Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect Elon Musk's hostile $54.20 per share Twitter takeover, contrasting his free speech promises with fears of billionaire media consolidation. They expose how Saudi princes and European central banks already influence the platform, debunking libertarian claims of a pure free market while criticizing progressive hypocrisy over sustainable energy support. Ultimately, the discussion suggests Musk's acquisition may merely force a conversation amidst looming DOJ and SEC investigations, revealing that social media censorship is a entrenched regime rather than a simple corporate choice. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Overreach and Big Problems00:15:12
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, aka the King of the Caulks, aka COVID Jesus, aka.
I don't know.
We need some new ones.
Shit, there's got to be others.
Whatever.
That'll do for now.
What's up, brother?
How are you?
I'm pleased to say that the Reno comedy show has nearly sold out and chair negotiations are going well.
So I do forecast that we will have chairs for the event.
Sadly, the chairs are not going to match.
It's going to be like some are going to have beach chairs with those little like drink holder in them on the side.
Other people are going to be in lazy boys.
Those tickets are extra.
The lazy boy tickets go for a lot.
And then just a bunch of folding chairs.
Well, these are tough times with Biden running the economy.
It's not the chair market of 2019.
Oh, I miss 2019 when you just grab a chair for $3.20 or whatever.
Yeah, the tickets are selling very quick.
Listen, when we booked this room, we were like, okay, this is a nice big room.
This will be a good size for what we're doing.
And then the tickets have been selling much quicker.
We typically sell out when we do shows together, but typically the shows will announce a gig, a few tickets sell.
There's a trickle, trickle, trickle.
And then the last two weeks before the gig, they like sell out.
This one, they've like, we're almost sold out immediately.
And there's still like weeks and weeks to go.
So I feel a little bit bad that I'm like, fuck.
I hope everybody who wants to come is able to come, you know?
So that's, well, that's going to get chopped up and made into some awkward gay thing.
Anyway, the point is the internet always gets me when I say things like that.
All right.
Anyway, the point is that if you want to be a part of the show, if you would like to witness it live, try to say things that no one can fuck with me on.
Make sure, go grab tickets right now.
Also, the live podcast is going to be after the stand-up show, and that's a separate ticket.
Those there's still a decent amount available for.
So if you want to come to the podcast, make sure you buy the ticket for that.
There's separate links, separate tickets.
And this is going to be the last part of the problem before the National Libertarian Party convention.
So it's going to be a really good one.
Just saying, you're going to want to be there live.
If you're going to Reno and going to the Libertarian Party National Convention, let me tell you, you're going to want to come and watch the part of the problem that's a live episode the Thursday before the convention.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
Are you even speaking at the convention?
As of right now, I don't believe so.
I believe this is what I'm doing.
This is the big moment.
I am, I'm not exactly sure what my role at the convention is going to be, but I will be there for the convention.
Let's just say that.
And there's going to be a lot of great stuff happening.
A lot of my friends and a lot of heroes in the Liberty Movement are going to be speaking there.
There's, let's just say we don't have control of the thing yet.
So that's who's deciding on who's speaking there.
And there's still some talks underway.
So we'll see what happens.
But this is going to be a lot of fun to do this.
And I will be there hanging out the whole weekend.
So this is going to be an incredible moment in the history of the Liberty movement.
I'm very excited for it.
It's all coming up right now, next month at Reno at the Libertarian Party National Convention.
So make sure you come out to that.
Make sure you're there Thursday night.
Book your flights in hotels now, guys.
This is going to be incredible.
Okay.
So the big news that's on my mind right now that we have to talk about a whole bunch on this show is so interesting to me is that Elon Musk, just, you know, a regular guy, just an everyman, your average African-American gentleman has decided.
He's also the richest man in the world.
He has, so we talked about this, I believe, the other day that he had bought like somewhere between 9% and 10% of Twitter.
And he had become the biggest shareholder in Twitter.
And we were like, oh, that's really interesting.
Maybe he'll use his influence to make Twitter a little bit better or something like that.
But earlier today, he made an offer.
He is attempting a hostile takeover of Twitter to buy 100% of the company's stock.
He offered to buy everybody's shares for, I believe, it was $54.20, which is substantially higher than the stock is currently.
And the stock price has gone up substantially since Elon Musk became the biggest shareholder.
But he is now attempting to buy the entire thing and take it under his control.
