The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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So Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion in what he says is an attempt to open the platform up to free speech and reduce the influence of censorship and cancel culture on the platform, as a significant shareholder he thinks that it is heading a bad direction and wants to steer it in a different direction, threatening to dump his stock otherwise as a bad investment which would tank their share value, and I have to say I agree with him here.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...-absolutist-elon-musk-would-transform-twitter

How ‘free speech absolutist’ Elon Musk would transform Twitter
Analysis: Musk’s past musings about Twitter show desire to reshape essence of its business model

Last week Elon Musk, in his characteristically antic manner, tweeted a series of suggestions for improving Twitter after he was revealed to have become its largest individual shareholder. They ranged from asking if the site’s HQ should be turned into a homeless shelter to whether advertising should be removed from the platform’s premium service.

Many of these tweets were subsequently deleted, including one sharing a meme depicting the attorney Saul Goodman from the series Breaking Bad with the words: “In all fairness your honor, my client was in ‘goblin mode.’”

Whether Musk was being mischievous or not at the time – it’s hard to tell with the world’s richest person – we have to take those tweets very seriously now that he has offered $43bn (£33bn) to buy the microblogging site.

Given Twitter’s pivotal role in shaping the news and political agenda on both sides of the Atlantic, its ownership is a sensitive issue, particularly if it is about to be placed in the hands of an entrepreneur with a $260bn fortune. Not only is Musk one of the site’s most popular accounts with 81.6 million followers, he is the CEO of two companies – the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket firm SpaceX – that intersect with the regulatory and political spheres.

“The Beltway and EU will have a field day with this,” said Dan Ives of the US investment firm Wedbush Securities. “Musk owning Twitter is a nightmare for many and this will go through regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the pond.” Nonetheless, Ives doesn’t see rival bidders trumping Musk’s $54.20-a-share bid. Musk has a lot of money and a 9.2% stake, giving him a strong position as the Twitter board – which he declined to join at the weekend – ponders its next move.

Change is on the cards if he succeeds. Musk said in a letter to the board on Thursday that Twitter is “the platform for free speech around the world” but cannot achieve this “societal imperative” in its current form and “needs to be transformed as a private company”.

His main concern appears to be with Twitter’s moderation policies. In March he tweeted a poll asking users whether the site adhered to the principle of free speech. “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy,” he said. “What should be done?” He has declared himself a “free speech absolutist” and, in that context, the Twitter-banned former US president Donald Trump must be hoping Musk’s bid succeeds.

 

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Are "left wing media" in a melt down about it?

As I understand it he's probably going to be rather constrained by the deal he made with the SEC when he broke the law on insider trading or whatever it was he did a few years back (the main reason he couldn't be a member of Twitters board IIRC).

Yeah, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, etc. ranting about how "frightened" they were, and how all the money should go feeding the homeless etc.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/busi...-business/video/playlists/business-elon-musk/

Centrist media covered how absurd some of the analogies were likening Musk to Putin.

Right wing media tended to be ok with it as well, with Fox News mocking some of the doomsday claims.

Twitter executives are in a frantic attempt to stop it.

https://news.sky.com/story/twitter-...efend-against-elon-musk-takeover-bid-12591122

Twitter adopts 'poison pill' strategy to defend against Elon Musk takeover bid

 

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If anyone believes Musk would end content moderation they are sadly mistaken.

Probably, but it's hard to imagine to situation getting much worse.

 

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It will just end up like Gab or Parlour, a toxic echo chamber that is only used by those people who want their views reinforced

The implication there is that this isn't already the case.

 

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Who is it then.

Watch CNN and MSNBC and decide, the right wing media like Fox are utterly gleeful by comparison that Musk is trying to do this.

 

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If both sides are being accused of crying harder about it its just another event trying to be abused as something to bash the others with.

Quite, the main stream media response is pretty one sided, but random conspiracy theorists on twitter or forums isn't much of a metric of the public opinion. Most of whom don't care one way or the other.

 

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TBH I'm not sure he really wants to buy it - just put them under a lot of pressure to change certain aspects, some of which people have been asking for and they've not been very receptive towards.

One of which is increased transparency so they can't hide algorithmic censorship which is a pretty basic thing to ask for!

