Naturally, there are many on the left who will want him to fail.
Naturally, there are many on the left who will want him to fail.
I t is not an exaggeration to say that the future of civilization is hanging in the balance and that Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter — or failure to do so — represents a potentially significant turning point.
In my book The Drift, I synthesize almost a hundred years of scholarship by men as diverse as Joseph Schumpeter and Marshall McLuhan and argue that our society is trapped in a well-organized drift toward socialism. Incredibly, Schumpeter described this drift with uncanny accuracy almost a hundred years ago. He argued that as our capitalist society became wealthier and wealthier, an increasing number of our citizens would receive higher education from universities that are inherently socialist entities. Students would be indoctrinated to believe that capitalism is evil and that anyone who claims otherwise is too. In Schumpeter’s view, socialism was inevitable because, over time, the socialist priests would gradually take control of the media and eventually determine political outcomes by curating what we see in favor of their own ideology. The New York Times, for instance, would control what qualifies as “respectable” and defenders of free markets would see their reputations destroyed if they dared to buck socialist orthodoxy.
But McLuhan saw the Internet coming and understood that it would fundamentally alter society because it would undermine the influence of the curators of our media. The Internet, in other words, would be one giant competition for attention, which would be as disruptive to the liberal elites as the printing press was to the church. The problem with this development, though, is that the curators would resent their lost influence and begin to recognize that if they organized inattention — that is, acquired the skill to make sure that citizens cannot see content the elites don’t want them to see — then they could regain control.
That, of course, explains exactly the world we live in today. We are in the advanced Internet age McLuhan foresaw: Thoughts and people that disagree with the socialist academic elites are erased from view. Twitter, of course, has become an important part of our public square, and it has been at the very center of these efforts to erase conservatives from the conversation, while lionizing and defending liberals. There are the well-known examples, such as kicking Donald Trump off the platform altogether, to quieter but constant suppression of news inconsistent with the objectives of the Left.
Recall one of the best-known examples. When the New York Post published the Hunter Biden laptop story in the fall of 2020, Twitter stopped every single user from linking to the article or even messaging their friends about it. If you tried to tweet the link to the piece, the tweet was erased and you received the chilling message, “Your tweet couldn’t be sent because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Harmful to whom, you might ask? Joe Biden and the Left, of course. Even though it may not have been decisive, there is no question that the suppression of this story influenced the election.
Which brings us to Elon Musk. From missions to Mars, to thoughtful discussion of whether we are living in a Matrix-like computer simulation, he has established himself as an outside-the-box thinker who is attentive to the macro trends driving the future of civilization. The fact is, the socialist purgatory that Schumpeter envisioned will be the inevitable equilibrium we will reach if liberals are able to erase conservatives from the public square. It is essential that the Internet sustain and nurture a competition for attention, which will allow those with competing ideas to challenge one another.
If Musk is successful at helping the Internet transcend the current state of organized inattention by acquiring Twitter, then he will stop the Drift in its tracks.
Naturally, there are many on the left who will want him to fail. His success, in any case, is far from a sure thing. But as the Twitter board contemplates the best way to hold on to its power over society, Musk will always have another option. While Twitter doubtless has massive first-mover advantage, Musk could pursue the alternative strategy of acquiring Twitter’s users without the platform itself. He has stated publicly that he has a back-up plan. Perhaps it is this: He could start a competing platform and pay users, say, $100 to sign up and use it. That amount could be renewed in the future if users continue to use the new site. Such a move would likely create a new equilibrium, with Twitter sufficiently challenged and its new uncensored twin supporting a vibrant public conversation. Internet valuations being what they are, this approach might even cost less than buying Twitter itself.
In other words, those who oppose the Drift have more hope than ever.