlling every form of my mass communication can only make things worse, though How can it make things worse when it has literally always been the case as long as there has been “mass communication”?
- RustyConsul 5y ago'Oligarchs' historically have gained influence and fielty to a nationstate. We are at a new form of Oligarchy, where the business magnates are able to operate internationally on a scale never seen before. Historically, taxation has been the most profitable form of revenue generation. But thats no longer the case. With globalism and multi-national product creation, a single person in a nation can be many times richer than any nationstate, with technology above and beyond any nationstate. What happens when musk has electric jets and fully-reusable ICBM's, has remade the world power grid in his image, is one of few entitys even able to get to mars let alone command and control the resources of the astroid belt.
- tiahura 5y agoMy new personal pet peeve has been the torturing of the word oligarch. It’s now come to mean “rich person I don’t like.” From my vantage point, it’s hard to see how Elon Musk is making any governmental policy decisions - and thus isn’t an oligarch. But maybe you have some examples? Musk is extremely rich and can buy a lot of stuff. That’s entirely different than determining agricultural policy, or putting people in jail, or conducting the census, or maintaining the border, or doing anything else that a ruler does.
- justinpowers 5y agoYou’re right in the sense that people often use the term imprecisely and hyperbolically, but in this discussion they are more right than wrong, at least by this measure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy#Putative_oligarchies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy#Putative_oligarchies > That’s entirely different than determining agricultural policy, or putting people in jail, or conducting the census, or maintaining the border, or doing anything else that a ruler does You’re making a mistake of your own by conflating oligarchy with tyranny. They often go hand in hand, with the former generally preceding the latter. So it’s probably better to cry oligarchy before it’s a given rather than afterwards.
- LaurieKoudstaal 5y agoA better term for what people are trying to articulate is plutocracy.
- linguistbreaker 5y agoA media company having a legal obligation to maximize profits seems at least as bad for journalism as private ownership as there's zero room for any sort of integrity.
- MichaelMoser123 5y agoSpeaking about enlightenment, isn't it strange that Elon Musk is into politics now? I mean he wants to go to Mars, his project was "Flyin' mother nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun", and now he goes right in the opposite direction. Did he have any major setbacks with his Starship?
- codeulike 5y agoI'm wondering if this whole 'buy twitter' idea is some sort of displacement activity from stressful problems in either spacex or tesla. I'm a fan of both companies but I know he drives them hard and takes lots of expansion risks/gambles with them (innovation is a gamble at the end of the day).
- ncmncm 5y agoIt reveals that everything he ever said about Mars, or about global climate catastrophe, was just so much posturing.
- garbagetime 5y agoHow?
- ncmncm 5y agoMoney is fungible. Dollars put into Twitter are, exactly, dollars not put into those other things. Dollars speak louder than words. Musk can say anything, anytime. What he does with his money demonstrates what he believes.
- avisser 5y agoThe Zuck needs to be in that 2nd graph.
- hintymad 5y agoAs much as I don’t like WaPo’s Opinion columns and Twitter’s double standards in content moderation, I don’t think the two companies are puppets of their owners. The staff there have their mostly left-leaning political view point and their own moral standard. I don’t necessarily agree with their view, but it’s their view and their voice nonetheless.
- shoulderfake 5y ago
- tonguez 5y agoThat’s because they only hire staff who have the opinions that the people who own the organization want them to have. There’s nothing left-leaning about corporate censorship, which Twitter embodies. It’s all neoconservative war propaganda.
- abvdasker 5y agoWhat other reason could the billionaires possibly have for owning these companies? I doubt it's out of the goodness of their hearts and given the success of their other businesses probably isn't about making money. This is just robber barons all over again and to believe otherwise one would have to be pretty ignorant of America's history. Chomsky's best insights are about how this kind of control actually works and it isn't really that journalists are censored by owners (though this does occasionally happen).
- oceanplexian 5y agoThey probably own them for a lot of reasons: WaPo was failing and running a loss at the time that Bezos purchased it. Twitter is in the same boat due to poor management; it's losing money and headed towards failure. If Musk can turn it around he can A) Make a bunch of money, B) Save a useful tool for online communications and C) Promote his values when hiring leaders at the company. I doubt Elon is going to be personally moderating every Tweet, however it is likely that their corporate values system might change.
- memish 5y agoThis is a good point. Everyone that thought it was great twitter was centralized and saying "it's a private company, they can censor what they want" and "go make your own platform" will have to contend with their once convenient unprincipled position.
- PartiallyTyped 5y agoI don’t find it unprincipled. It is how it is, and we should all be okay with a company enforcing their TOS. Boycotting (the so called cancel culture by those it affects) is a fundamental and irreducible component of any “free” market.
- user3939382 5y agoSo should AT&T be allowed to cut phone service for customers who use their phone service to discuss political opinions the AT&T execs disagree with and therefore consider “misinformation” or “lacking context”? They’re a private company, right?
- PartiallyTyped 5y agoDoes it violate the TOS that _both_ parties agreed on and signed? If so, then yes, I don't see why one needs special protection and the other doesn't. At the same time, anyone is allowed to not participate on twitter or whatever and roll their own social network.
- user3939382 5y agoI do see it differently and disagree with that perspective, but moreover would point out that we as a society for several decades have agreed that private companies do not have the right to such practices, precisely because the effect on society is so harmful. AT&T today, under the law, does not have that power and I would argue for good reason.
- 5y ago
- Veedrac 5y agoThis is not oligarchy. Using that term here makes no sense.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tick_tock_tick 5y agoI mean by and large the success of first generation billions and the power they manage to control kinda show with enough money it doesn't matter that he is explicit not part of the "real oligarchic nature of the US political and societal life".