 

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So Musk would be totally OK with his employees organising a union through twitter if he owned it?

Not sure what that has to do with censorship?

 

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No it isn't. The right wing media are desperate for this to happen just so Trump can have his account reinstated.

That pretty much agrees with me then, the right wing media are gleeful while the left are melting down.

 

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are the "left" melting down?

I think all that's been said is that Musk may find it hard due to his legal issues around his previous use of Twitter and the fact the main shareholders of Twitter don't want him in charge, or saying he'll probably be a disaster for it.

That's not exactly having a "melt down".

I already responded to you in post 3.

 

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Not hording ridiculous sums of money and buying super yachts worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and instead living a reasonably modest lifestyle and helping communities?

Helping communities doesn't mean forgoing extravagances like yachts. The two are not mutually exclusive.

That being said, Musk has received so much tax money for all his failed business ventures that it's criminal.

 

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then get every western country to do a pact that no one can earn more than 100X minimum wage then everyone would have to be paid more in order for the elites to get a raise.

doesn't stop people who own their own company taking out dividends though or whatever

When I worked in the private sector, directors would generally pay themselves less than the minimum wage, just the personal allowance so they paid 0 income tax and then would pay the rest in dividends because the corporation tax rate was much lower. We need to fix the loopholes before we have any hope of making the tax system fairer.

IIRC back in the 70's and early 80's the top rate for tax in the US hit something like 70% once you went over something like a million a year.

And this was back before a lot a lot of the current loopholes and exclusions were in place.

Something a lot of people in the US seem to be unware of, is that higher taxes for the "super rich" used to be something that both Democrats and Republican parties tended to agree on, the same with a lot of what the current Republican party like to call "radical left" policies (it's slightly telling that a lot of what used to be considered very hardline Republicans in the 00's are now considered "Rino's" by a lot of the current Republican hardliners).

Back in the 20s under Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge the income tax rate was obscene. When it was massively reduced by them tax revenues from the rich actually increased substantially to the point the government had a tax surplus. Shows how a libertarian philosophy towards equal tax rates actually works better than a progressive tax system.

 

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An honest debate over what the government should and shouldn't pay for is impossible when the majority can vote separate and unequal tax rates on the minority, and then use revenue generated from that discrimination to expand the size and scope of government for their own benefit.

When you can vote for someone else to cary a disproportionate portion of the burden, it's easy to argue that the government should do all manner of things "for the greater good."

Most modern societies have come to the realization that discriminating against people based on their race is wrong, (feel-good "Affirmative Action" schemes not withstanding) but it appears we have not yet addressed the seemingly envy-driven discrimination based on different economic classes.

Agreed, progressive tax systems create a divisive us vs them mentality whereas flat tax systems have a unifying affect because everyone is affected by tax changes equally.

 

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To address the "Poor people need their money more." argument, I would propose a flat sales tax with a "prebate" check sent for every man woman and child to cover the taxes on the amount of money people "need".

So, if we decide individuals "need" 20k per year to live on, the government sends out a check at the beginning of the year to cover the taxes on 20k.

Now no one pays taxes on the money they "need" to live on.

With that objection off the table, and everyone paying their proportional burden of the cost of government, lets talk about the size and scope of government with the understanding that we can't just dump the bill in someone else's lap.

I like this aproach because it's self-leveling. As the prebate increases, the sales tax (on everyone) increases. -Same goes for government programs.

The urge to set the "need" level above one's own income level is counterbalanced by the resulting increase on the sales tax.

Basically a negative income tax system of sorts, I think a less radical approach that might be more readily accepted would be a large personal allowance.

Bonkers that we charge income tax on people earning minimum wage only to pay them back in tax credits imo.

 

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Thats exactly why we don't have flat rate systems... because taxes don't affect people equally. You could tax someone earning £5m/year at 90% and they would still take home £500,000/year and live a very very nice life. If you taxed someone on £100,000 at 90% they would be on the streets.

It should be an us vs them mentality when it comes to the rich vs the poor because the rich are the people that make the laws and dictate how the world is run and who it benefits. The rich cannot be trusted to do this. When you consider how much wealth there is in the world and how few people it sits with and then you consider how many people are barely surviving that should tell you something is very wrong.