I think this is a very big deal.
Whether or not this happens, which, of course, there's something amazing about the idea that this could happen.
And what if he runs it and runs it in a really great way and just allows people to say what they want to say and not get people banned for saying the wrong thing or something like that?
You know, but whether or not that ends up happening, I already think the moment that this is created is really just incredible.
So there's a lot I have to say on this.
I think there's so many different avenues we could go down to explore what's really interesting about this moment.
But this is a really interesting thing.
It's a really big deal.
Let me throw it to you, Rob, to start.
What jumps out at you about any of this?
What are your thoughts on Elon Musk?
This guy who is the richest man in the world.
I guess, to be fair, it oscillates between him and Bezos, from what I've seen on most charts.
And then, of course, there's probably other people we don't know about who control all types of resources and wealth that we don't know about, but he's a very, very wealthy man.
What do you think about Elon Musk potentially taking over Twitter?
Well, I love it.
You know, hopefully he steps in and we end up with an actual free speech platform.
But just all the topics surrounding this, such as liberals yelling about we can't have billionaires owning media.
Well, firstly, someone currently is running it, right?
And also, you know, it was the obvious one with Bezos owning the Washington Post.
I mean, this is a story as old.
It's as old as time, except in this case, it actually looks like Musk is stepping in, trying to create a free speech environment, not because it's not a reporting institution, really.
Like traditionally, people buy these newspapers because they want actual favorable reporting.
You talk about the Washington Post with Bezos.
Yeah, but he's not the first wealthy individual to buy a media publication.
Sure, sure.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
So, absolutely.
This is the idea that this is some new thing that a rich person is going to influence some organization.
It's like, no, you just don't like that he's not in your network.
Right.
But it's also interesting that Twitter's not actually reporting on anything.
It's just a place for everyone to publish their own thoughts.
And so, unlike the other things where it's like actually have people who are hired to write stories.
So obviously you're going to be able to create, you know, tremendous amount of influence.
If you're a billionaire, hey, don't report on what Amazon's doing.
Hey, make sure to go report on how bad Trump is.
You really do get to dictate quite a bit versus Musk stepping in here to actually create a free speech environment, which is not really even creating anything.
It's just kind of restoring it to pre-Donald Trump.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I've mentioned this before on the show, but there's this video that Bob Murphy did.
If you're not familiar with Bob Murphy, he's like a brilliant libertarian economist who's, you know, Rob, you've done his show and I've done his show.
And he's been on part of the problem before.
And he's, he's just a really, really interesting guy and very, very smart.
And he made this video.
Man, I could be wrong about this, but I think this was his part.
This might have been in 2013 or 2014 or something like that.
But he made a video on YouTube.
I'll try.
If I can find it, I'll put it in the episode description.
But there was this video he made that was kind of like a, it was like a mock, like kind of satire.
I don't know, satire, what's the way to put it?
But it was kind of like almost like a sketch that he did where he played an advisor to the ruling elite.
Like if he was meeting at the biggest like Bilderberg, you know, group or whatever, like what his advice to the ruling elite class would be.
And this is back, again, I think 2013 to 2014.
I could be wrong about that.
It's kind of irrelevant, but it was, it was early enough that it's really amazing that he kind of in some ways predicted all of this.
But he said, like, he, he basically did this thing where he was coming in to give advice to all the powers that be.
And he starts and he's like, first off, let me just tell you guys, great job.
Like, you guys are doing incredible.
I mean, holy crap.
You know, you got, you, you run the public education system.
You have complete control of the corporate press.
You have complete control of the narrative.
You guys are doing everything.
You have the central banks.
You run the money.
You run the post office.
You run all the means of communication.
Like you, you guys are really just, you've done an unbelievable thing here.
Congratulations.
You know, and like, we're doing really good in so many different ways.
But hey, we got a problem.
And here's the problem.
And it's the internet and it's social media.
And the problem is that now, just like anybody can talk to anybody and they can express their own views.
And somebody who can, you know, contradict everything that you're saying can just express that publicly.
And not only can they do that, but now everyone can see how many people agree with them.
You know, so it's not just that someone can say Hillary Clinton's a liar because she, you know, said blah, blah, blah, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and then voted for that war.
And then she championed the war in Libya or she did this or that or whatever the thing is.
This isn't from the video.
I'm just paraphrasing all of this.
She goes, it's not just that he says, it's not just that someone can say that.
