Consider This from NPR - What Elon Musk's Twitter Bid Says About 'Extreme Capitalism'

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter. His vision of the future may not pan out for the platform, but that vision represents what historian Jill Lepore calls 'extreme capitalism.' Lepore, a Harvard professor and New Yorker writer, is host of the podcast The Evening Rocket, where she examines what she calls Musk's extravagant, "extreme" capitalism — where stock prices are driven by earnings, and also by fantasies. NPR's Bobby Allyn also explains Twitter's effort to prevent Musk from gaining control of the company. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Okay, so a billionaire wants to buy a company. Elon, welcome. What's the big deal? Well, I think it's very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech where all... Elon Musk appeared at last week's TED conference in Vancouver, where he was asked why he put a $43 billion offer on the table for Twitter. Musk said he wanted Twitter's code to be public. Also, he says he thinks Twitter has too many rules when it comes to what you get to say on the platform. The company has policies against certain forms of hate speech and

disinformation. And Musk thinks that users should be able to, quote, speak freely within the bounds of the law. Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square. So the thing is, it's not a town square where most people are. According to Pew Research, fewer than 30 percent of adults in the U.S. say they even use Twitter. And about that free speech argument? To allow all legal speech, you would have to allow all spam to stay up on the platform. You would have to allow all pornography to stay up on the platform, all forms of hate speech. It could make the platform functionally unusable. Kate Klonick with St. John's University in New York focuses on private governance of online speech. And Klonick told NPR that Musk's offer to buy Twitter underscores how when it comes to

speech on the internet today, money is power. What this moment is really showing us for a lot of people is that these private platforms are really susceptible to the power of capitalism. The fault lines that we expect to exist are being exposed. own and change Twitter is about promoting democracy, not about making money. But his offer to buy the platform arguably represents a particular style of capitalism, a style of capitalism that one historian calls extreme. I think it's a kind of unchecked capitalism that insists that the government really has no role in the regulation of economic activity. That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Monday, April 18th.

This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wyze app today or visit Wyze.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. So before he made an offer to buy Twitter entirely, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and other companies, had already bought a small part of Twitter in the form of stock. That purchase came earlier this month, but last week, Twitter came up with a plan to prevent Musk's share from getting much bigger. I spoke to NPR tech reporter Bobby Allen about what is going on. Hey, Elsa.

Okay, so how is Twitter trying to stop Musk? Yeah, so Twitter's board of directors introduced something known as a poison pill plan. Right now, Elon Musk owns like 9% of the company. But under this plan, if he or, you know, really anyone else tries to buy 15% or more of Twitter, this pill kicks in. And what happens then is, you know, Twitter stock would become available at a discount, basically flooding the market with really cheap Twitter stock. And, you know, for Elon Musk, that could mean the shares of Twitter that he now owns could be cut in half. And that, you know, would be a loss in the billions of dollars. I talked to a corporate governance expert, Edward Rock, about this. He's with NYU's law school.

The poison pill puts a temporary roadblock in front of Musk going forward, which gives the board a chance to evaluate the bid, whether it makes sense to sell the company, and if they are going to sell the company, whether it makes sense to sell the company to him. Yeah, in essence, it's a delaying tactic. It gives Twitter up to a year to figure out company to him. Yeah, in essence, it's a delaying tactic. It gives Twitter up to a year to figure out what to do. Okay, but is this poison pill strategy going to be enough

to actually end this bid from Musk, you think? Yeah, we don't know just yet. But also the larger question that we hear in Silicon Valley is, just how serious is Musk when he says he wants to buy Twitter? I mean, one really notable absence in the SEC paperwork that he submitted to try to acquire Twitter was how he plans to pay for it. The paperwork, you know, said that his bid hinges on the, quote,

completion of anticipated financing, right? A wee bit vague. I mean, as, you know, obviously the richest person in the world, he can probably figure out some way to buy Twitter for the $43 billion he says it's worth. But without any specifics, some people are like, is he making a legitimate investment decision or is he trolling us? Is this some elaborate Elon Musk joke? That's what I want to talk about. Can we just step back for a second and talk about why in the world Elon Musk would even want to own Twitter? What do you think his ultimate motivation is here?

Yeah, that's a good question. And the problem is he's kind of all over the place with exactly what his motivations are here. So we all know Musk is a very erratic person, and he's living up to that reputation here with this Twitter drama. He says he wants Twitter to be more of a free speech platform, not subject to what he calls censorship. He also says he wants more transparency around how Twitter's algorithm works. You know, why are some tweets demoted, some tweets promoted, sort of a glimpse into that process.

But look, Musk just courts controversy and tension everywhere he goes. This is a very influential piece of internet real estate. So I think he sees this as a chance to get bragging rights, a chance to stay in the headlines, and maybe a chance to troll all of us. a chance to stay in the headlines, and maybe a chance to troll all of us. Who knows? That is NPR's Bobby Allen. Thank you, Bobby. Thanks, Elsa.

