A Billionaires’ World

Two years in the past, the economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman printed a statistic that you simply don’t usually see. It was the share of wealth owned by the richest 0.00001 p.c of People.

That tiny slice represented solely 18 households, Saez and Zucman estimated. Every one had a median internet price of about $66 billion in 2020. Collectively, the share of nationwide wealth owned by the group had risen by an element of practically 10 since 1982.

This wealth conveys huge energy on a small group of individuals. They’ll try to form politics, because the Koch household has performed. They’ll create a worldwide charity, as Invoice Gates and Melinda French Gates have performed. They’ll purchase a nationwide media group, as Jeff Bezos has performed.

Or they’ll purchase a social media community when its insurance policies annoy them, as Elon Musk is within the strategy of doing.

Twitter introduced yesterday that its board had accepted a $44 billion bid for the corporate from Musk, the chief government of Tesla and SpaceX and at present the world’s richest man. He’s utilizing $21 billion of his personal money within the deal.

Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” has instructed that he can be much less aggressive than Twitter’s present administration about blocking some content material — together with misinformation, in all probability. He plans to take the corporate personal, which is able to give him tighter management than he would have over a public firm.

The deal is the newest instance of how excessive inequality is shaping American society. A small variety of very rich individuals find yourself making choices that have an effect on thousands and thousands of others. That has all the time been true, after all. However it’s more true when inequality is so excessive. Within the U.S. financial system, wealth inequality has exceeded even the peaks of the Nineteen Twenties, as one other chart from Saez and Zucman’s analysis reveals:

The Musk deal additionally recollects the Gilded Age, as my colleague Shira Ovide wrote: “The closest comparability to this is perhaps the Nineteenth-century newspaper barons like William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer and the fictional Charles Foster Kane, who used their papers to pursue their private agendas, sensationalize world occasions and harass their enemies.”

After information broke yesterday concerning the Musk-Twitter settlement, I requested Andrew Ross Sorkin for his response to it. Andrew, as many readers know, has been masking finance and enterprise leaders for the previous twenty years at The Occasions. He created and runs our DealBook publication.

Andrew’s response bought me fascinated about these bigger questions of inequality, and I’m turning over the remainder of at present’s lead merchandise to him. Beneath his ideas concerning the Twitter deal, we embrace extra Occasions protection, in addition to evaluation from elsewhere.

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will reignite massive questions concerning the affect of the billionaire class and the facility of know-how over our nationwide discourse.

This month, Musk was complaining that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder, had an excessive amount of energy, arguing that the way in which Meta was structured, “Mark Zuckerberg the 14th” would sometime be operating it.

Now Musk will personal Twitter outright as a personal firm. He’ll report back to himself. So if he decides to permit Donald Trump again on the platform — which looks like the elephant within the room — it is going to be Musk’s alternative and his alternative alone. (Trump has claimed he is not going to return, as a result of he desires to assist his personal social media platform.)

Washington is atwitter attempting to know Musk’s ideology. He’s a self-styled libertarian with out an ideology. However will not be having an ideology an ideology unto itself?

Musk has stated he desires extra “free speech” and fewer moderation on Twitter. What’s going to that imply in observe? Extra bullying? Extra lewd commentary and pictures? Extra misinformation?

Maybe a window into Musk’s strategy is a tweet he despatched on Friday making enjoyable of Invoice Gates with a crude reference to anatomy, as a strategy to get even with Gates, who had admitted to betting towards shares of Tesla.

Which raised this query: When conspiracy theorists falsely posted that Gates was paying to develop Covid vaccines to implant chips in individuals, Twitter down-ranked the content material and added fact-check notices. If Musk had been operating Twitter then, would he have left these posts as much as needle his nemesis?

The deal will give Musk monumental affect over politicians, celebrities and the media, with the flexibility to platform and de-platform them at will.

However some could have sway over him, too, in ways in which might distort what the general public sees on Twitter. For instance, Twitter has no presence in China. Musk does: An enormous chunk of Tesla’s progress depends on that nation. What occurs when Chinese language officers inform him to take away content material from Twitter that they discover objectionable?

Again right here within the U.S., Musk’s SpaceX enterprise depends, largely, on contracts with the Protection Division. His Tesla enterprise is in discussions with the U.S. authorities a couple of nationwide charging station infrastructure. His Boring Firm, which digs tunnels, depends on governments for contracts. If a politician that controls the purse strings for any of Musk’s corporations had been to publish misinformation, would Musk take away it?

There aren’t any solutions to those questions simply but. However we’ll discover out quickly. Probably on Twitter.

Christine Emba, The Washington Put up: “What we’ve got right here is an ideal instance of ‘peak billionaire’ — the flexibility of 1 fantastically wealthy individual to, with out accountability, make choices with doubtlessly life-changing ramifications for a lot of, many individuals — based mostly on nothing greater than their temper and their ridiculously deep pockets.”

Jessica J. González, CNN: “He has used the platform to discredit and disparage those that disagree with him, and he has lashed out at journalists who’ve written or produced issues he didn’t like. Additional, he has used the platform to sow doubt about Covid-19 vaccines.” (Musk doubted the necessity for a second dose final yr.)

Anand Giridharadas, The Occasions: “We’re going to must be taught to see by way of the fraudulent tales that elevate figures like Mr. Musk into heroes. We’re going to must legislate actual guardrails — maybe like these created by the European Union’s Digital Providers Act — on social media platforms which are too massive to entrust democracy to.”

The crowds are a bit thinner, and there are fewer mega-yachts, however the Venice Biennale stays “artwork’s most flamable combination of artistic minds, spectacular wealth and a worldwide tradition stumbling its approach towards the longer term,” Jason Farago writes in a evaluation.

The Biennale consists of a major exhibition of up to date artwork, together with greater than 90 pavilions the place international locations set up their very own reveals. This yr’s major present revolves round surrealism, cyborgism, and animal and plants, and nearly all of contributors are girls. It’s “a coherent and difficult present, whose optimistic imaginative and prescient of emancipation by way of creativeness feels very uncommon these days,” Jason writes.

Just a few highlights from the nationwide shows: Stan Douglas of Canada used pictures and video artwork to delve into the intersecting uprisings of 2011 (the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Avenue, the London riots). And Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, a Roma artist, created a 12-part tapestry stitched with imagery of Romani migration and on a regular basis life.

The pangrams from yesterday’s Spelling Bee had been burping and upbringing. Right here is at present’s puzzle — or you’ll be able to play on-line.

Right here’s at present’s Wordle. Right here’s at present’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Chap (5 letters).

In case you’re within the temper to play extra, discover all our video games right here.

Thanks for spending a part of your morning with The Occasions. See you tomorrow. — David

P.S. The Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe occurred 36 years in the past at present. The Soviet Union introduced it two days later.

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