It's that then people can also see, oh, wow, 20,000 people liked that video.
Oh, wow, 100,000 people liked that comment.
Oh, well, you know, like you can see, like, oh, wow, there's a lot of people with me.
And that's a real problem for you guys.
And that's, so this was kind of his point that this is, this is their next move has to be cracking down on this.
And there's something really interesting about that point that he made, and that he was, you know, kind of prophetic enough to see that before any of this, this censorship regime really started rolling out.
And it's interesting to watch right now how much like people are freaking out.
The establishment, the corporate press, and the kind of neoliberal, progressive, neoconservative, whatever you want to call the kind of like ruling establishment, dominant, prevailing order.
A lot of people who subscribe to that and the big figures are freaking out about this possibility.
On that note, I was looking at an article that was showing MSNBC's prime time numbers and they were pathetic.
Yeah.
I'm saying they're like in the core demo that they look for, which is 25 to 50 year olds, their best show is not beating our show by a lot.
It's not a lot.
It's really not a lot.
Yeah.
And that's, and then you got to think, right, that like they're based, we're basically competitive with them.
And then there's these shows like these other huge podcasts that are just demolishing them.
You know, Tim Poole or Joe Rogan or like a million different shows out there are just demolishing these shows in that core demo.
And that's, and in overall ratings.
And that's, it's really, there's something really interesting about that.
There's another thing, like a little piece of the pie puzzle there, which is that they still make like Rachel Maddow's salary against your Sally is an astronomical jump.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to say that, but Rachel Maddow, I think she makes $30 million a year.
And the amount of money that probably exists behind that show in terms of like writers, editors, producers, studios.
Yeah, it's funny.
I literally just, I walk down to my basement, flick on a few lights and turn my camera on.
Like, and yes.
And I also make $20 million a year.
But yes, your point is well founded.
But more of what I'm saying is that there are people who are willing to spend money with MSNBC because, you know, they're buying propaganda.
I guess you're a pharmaceutical company and you got this thing called COVID-19 and you're looking to push your pharmaceuticals.
So even if you're not actually going to return a profit here, you're willing to spend a lot of money because MSNBC still has some historic influence because I guess it's on cable and some people are listening to it.
But what happens when the pendulum really swings and people are actually interested in making money?
And all of a sudden, like you realize, oh, I can get much better rates with these podcasts.
Why am I spending all this money over here?
So like, what happens if like that institution actually folds and they don't get all like this phony money because there's some historic legacy institution?
Like, can you imagine if we had the staff or budget of what Rachel Maddow was working with?
Like what we're doing is really cool and authentic, but I'm just saying.
I wouldn't increase our staff one bit.
It's just our pay, Rob.
That's all we're doing.
The three of us, me, you, and Brian, are still going to do this show, but we're all getting paid super, super rich.
Limits to Free Speech Online00:04:53
I'll take it.
Well, it is, it is interesting, right?
And that's kind of the dynamic of like what's what's happening here that people are starting to realize.
Like people are starting to realize that there's this big vulnerability.
And this has been happening for a few years now, right?
At least since 2016.
And, you know, I want to make sure that in this episode, as I, as I talk about this, because there's a lot that's interesting about what's happening here.
And I want to make sure that I Want to make sure that I criticize the kind of progressive left and the conservative right and libertarians.
I think there's like criticism for all three of them to be had here.
And look, the biggest thing, I don't even know which group, which group to start with.
So, okay, fine.
Let's start with the easiest, the lowest hanging fruit, right?
Which is the kind of progressives, the left-wingers, and the neoliberal establishment, all of them.
The fact that they're all freaking out about this is hilarious.
I mean, it is just so revealing that they are scared that what?
That Elon Musk, that this offer might actually work, which is a fair thing to be afraid of.
I mean, the offer could actually work.
I don't know.
There's a lot of things.
There's a lot of things that would have to happen right now for this to actually be our like dream scenario where this guy really does take over Twitter and make it what we would like it to be, a free speech platform.
And there could be limits to that free speech.
I don't think you should be allowed to violate the law in terms of like threatening somebody else or something like that.
And, you know, there could even be like some reasonable limits within not threatening people, but like, you know, hey, you can't like viciously harass people or something like that.
You know, that's not really what my concern with, you know, people being shut out of social media is.