So yeah, we don't know yet if the vision Elon Musk has for the future of Twitter will ever become a reality. Musk, of course, has a vision for the future of lots of other things, too, like spaceflight and driverless cars. And that vision, according to historian Jill Lepore, stems from the science fiction that Elon Musk grew up on. Science fiction that was full of stories about conquering space and saving humanity. But Lepore argues in her podcast, The Evening Rocket, that Elon Musk missed something about those stories and what they were trying to say about capitalism. Jill Lepore spoke to NPR's Daniel Estrin about what she's coined Muskism. So what is Muskism? I think of it as sort of an extreme, extravagant form of capitalism, really extraterrestrial capitalism. X is Musk's favorite letter of the alphabet, as it is of many science fiction fans. So X capitalism seems somehow also to fit.

How do you define extreme capitalism? capitalism that insists that the government really has no role in the regulation of economic activity at the practical level. I think at the cultural level, it really is engaged with selling the public on the idea of futurism as a way to impose economic conditions that come from the very deep past. I think of Muskism and its vision, colonizing Mars as dating from the age of imperialism, when British imperialists were colonizing countries around the world and science fiction writers like H.G. Wells were indicting British imperialism by telling stories about space colonies and how wrong that would be to take other people's land and enslave the people there. And for Musk, somehow you can resurrect those stories in order to justify colonization. So Muskism always has within it,

this extreme capitalism always has within it, almost a kind of ironic twist. Huh. Well, he is a big science fiction fan. You talk about that on your podcast, an early fascination with sci-fi like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. So how does his love of sci-fi translate into his vision of the future of technology? As a historian, one of the things I find so fascinating about Musk and Muskism is how much of the sort of fantasy of invention, especially disruptive innovation, remember that buzzword from the 90s, boasts itself as part of a culture of futurism. But so much of what the culture of Silicon Valley produces has its origins in science fiction, as I think a lot of those people would themselves recognize. But what they wouldn't see is that the origins in science fiction is actually origins in dystopian science fiction.

So what a lot of people like Musk and others celebrate as their great futurism is, for one thing, really has tremendously important origins in the past. And for another, what they celebrate as often utopian has origins in dystopianism. I mean, he's even been called a real-life Tony Stark, you know, from the Marvel Universe. I mean, does he see himself that way as a kind of almost like a real-life science fiction character? Does that impact the way he interacts with public life? Oh, I think there was a period in his life

when he was really into being Iron Man and being Tony Stark, and the press loved that, and he was on the cover of every magazine as, you know, he appeared in one of the Iron Man movies with Robert Downey Jr. So he has a kind of celebrity iconic status. I mean, he's the guy who was on SNL, right? And it's part of the boyishness that Musketeers really love about him, right? He can be very funny. He can be very witty online. He's extremely smart guy. And there's a playfulness around that. One of the things that's distinctive about Musk, and in the sense that he's the best at this, is depicting your product as saving humanity.

This also became a thing in Musk's really early years. So even the Twitter bid in Musk's language is somehow about saving civilization. Well, let's get to the Twitter bit in a second. But I just want to speak seriously for a second because he has this large group of passionate fans, the Musketeers, as you call them. I mean, in my own family, just this weekend, a relative of mine, we were speaking about models of leadership and what leaders we admire. And my cousin mentioned Elon Musk. And I have another cousin in Ukraine who, out of the blue, said to me, I thank Elon Musk for helping provide Starlink internet access in Ukraine during the war. So what is it about him that you think fascinates people so much and makes them buy into that vision of almost saving humanity? Well, I think Musk presents himself as a messiah. I think that Musk especially appeals,

at least in my universe of talking to people, to people who are really kind of geeking out in engineering as someone who is daring and courageous, maybe a little restless. I mean, I think since Trump's removal from Twitter, Musk, who had been on Twitter for a long time with large numbers of followers, kind of really became that kind of love-hate Twitter account. So let's talk about Elon Musk on Twitter and wanting to own Twitter. He wants Twitter to be more like a public town square. He often tweets about his political views, but it's very hard to pinpoint where exactly he is politically. He's called COVID-19 lockdowns fascist, but he has also resigned from former

President Trump's business councils after the Trump administration pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. So what do you think, based on what you've learned about him, what do you think he'd want to do with Twitter if he bought it? So I think Musk's politics are elusive for a reason. And I think the best way to discover them is to look at what he says about science fiction. Musk grew up in South Africa under apartheid and left to avoid serving in the military that enforced that regime. He left when he was 17. But his favorite book as a child was Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which he cites almost as a kind of guide for living, his kind of Bible. But the Hitchhiker's Guide, which was a radio play put out by BBC Radio 4,

is actually an indictment of luxury capitalism. I mean, Douglas Adams had on his typewriter a sticker that said, end apartheid. Like he wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in order to indict systems of vast income inequality where whole groups of people had no political authority whatsoever. So I think, you know, to try to deduce what Musk is looking for and attempting to buy Twitter, you'd be well advised to look for evidence of other public spirited activity. I mean, he objectively, I guess what he would say and has said, he needs to take over Twitter in order to save civilization. But where's the evidence that Musk has ever really been interested

in democratic discourse? He routinely trolls people online. He's had an often adversarial relationship to the free press. He doesn't think that someone as wealthy as he is should have to pay taxes. As you say, during the pandemic, he tweeted free America now and described the lockdown and various shutdowns as fascist. There's just really not a whole lot of evidence that his big priority is healthy, democratic society. So I think you could probably set aside the sort of wrapping on that package and ask yourself, what is it that he really wants, aside from more attention from Twitter? That was historian Jill Lepore. There is a link to her podcast, The Evening Rocket, in our episode notes. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang.