I believe there are two reasons for this. The first is that the world of social networking employs a theory known as preferential attachment. The tendency of the rich to get richer applies not only to money, but also to the abilities of the people they connect with. To attract more attention. Second, I believe that great wealth uniquely protects the wealthy from the consequences of their speech. All gasoline, no brakes.
The Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which declared political spending a protected form of free speech, began as a legal decision, but a number of news organizations, including X and Sinclair, is increasingly becoming a cultural norm. Broadcast groups have wealthy owners, some of whom are happy to take a distinctly pragmatic approach to making their politics the politics of the platforms they own. .
And wealthy people are also more insulated from the consequences of what they say. Self-employed billionaires like Mr. Ackman, Mr. Musk, and Mr. Trump are protected by extreme wealth and can say whatever they want on social media without fear of financial or political repercussions. You can't fire them, and even if you could, it wouldn't affect their lives in any way.
Although our society likes to claim that everyone has the same right to free speech, it is a privilege reserved for only a small number of Americans. Even if it was once true, it is no longer true. A few profanity words spread publicly can get you fired from your job without any recourse, or fired, or both, or worse. Just ask Dr. Gay at Harvard University or Elizabeth McGill at the University of Pennsylvania. She too came under fire for statements about campus anti-Semitism in Congress (as did Dr. Gay and Dr. Kornbluth) and other putative falsehoods, and recently resigned from her provost position. Paz, or Yao Yue, a Twitter employee whom Musk fired after publicly criticizing his reinstatement order.
Mr. Ackman, an activist investor notorious on Wall Street for relentlessly and openly agitating for his desired outcomes, acknowledges his unique position. Ackman admitted this in a Jan. 12 CNBC interview. he could lose his job. He could be blackballed. It may be canceled. ” he added. I'm not afraid of being canceled or losing my job. Being financially independent gives you more room to speak out. ” He considers himself a fixer, and he sees no difference between an activist campaign to “fix” a company and an activist campaign to “fix” a university. “It's all the same,” he said. He sees no irony in the fact that the wise men said this. Gays, McGills, and Kornbluths do not have similar privileges. He sparked another major controversy over X by defending his wife, a former MIT professor, against accusations of plagiarism laid out in a series of Business Insider articles.
