Robert Reich
Elon Musk (worth $271 billion) and Jeff Bezos (worth $262 billion) — the richest and second-richest people on the planet — are now showing America why it’s dangerous to have great wealth concentrated in so few hands.
In August 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post for $250 million. On Friday, just as the Post was preparing to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president, Bezos stopped the paper from doing so.
Partly as a result, the Post has already lost 250,000 subscribers, or 10 percent of its subscriber base.
In October 2022, Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billon, turned it into X, and became its biggest user, with 202 million followers.
Musk has endorsed Trump — and weaponized the platform into a supporter of Trump, smeared Harris, and amplified rumors and conspiracy theories.
Independent analysts such as Edison Research said in March that X’s usage in the United States dropped 30 percent since last year. Fidelity this month estimated that X’s value has plunged by about 80 percent since Musk’s takeover.
Why have these two oligarchs been willing to take actions that cause so many of their customers to jump ship? What’s the connection between Bezos’s preventing the Post from endorsing Harris and Musk’s weaponizing X for Trump?
Here’s a hint:
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