Elon Musk’s Mysterious Investment In Twitter Is a Happy Rejection of Victimhood

As most readers are aware by now, last week Elon Musk went public with his purchase of over 9% of Twitter. The $3 billion buy makes him the company’s largest shareholder.

Members of the Right cheered Musk’s decision; one that was said to be rooted in Musk’s worry that prominent social media sites were increasingly hostile to free speech. Conservatives in particular have protested what they deemed their muzzling on sites like Twitter. Their protests haven’t elevated them.

For one, they’ve spoken to a growing embrace of victimhood on the Right. While conservatives have historically called for individuals to take care of themselves, and not place the blame for their plight on others, it’s more and more the case that conservatives are pointing fingers. “Twitter cancelled me,” “Facebook banned me for my political views,” and “How can we compete if CNN is reporting in such biased fashion?”, or “We would have won the 2020 presidential election if the New York Times hadn’t ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story.” The whining and victimhood is so very much beneath the Right, and its history.

Think back to Ronald Reagan. As USA Today reported in the early 2000s, when Reagan ran for re-election in 1984 his media coverage was over 90% negative. Please keep in mind that the biased reporting happened in a media environment that was quite a bit smaller. Figure that there was no Rush Limbaugh then, no Internet, no Fox News, not much in the way of talk radio in general. Instead of being a victim, Reagan talked over his critics. And won. 49 states to 1. Yet now conservatives complain incessantly that Twitter, Facebook et al don’t like them. Waaaah.

Worse, it gives the impression of a growing conservative desire for affirmative action. Does anyone remember the Facebook summit several years ago when Mark Zuckerberg et al hosted various prominent conservatives names given the desire of the Right to get more favorable treatment on Facebook? How very embarrassing it all was. Since when do conservatives believe in preferential treatment? Why does Facebook have to emphasize the views of the Right on its platform if that’s not the natural instinct of its employees? Force is bad.

At which point the whining about “Big Tech” in concert with calls by conservatives for Washington to neuter the biggest players speaks to flamboyant economic illiteracy. In other words, the call by the Right to shrink or break up “Big Tech” presumes that the present of technology reflects the future of technology; that the powers of the moment represent a frontier beyond which there is no advance. More realistically, the existence of powerful, well-capitalized technology/social media firms in the present is the surest sign that the future of technology will look nothing like the here and now. In short, the technology powers of tomorrow will almost assuredly not be the players of today.

How we know the above is true has to do with the basic truth that soaring valuations born of near-term “market power” are a magnet for investors seeking the immense returns that will most certainly result from toppling today’s giants. If you seek change at the top of the technology pyramid whereby the giants of today will be replaced tomorrow, leave today’s giants alone. The capital and wealth they produce will beget enormous competition that will eventually result in the players of today being pushed aside. Conservatives should know this. While force is bad, competitive markets are good.

After which, didn’t they formerly believe in property rights? As in didn’t they formerly believe that owners of private entities were free to control activity on their property? What about “No shirt, no shoes, no service”? Wasn’t and isn’t the latter a metaphor for something bigger? If a business owner would prefer to not host my views, then so be it. This is a conservative view. Or at least it was.

Which is a crucial reason why Musk’s move is so encouraging. Hopefully conservatives know why it is. Supposedly unhappy with how Twitter is operating, Musk is using his own money to hopefully bring about change. Amen. This is how it should be done.

Is Musk a member of the Right? There are varying views here. The main thing is that Right or Left, Musk is teaching the Right how to act, or how it used to act. Don’t like what’s happening in private commerce, put your money to work. Rupert Murdoch is instructive here. Aware of how conservatives weren’t getting a fair shake from the media, Murdoch didn’t whine; instead he took a monumental risk on Fox News.

All of which brings up the mysterious aspect of Musk’s Twitter investment. He has a history of pursuing entrepreneurial visions that have an impossible quality to them. Put another way, Musk has a history of taking us places we’ve never been. Which raises the question of why Twitter? Given its $30 billion market cap, Twitter is already established. Which means it’s likely not the future of social media, assuming social media is the future of communication.

As opposed to investing in what’s already an established mode of communication, it seems Musk would be the kind to invent an all new way. This explains the surprise, but that may be the point. It’s possible that with Twitter, Musk has visions for it that have nothing to do with the present, and little to do with how we envision what Twitter is and what it could be. Let’s hope. Musk is about big leaps that improve life immensely, not improvement of what’s already known.

Whatever the answer, Musk’s intrepid investment should be cheered. What a great lesson. When we want something, let’s put our wealth to work as opposed to running to Washington for help.