It's not like my concern is that you shouldn't be, you know, you have to be allowed to like every single day respond to somebody with like racial epithets or like what, whatever.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's not like what I'm here fighting for.
Although I do think there are mute and block functions for things like that.
But what I'm talking about is what I think anyone who cares about the truth should acknowledge is that like there are people who, I don't know, were questioning, let's say, lockdowns or vaccine mandates or even what was being reported about vaccine efficiency and things like that that have lost their Twitter accounts that have basically been silenced in the public square.
And, you know, for people who were saying things like, you know, we're from the very beginning of the COVID regime, just for one example, people who were tweeting things like, oh, part of the reason in March and April of 2020, they go, part of the reason why the COVID deaths are inflated is because they're putting way too many people on ventilators.
And those people would get their Twitter accounts, you know, shut out.
And that turned out to be completely right.
And then there were people who were saying things like, you know, whatever, that the lockdowns were causing far more harm than, and they weren't doing anything positive.
And they lost their Twitter accounts.
And there were people who were saying that, you know, when they first rolled out the vaccines and they were like, well, this will make sure, as the president was saying, and all these other people were saying, well, this will guarantee that you can't get COVID and you can't spread COVID.
And they were saying, that's all bullshit.
And those people get fucking shut out.
You know, that's like what I'm really concerned about is that the fact that, you know, I wouldn't really have too much of a problem, even though I am someone who likes offensive jokes.
I wouldn't have too much of a problem if Twitter just said, hey, look, this isn't the place for offensive jokes.
We don't like those.
This isn't the place for trolling or something like that.
Depending on what the definition was and how they enforced it.
But the fact is that you can't even express dissent on these platforms.
You have to always be careful about what you say.
That's a big issue.
So just saying, let's say like this became, you know, what we want it to be.
A place where you could do all of that, where you didn't have to worry about any of that stuff.
That's a big deal.
The Vanishing of Dissent00:02:21
And a lot of things would have to happen in order for that to be the case.
You know, like Elon Musk would have to actually, you know, he'd actually have to succeed with this hostile takeover attempt.
And he would have to actually mean what he said and be willing to follow through on it.
So that's still far off.
And he's got a big battle on the following through.
Because what I don't quite understand about Elon Musk is it seems that a lot of his business is actually built off of government mandate.
And what I mean by that is he's in the electric car business.
And so I believe his profit margins heavily rely on government policy for both credits.
And like, why is the Tesla the charging thing that's available?
Who's paying for that?
Who's putting that in at every gas?
Well, that's a fair.
Damn, it's tied into the system.
No question about that.
And that's, there's another point to be brought up about that, because I think they're starting to turn on him.
Or I guess we could say that right now, that I've seen it reported already that the Department of Justice and I believe the SEC are launching investigations into Elon Musk already because they are really freaked out by the possibility.
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Protecting Your Digital Privacy00:02:34
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All right, let's get back on the show.
Thus far, at least on the SEC side, he's won because they're always going after him.
And thus far, he stayed ahead of them.
But just when the machine turns, like, I mean, I've said this before in the show, I don't think Dorsey, most of these tech guys, they actually go into it either looking for profit or actually looking to run a cool company and the government knocks on their doors and goes, listen, you want all your people to keep their jobs?
Well, you're going to have to start playing ball.
And here's what we want from you.
And you got to make a tough decision.
Do I want to go back to being poor and costing all these people their jobs or throwing a couple people off the platform so that I can stay wealthy and all my employees can continue to have their jobs?
What do I prefer?
And guess what?
If I was a CEO, I'm going, all right, everyone's keeping their jobs today.
That's what we're doing.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.
Yeah, it's very hard.
And I've known people, you know, it's interesting you bring that up because I've known people who are in situations like that.
The thing that comes to mind to me is Ari, Ari Shafir, who's a great comedian and a very good friend.
And he had a show on Comedy Central.
And he's the most fucky person that ever existed in the history of existing.
But here's the thing.
Yes, he is that, right?
Like he is a guy who just will stick to his morals and never compromise, except that here's how they got him: is that he had a show he was doing, and they, I forget the exact details of it, but the way that they got him really good was that they basically fired him and he was like, Whatever, you're firing me over this, fine, I don't care, I'll leave.
And then they go, Okay, well, your entire staff is out of work now, unless you sign over all of this and give your show up to somebody else.
And he knows all these people, you know, he's been working with them for like years.
