Hacker News Reader

Comment by khazhoux | Hacker News Reader

What most troubles me about this whole ordeal: The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation by an individual means that a single person can eventually directly control enough funds to simply decide one day to buy one of the world's largest communication channels.

No one here seems to have a problem with this. For as much as the tech community generally despises generational-wealth families like the Waltons, or foreign oligarchs, or Saudi royalty who get free unlimited money and power from the ground, we're all perfectly comfortable with an executive amassing ever-increasing power like a giant Katamari ball.

A democracy can vote out a leader who grows corrupt or ineffective. But the power of Elon (and Zuck, and the other modern mega-billionaires) is effectively unstoppable. Bill Gates, e.g., still sits at the top of the money-power pile, even though his own success peaked 25 years ago.

View on HN

In what way do you believe the powerful people you've cited have negatively effected you personally (i.e. restricted your freedom, etc.)?

I personally can't come up with anything (at least nothing negative). If anything, many of them have made the world much better (on balance). Yes, even the Saudis. Oil is the lifeblood of the modern world. Yes, we need to rapidly transition to renewable energy. But oil is still king.

> But the power of Elon (and Zuck, and the other modern mega-billionaires) is effectively unstoppable.

This is a very significant exaggeration. Just go look at what Xi has done to the tech titans in China if you doubt it. Jack Ma was placed under house arrest until he bent the knee. Violence and the legal monopoly thereof >> everything other form of power.

> In what way do you believe the powerful people you've cited have negatively effected you personally (i.e. restricted your freedom, etc.)?

That's not my criteria for how much power one should be allowed to wield. (whether they've wielded it against me or not)

> If anything, many of them have made the world much better (on balance). Yes, even the Saudis. Oil is the lifeblood of the modern world.

We should hardly forgive the Saudis for their human-rights violations because they "made the world a better place" by generously sharing their oil.

> Just go look at what Xi has done to the tech titans in China if you doubt

You're right, a corrupt authoritarian government can crack down on the mega-rich (another example: Putin took the oligarchs' extreme wealth, and redistributed it to himself).

> That's not my criteria for how much power one should be allowed to wield.

I'm merely pointing out that their power is probably not as great as you fear ("unstoppable").

> We should hardly forgive the Saudis for their human-rights violations

And yet we (China, U.S., Germany, Japan, etc.) have been for decades. In other words, many societies have made that bargain.

> a corrupt authoritarian government can crack down on the mega-rich

Disagree. Any entity (i.e. a government) having a monopoly on violence can crack down on tech companies and/or the mega-rich. If you can be arrested, your power can be curtailed.

To put all of this in perspective, and to tie it back to your original comment, Twitter is smaller than Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snap, WeChat, Sina Weibo, Telegram, etc. It's smaller than Pinterest. This is nothing like a dystopian scenario in which the rich and powerful are all-powerful. It's not even on the level of, say, a Russian oligarch. Rather, it is a very rich individual (made so by his skill as an innovator and capital allocator) buying a relatively small and stagnant social network.

"No one here seems to have a problem with this." That is not true. A true statement is "Not enough people seems to have a problem with this." The American political system is setup so one vote is not equal so those with more voting power can win with fewer votes. I would argue that a majority care about these issues and would like to fix it, but the votes of the minority count more. Look at the US Senate and count the number of people each senator represents. The electoral college guarantees inequality in votes for the president.

Not sure what you want to do about this. In our system, every governmental action to ease poverty and spur economic activity has a knock-on effect of increasing the wealth of the 1%, and every wealth redistribution action has the effect of decreasing non-governmental economic activity making the middle-class more poor and forcing people already on the margins into poverty.

Human beings need to be less lazy in switching communication platforms. It used to cost money to change cable subscriptions. It costs nothing to switch to a new platform, except for small businesses who rely on their presence online. For individual conversations, just switch. Not a big deal. It's fairly easy. The problem is lazy competitors who don't do what they need to make their services as easy to access as Twitter. Invest up front, offer a free, low barrier way for people to share the content they want to share and in the format they prefer. Boom.

Agree with all your points and I share your concerns. If this deal goes through, I'll cancel my (almost completely unused) Twitter account. It's not much, but it's more than nothing.

Nobody is forced to use Twitter. You don't get to vote against Elon, but you can simply stop using the service. On the other hand, you have no option to stop using your government, short of moving to a different country.

The billionaires you mention can only remain powerful as long as they can convince people to willingly hand over money in exchange for the goods and services they provide. They don't get to collect taxes at the point of a gun or simply print money the way the government does.

Over twenty years ago. Veritably ancient.

Perhaps the reason why people are more troubled by the Waltons (family net worth: $238B) than Gates ($132B) is that the Walton wealth is multi-generational and Gates' is not (so far). Though I think that as long as the Waltons keep spreading their money out among an every increasing number of descendants, it mostly takes care of itself.

The idea is that they have control over how and where they invest their money. If they make stupid decisions, they lose that wealth. So you still have some checks and balances there.

We do have the ability to enact laws to reduce power though. E.g. the antitrust laws that limited JP Morgan at a certain point.

Noam Chomsky would say - have you being paying attention? In a “capitalist society” the real power lies with the rich. The clue is in the name.

The political leaders are controlled by the rich, because they rely on their money, so your idea that the people can vote for a better politician is incorrect - nearly all the time, the winning candidates are essentially chosen by the rich.

That’s Chomsky anyway, I’m reading him at the moment, but it’s hard to argue against.

I've never read Chomsky (*).

Ironically, the same double-standard we apply tech billionaires vs Saudis/Waltons, etc, also exists when it comes to campaign funding. The same people who decry money in politics, are overjoyed when their candidate is outraises the opposition.

(*) In part because I don't want to be that guy that's always quoting Chomsky :-) "The last Toy Story movie was clearly nothing more than manufactured consent!"

This has already happened.

The wealthy elite want people frothing at the mouth over identity / social issues so nobody notices how much money they are stealing and how much toxic sludge they are polluting our environment with.

All of our mass media news is owned by one oligarch or another. That is why CNN only talks about Trump and Fox News only talks about whatever controversy-de-jour is going on for the day.

> Bill Gates, e.g., still sits at the top of the money-power pile, even though his own success peaked 25 years ago.

Bill Gates made 3X more money after his retirement by doing nothing than what he made through working at Microsoft 12-16 hours a day for 35 years. All hail capitalism!

Even if this deal goes through, Elon Musk will still own much less media than several other billionaires do. He's scarcely on the leading edge of this trend.

> The lack of upper limits on wealth accumulation ... But the power of Elon (and Zuck, and the other modern mega-billionaires) is effectively unstoppable

You're conflating two relatively unrelated things - when systems are put in place to limit wealth accumulation, there are not only still people whose power is effectively unstoppable, they're far, far more dangerous than Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg ever will be.

I hear what you're saying, but on the other hand, it's because of people like Elon Musk, the Saudi Royalty, and dozens of other wealthy individuals and funds that many of us even have high paying jobs at a number of high profile tech companies.

Seriously? Anyone can just not use their product. Did you feel this way when NewsCorp bought MySpace?

Yes, an individual can protest in this fashion, but that doesn't negate the unchecked influence Twitter has and the GP's concerns over how the rich and powerful are able to acquire this influence without any limit. It's a good point about NewsCorp, but I think the world has changed considerably since the MySpace purchase happened.

My point is not at all actually about Twitter itself. It's simply this: once an individual amasses a certain billions of dollars in wealth, their power is effectively permanent for the rest of their (and our) lifetimes. And that power --concentrated into the hands of a few individuals-- is enormous. I claim that his is "not ok."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com