Does Elon Musk Have a Right to Destroy Twitter?You break it, you...

Does Elon Musk Have a Right to Destroy Twitter?

You break it, you own it. That’s what I was told as a child. But for today’s billionaires, it seems like the opposite is true.

“You own it, you can break it” — at least if you’re rich enough. 

Just look at Elon Musk.

He paid a fortune for Twitter and is now busily destroying it — firing half its employees and driving out even more, causing chaos on the platform, making advertisers flee, and threatening bankruptcy.

Or consider Sam Bankman-Fried, who became a billionaire after founding the popular cryptocurrency exchange FTX — until he drove the company into bankruptcy.

Seems FTX was a Ponzi scheme that got out of hand. At least $1 billion in customer funds is reportedly missing.

These billionaires are presumed to be free from responsibility because they own what they’ve had a hand in destroying. So under the rules of capitalism, they have a right to do whatever they want with their money. Right?

Wrong. Millions have come to rely on Twitter as a vital source of information and connection.  Investors put their money — and trust — in FTX. These people aren’t mere collateral damage. They’re bearing a big part of the cost.

“You own it, you can break it” is a careless norm for a complex society.

Do we really think that the super-wealthy should be allowed to control so much wealth and wield so much influence?

Absolutely not. We need stronger laws protecting the rest of us from the recklessness of these so-called “disruptors.”

Robert Reich

This is from Robert Reich’s blog, www.robertreich.org. He is professor of public policy at Berkeley, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, and author of 13 books, the most recent of which is “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future.”