Like, this isn't just like some theory of like, well, what do you do when your principles are on the line?
You're like, oh, that's like Susan and Tom and all these people.
And he was like, Well, okay, I guess I'll come out of my own pocket to pay all of their salaries.
And then he's like, I'm going to be dead broke if I do that because that's actually a lot of money to pay everybody's salaries.
And then they were like, Well, you could just sign over everything if you do that.
And he's like, I'll do whatever I got to do.
And then Roy Wood Jr. actually stepped up and he was really appreciative that he stepped up to take over the show so he could be like, Okay, everyone keeps their job, you know.
Business Interests vs Democracy00:09:45
Anyway, whatever.
That's neither here nor there.
But it's just kind of like a little like indication that there's a lot of forces that'll be at work at good people who will keep them kind of participating in a lot of this stuff.
So, okay.
To the fact that so many people in the establishment are so freaked out over the prospect that Twitter could become an environment where people can make whatever type of arguments they want to and people can speak.
And what we're talking about is not just like people who we agree with, but we're talking about like, you know, Donald Trump was the sitting president of the United States of America and probably the most effective Twitter user ever when he got banned.
But he was the sitting president.
You know, MTG, she is that right?
Maurice Taylor Greene?
I think that's it.
She got kicked off.
She's a sitting member of Congress.
She was kicked off or at least suspended for a while.
The New York Post was frozen for a while on Twitter during the election.
The idea that these that people shouldn't be allowed to hear from them just because you've decided that what their fake news or what they're saying is wrong.
It's like, okay.
I mean, you know, probably a lot of what all of them are saying is wrong.
But with the people who are advocating, they get kicked off.
They say a lot of wrong shit too.
So what is this?
And for all these people who like defend the idea of democracy so much, it's pretty enlightening in a way.
It's like, it's pretty revealing.
It's like, oh, okay.
So you believe in democracy, but before everyone votes, they should only get to hear the information you think they're allowed to hear.
Like, okay, that's that's that's an interesting little caveat on your views on democracy.
Everyone should get a vote, but also we should be the only ones who get to talk to them before they vote.
They shouldn't get to hear from the other side.
That's that's not exactly pure democracy.
It's been really interesting to see the people in the corporate press freaking the out about this prospect.
And understandably without censorship, or the more we move away from censorship and the more you can actually get free information, the more worthless they are.
Yeah.
Like a direct relationship and they're actually trying to make the argument, which is really unbelievable.
But they're actually trying to make the argument that like, they're trying to have this like noble cause behind censorship.
So they're like well look um, you know, it's not that we're the powerful trying to control the conversation.
It's that too much fake information will be, will will be, you know, will flow out there if we don't have this content moderation and so therefore, we need it to make sure that we protect people from these dangerous ideas.
You know, and like it's also sales.
It's always, it's always for your benefit that you know it's just sales right, they're just making some claim about how, like I mean, how much good information could have uh, been disseminated on, like Alex Berenson could still be on twitter right now.
That guy probably had the best coverage, specifically when it came to the Covet stuff uh, and you know why all this vaccine stuff was bullshit and he was yanked.
It's like you know what they mean, like they're, what they're talking about is that they can't win the war of ideas and so they need to control it and they can't just have free information.
Well yes, that well, that is the truth, but it's just interesting to see how they can even try to like, how you know, how you could try to justify censorship behind the the mask of, you know, democracy and freedom and all of this stuff it's.
It's interesting to see people even try and that you know.
The idea is like well if, if the former president were were even allowed back on twitter.
That's what a lot of them are freaking out about is that they think Trump might be allowed back on twitter and they're like, if he is, then oh my god, that's a disaster, because we can't possibly have the former president allowed to speak to the American people.
Well, it's interesting, Trump going back to twitter because he would bankrupt his own failed, that's true, which I think he's done enough of already, but sure, my guess is he would come back to twitter.
Uh, but it's funny for him to just have another failure on the books while pretending to be the greatest solution solver of all time.
Yeah well, that would be classic Trump to be like, I don't know what you're talking about.
I never started a business, this never happened.
Yeah, they're right, exactly.
And and somehow Trump would still find a way to have like done pretty well for himself out of all of it.
Oh, i'm sure.
Yeah, you know that would be very classic Trump um, but anyway, so it's just been.
It's very funny to see all of this.
