WALL OF TEXT: TWITTER AND ELON

 

WALL OF TEXT: TWITTER AND ELON. Elon Musk bought twitter, and the first thing he did was fire all the managers. He is trying to monetize the site, and of course he is—he must pay for the purchase somehow. He risks pissing off the userbase. I’ll laugh my ass off if this genius self-made entrepreneur who got a major boost from family wealth and government tax breaks crashes one of the  biggest social media platforms in the world. He has clearly not read Machiavelli. He wrote that when you acquire a new territory, the first thing you do is CHANGE NOTHING, lest you piss off the subjects and risk an outright revolt. Things could go one of two ways: either the centralization/consolidation of the internet will continue and some other social media site will take Twitter’s place, or the internet will splinter into individual websites again. My money is on centralization, as it is the default state of Capitalism. What’s happening with Elon Musk and Twitter is emblematic of the economy as a whole and shows the reason prices are rising: Company A buys Company B, forming Company AB. Now Company AB must raise prices or cut services in order to pay for the purchase (see Dirty Money on Netflix), whether made through debt or not, so something uncomfortable must change as a result. Multiply this tenfold as companies swallow one another over and over, and you get the modern economy. We’ve seen it happen with multiple platforms and services (Skype is just one example). It’s only a matter of time before there is only one service left and there are no other options. Capitalism’s tendency toward consolidation will bring about the 1984-style hellscape of mass shortages as the rich take more and more to elevate themselves above the masses while the poor continue to work for whatever scraps are leftover. Big Government need not be the cause. It’s happening right now without one. If we want things to get better, we must enforce the antitrust laws. We must remember what happens when companies merge without limit, and we must realize what happens when our platforms are owned by individuals with an agenda.