On The Job Elon Musk, Twitter, and why billionaires are a bad idea
When the world was in the depths of this gruesome pandemic, the world's billionaires were carrying on like it wasn't happening.
The likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos were pursuing their pet projects, firing themselves into space, titling crypto-currency markets off their axis at a whim, and acting like they didn't have a care in the world.
Recently, Musk has stepped up his narcissistic indulgences, launching a hostile takeover bid for one of the world's biggest and most influential social media platforms, Twitter. At the same time, the Tesla founder has been playing footsy with the libertarian/alt-right, blabbing on about freedom of speech, and promising to unleash the dogs of hate speech and misinformation back onto the platform.
Is it healthy that one individual can amass such outsized wealth and influence whilst tens of millions of people struggle to make a living? What is the danger that the billionaire class poses to the health of our societies?
John L. Campbell is a sociologist and economist at Dartmouth University in New Hampshire in the United States. He's been writing about these very issues. John joins us on this week's pod.
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