Who, uh and, by the way, from a bit from a business standpoint to remove the most famous person in the world from your platform, one of the most engaging people in the world from your like?
Think about how much free press uh Twitter was getting on a daily basis, when every news story is about what the what the Trump has tweeted.
Yeah yeah, you're not.
So no, you're not interested in profit when you're taking Donald Trump off your platform.
You're interested in uh, you know, doing the bidding of something else that's either allowing you to stay in business or that's really where your profits are.
Yeah yeah well, that's right, okay.
So uh, Max Boot, who's a big like neoconservative, a foreign policy analyst um, and a writer for major corporate news publications.
He wrote uh on twitter earlier today.
He said, quote, I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk's, if Elon Musk acquires Twitter.
He seems to believe that on social media, anything goes.
For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less, Right.
That's freedom.
That's what these people are saying.
First off, I think it's really easy, really interesting that he says, I'm frightened.
He is frightened by the fact that other people might be allowed to say their piece.
That other people might be allowed to call out what he has to say.
And of course, he like this guy seems to believe on social media, anyone should be able to say what they want to.
But for democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.
So we need to control what people are allowed to hear for democracy to survive.
It's so insane that these guys are willing to say this publicly with a straight face.
If you just like take a little bit of a like look back, it's anyone who has a monopoly, right?
You don't want competitors.
So these people somewhat have a monopoly on ideas where, I mean, if you go back 10 years ago, where the like you, what do you get published in Newsweek or the New York Times, and then that's the opinion that's available.
So there isn't that much competition for ideas, right?
If you're on the side of whatever propaganda they want to spew, so you get paid for it.
And then everyone goes, oh, look, this is the one intellectual.
When all of a sudden intellectualism is really just opened up to everyone, you can go write your blog.
And if you've got the best take, you might end up with an audience and everyone might go, oh, this guy actually is making more sense than everyone else.
You know what I mean?
It's like any industry.
Of course, you don't want to compete.
If I own the railroads and someone started stepping in with, you know, flying cars, I might go, hey, we can't have those.
Everyone's going to be crashing into each other in the sky.
That's dangerous.
Who's going to regulate these things just flying right?
Cause I don't want the competition.
And this is this is actually the history of lots of business interest affecting politics is that they're always kind of like, you know, and this is one of the major problems with having big business in bed with big government is that, yeah, of course, they're always going to do their best to crowd out any of their competition.
But so this is, this has really been something that, and part of the reason why the establishment is freaking out about this particular, this particular incident is that, number one, this really is a threat to them.
And it really is a credible threat to them.
Like, first off, Twitter really is how Donald Trump won the presidency, right?
Like Twitter really is, and not just Donald Trump, it's much bigger than that, but Twitter first started when Twitter first started getting big, like what was the first presidential election after Twitter was really big?
It was 2016.
As a 2012, it was nothing like what it was in 2016.
And in 2016, you even had Bernie Sanders, you had Donald Trump, you had a bit, like you had a lot of people who were like, this was a really important tool where these guys could go right around the corporate press and speak right to the voters.
Switching From Smoking To Vaping00:02:50
Now, I don't like Bernie Sanders.
I don't like Donald Trump, but I do like the ability of going around the corporate press to speak right to the American people.
And this is something that they're like very concerned about.
They're very concerned about Trump right now and right-wingers in general.
And they like the fact that they've reestablished kind of this quasi-monopoly on the flow of information.
That if anyone who's too outside of the, you know, the establishment gets too big, they can kind of have one of their organizations write a bunch of hit pieces about what a racist, awful person they are and get them banned off social media.
And if they lose that, they're in a lot of trouble.
And the, and, and the reason why this one is such a credible threat is because it's Elon Musk.
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Private Sector Censorship Concerns00:15:15
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And Elon Musk has also put them in a very weird situation here.
And first off, he's got the money.
Now, what he's saying, he was talking about buying in cash the entire company, which does make you wonder, like even for someone as rich as Elon Musk, you're like, wow, that's a lot of liquidity you're talking about putting up.
Like, holy shit, where are you going to get this from?
I don't know.
But he was offering, I think it was something close to like a 50% premium on what the stock price is.
And then, first off, that's just inherently credible.
If someone's willing to offer that, how the fuck do you turn that down?
There might be a lot of people who are interested in accepting that.
And the backside of it?
What?
He also said, if you don't take my offer, I'll be selling all my shares.