America is feeling this and so are a lot of first world countries. They saw their parents live good lives on normal salaries and now they are seeing poverty even when they have far better jobs and both partners working. Something is broken and the fact that the wealthy are wealthier than ever might give you a hint as to where a lot of that money has gone.

Creating a class divide and arguably legally discriminating against a group of people based on wealth is a terrible and unethical thing to do.

Your example is ridiculous because we would not be taxing people 90% and the personal allowance would be large enough that everyone could live a good lifestyle before being taxed, the system we have is perverse.

 

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Are you serious here? You think that the current tax system is creating a class divide whereas a flat tax rate would unite the people. Thats genuinely laughable. The gap between rich and poor is getting larger by the day. While millions struggled through COVID the rich just got richer. The have are leeching off the have nots who cannot afford things like buying a house so they have to rent and fill someone elses pockets with what little money they do have.

I don't even know where to start on the idea that its discriminatory towards a group of people based on their wealth. The whole world discriminates against the poor if you want to go down that route.

It exacerbates an existing polarising political divide, because you have the rich who want to protect their income vs the poor who mostly just seem to hate the rich all voting against each other as teams on a single issue of the higher tax rate instead of just agreeing on a single tax rate or UBI and focusing on the far more serious issues affecting the country.

It was a silly number to make the point that taxing poor people the same as rich people is in no way fair. Not even a little bit. If anything we should be taxing the rich even more than we are. We should 100% be fixing all the loopholes they use to avoid paying the amount they should be. Perhaps that would be a good start.

I think it's inherently unfair to treat people unequally under the law.

 

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It is an incredibly stupid idea.

I guess you know you've won the argument when this is the level of debate...

But people wouldn't be treated unequally, the same rules apply to everyone. If a poor person becomes wealthy then they would also pay the higher rate of tax.

A progressive society should absolutely have taxation rates based on people's ability to pay.

It is unequal treatment, you're treating different classes of people differently. Like if you taxed people based on sex, you can legally change gender if you want, doesn't make it ok.

Yes we should have a tax system based on peoples ability to pay and a flat tax with a large personal allowance accomplishes that, so does a negative income tax, a far more "progressive" idea than the mess we have which is the politics of envy.

 

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It's not unequal, the same rules apply to everyone, that's the literal definition of equality. Your income is not an immutable characteristic, it changes over time, so different rates will apply to people at different times.

Wealthier people are able to pay greater amounts of tax and should do so. I'm a higher rate tax payer and happy to pay more. This isn't the politics of envy, rather it's the opposite of what you propose, the politics of greed.

"Immutable" characteristics is a poor and outdated vision of equality, rooted in identity politics, many protected characteristics such like religion are not immutable, and gender is often not considered such any more (certainly not legally anyway), over time they become more and more mutable, so it's not a good fundamental principle to base equality on.

What matters is holding everyone to the same standard, what you propose holds different people to different standards and is not really progressive, it's a failed model of taxation and it's long overdue that we reform it to something fairer, the top 10% of taxpayers pay something like 50% of this countries income tax and under a flat tax this would still be the same really.

 

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It is so stupid there is nothing more to add. It's like arguing that water isnt wet or the sun isnt hot or the world isn't round.

Some ideas and arguments don't warrant any serious debate.

So stupid that leading economists advocate for it, and other countries have adopted it and moved away from "progressive" income tax systems...

Obviously something serious is going on in your personal life for you to react in such a hostile way, so I'll just leave it there.

 

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Counties that have a flat rate.


List of counties that had a flat rate but recently moved to progressive rate

Yes we're all familiar with the wikipedia tables thanks.

There seems to be some economic illiteracy here based on some responses, a flat tax means one tax rate on income in addition to 0%, it does not literally mean everyone paying say 40% of their income or whatever on everything they earn. No one in this discussion has suggested such a system so why people are saying that is a stupid idea idk.

Flat taxes can be implemented in the form of a large personal allowance so people at the bottom are much better off, which is what I suggested the UK moves to, or a negative income tax for example which replaces the benefit system so helps the poorest in society and reduces administrative costs while treating everyone above the tax threshold equally, how anyone can be against a system that literally benefits everyone is beyond my understanding, except for people arguing based on the politics of envy.