A Billionaires’ World - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/briefing/elon-musk-twitter-sale.html
This wealth conveys vast power on a small group of people. They can attempt to shape politics, as the Koch family has done. They can create a global charity, as Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates have done. They can buy a national media organization, as Jeff Bezos has done.
Or they can buy a social media network when its policies annoy them, as Elon Musk is in the process of doing.
Twitter announced yesterday that its board had accepted a $44 billion bid for the company from Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and currently the world’s richest man. He is using $21 billion of his own cash in the deal.
Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” has suggested that he will be less aggressive than Twitter’s current management about blocking some content — including misinformation, in all likelihood. He plans to take the company private, which will give him tighter control than he would have over a public company.
The deal is the latest example of how extreme inequality is shaping American society. A small number of very wealthy people end up making decisions that affect millions of others. That has always been true, of course. But it is truer when inequality is so high.