Well, that's right.
He said he'll be selling all his shares, but then he also alluded to having a B plan.
And I don't know what exactly the B plan is.
Sell your shares and go compete.
Well, maybe, but I also think there might be something where, look, if the board, I don't know.
Okay, this is this is me speaking a little bit above my pay grade because I don't know if I'm right about this or not.
So just take this with a grain of salt.
But well, let me just say that if the board were to shut this down, even if the shareholders wanted it, it is possible that that's a violation of their fiduciary responsibility.
Like this is really, because this is a huge, like there is a legal obligation for the board to do what's best for their shareholders.
And so if they don't, they might, again, I don't know.
Someone might have a better legal argument on this than I have.
Really don't know, but this seemed to be what he was implying that, like, look, I mean, you, if you're going to turn down these people getting a huge premium on their current shares, you might be in a little bit of trouble.
And so, maybe that's part of what he's talking about.
But this is, this was very, anyway, whether or not this is real, it's credible and it's interesting what the reaction that he's getting out of all the establishment types.
Yeah, and there's also as big of a shareholder as he is at 10%, Brian, maybe you can look this up, but I think BlackRock also has a significant stake in Twitter.
And I'm not sure what other big banks might, but it does probably showcase a little bit of like the just inherent fraud in the system that, like, if I guess your billionaires are willing to spend more than the profits for a platform because they know that there's like there's more value in like the reach, right?
So, that kind of showcases something about the way the system works that like a BlackRock will knowingly lose money on an investment.
Like, the reason why they won't take the 50% increase is because they'll actually maybe spend even more than what he's willing to put up to make sure that they can continue to have the platform.
Why?
Because they're probably invested in such industries such as money in banking, pharmaceuticals, and others.
We're controlling the narrative is actually more important than their profit in any single investment.
Well, that's that's a very good point.
And if you actually look at like the stock price of Twitter, when I think it was like $17 a share, something in that ballpark in 2016, and then Donald Trump, the rise of Donald Trump drove the stock way up.
And from 2016 to 2020, their stock went through the roof.
And then when Trump got kicked off, their stock plummeted.
And then when Elon Musk bought the stock, it was up like 30% right away.
And so there is a very interesting thing going on here where it's not really just a profit motive.
You know, there's a lot more to it than that.
But we'll get back into that because I want to make sure that I criticize every single group here, right?
Okay.
So I think we've pretty adequately criticized the kind of establishment, you know, the progressive, neoliberal, neoconservative establishment.
I want to just for the left wingers who are opposed to this.
And of course, there are some good left wingers who are probably good on this, but for the left wingers who are opposed to this, it is pretty hilarious to watch a guy, first off, an African-American who's okay, fine.
He's a white guy, but he's from South Africa.
Who is a, what is it?
He's a guy who started a company.
He started Tesla, which is what?
All about creating sustainable energy, like in cars and whatever.
Okay.
To watch this guy try to take on the most powerful, like vested interests.
And you're going to side against him because what?
He has a position about free speech or at least a stated position about free speech.
Who knows what he would actually do if he took over the company?
Okay.
I mean, what else do I need to say?
Yes.
That's you're you're a real left winger to be against the sustainable energy guy who wants free speech.
Okay.
So they get a shot for them.
Okay.
Um let's do the the right wingers and conservatives next, and then we'll end on the libertarians.
Okay.
So the right wingers for the right wingers and conservatives, There has been this narrative that's been developed over the last few years, where basically, I'm trying not to strawman this.
I want to steel man this as best I can, but there does seem to be this narrative where it's like, look, we have historically kind of said we favor the free market over government intervention, right?
But this whole like tech censorship thing makes us reject all of that.
Because you have these private companies that are involved in censorship and they're destroying free speech.
And sure, you could say that the First Amendment isn't exactly violated because the First Amendment might say that Congress can't write any laws violating free speech, but whatever.
Who cares about Congress?
This is private companies violating free speech, right?
And there is something to this point.
There is something to be said for that.
That they took it almost as proof that what me and you talk about all the time, Rob, doesn't really work in reality.
Because they'll say, okay, you know, if there's a public square and, you know, there's a public square, the public area that's owned, you know, like the old timey idea of a public square, and you stand up on a soapbox and you start giving your ideas.
And here's what I think the government should do.
And here's what I think they're doing wrong.
And here's what I think we need to do to fix it.
And someone from the government grabbed you and dragged you away and said you can't be here anymore and you can't, well, that's a violation of the First Amendment.
You can't do that.
Right?
Because they're squashing free speech.
But they'd say, what's the public square today?
Well, it's social media.
That's people aren't actually going out into the public square.
This is the public square.
They're going out here and they're being squashed left and right.
And there's a clear bias and it's against right-wingers, or so they would say.
And this is a huge problem.
And so their argument would be that, look, I typically believe in the free market, or maybe I used to believe in the free market, but right now we can't just allow this to happen.
We can't allow these companies to have all of this power.
So what we need is government to come in and say, hey, you're not allowed to do that.
And there were several different proposals for that, you know, repealing Section 230 or like whatever else they would have.
And there'd always be problems with their proposals.
But that was kind of the argument that, well, look, this isn't working in the private sector.
This idea that, you know, me and you have of, you know, laissez-faire capitalism, well, look, look what happens when the private sector or the public sector is in private hands.
Look what they do.
We can't allow them to do that.
We would never allow the public sector to do that.
So why should we allow the private sector to do that?
So screw them.
We got to have the government come in and make sure they can't do that, even though we don't really have a very clear proposal for what should be done.
But look what's happening for all of those attempts, for all of those, even when you had Trump in there, you had Trump who had like was the president and had his supporters being the ones who were kicked off social media.
And ultimately, he got kicked off social media.
And they'd always say, right, in Trump's speeches and a bunch of other Republican speeches, they'd always say, We're going to take a hard look at big tech censorship and all this.
What have they done?
What have they given you?
Nothing.
And what's actually, you know, for the first time, looked like it could solve the problem.
What's actually driving fear into the hearts of progressives?
It's just one rich guy who believes in something, who thinks he might is willing to sell a whole bunch of his stock and buy this whole goddamn company in fucking cash because he believes that this shouldn't be this way.
Now, again, maybe he's not really going to buy the company.
Maybe he doesn't really believe in that, but you know what?
That idea is in the ether now.
And who knows?
Even if this one fails, are you telling me that, like, maybe, maybe Peter Thiel won't get involved with him too?
Maybe a couple more of his rich friends won't get involved with him too, and they might all come together and do this.
We don't know.
This is a credible threat.
That's why the progressives are freaking out about it so much.
So there's something to be said for you guys really getting this wrong.
Not just getting it wrong, but getting wrong what you not getting wrong that there was a problem here.
You were right about that.
The same way Bob Murphy was right about that many years ago.
But you really got wrong what the solution ought to be.
And that's something for you to think about.
All right.
And finally, I think, okay, so I think we've criticized the left, the progressives, the neoliberal, neoconservative establishment types, the right-winger conservative types.
And now let's move on finally to the libertarians and how libertarians have gotten this so wrong.
And this is something we've talked about on the show for years now.
There's been, look, in the kind of spectrum of libertarianism, there's been different views about the threat of social media censorship.
And there have been libertarians who have just, oh my God, been embarrassing in the way they've discussed this stuff.
You know, well, it's a private company and they can do whatever they want to.
And you know what?
This is just the free market cleaning up bad actors and stuff like that.
And there's, of course, we've, you know, dealt with some of these really stupid arguments a million times that just because you believe in the free market does not mean that you have to support everything that happens in the free market.
Michael Malice, the great Michael Malice, one of his favorite examples of this is, which I really love, is that if you go to a restaurant and they serve you, you know, they serve you a dish that isn't what you ordered and it's cold, you don't, and you start eating and you go, I didn't order this.
And oh my God, this is awful.
A libertarian wouldn't respond, well, it's the free market.
They're a private company.
They can do what they want to because that's fucking stupid.
So even if you're not advocating for government interference, you could still call out what a company does and be like, this is insane.
This is wrong.
This is awful service.
And if you're going to sit here and pretend that, you know, you had a situation with Twitter, particularly, I mean, there's a lot of social media companies, but just with Twitter, where the CEO at the time, Jack Dorsey, was saying that he believes access to Twitter is a human right.
But then he's removing that human right from people with no trial or no due process for arbitrary reasons.
So if you believe this is a human right, well, then, sir, you are guilty of crimes against humanity.
Now, I'm not saying I believe Twitter is a human right, having a Twitter account, but you could still call out that hypocrisy.
And there's just been a bunch of libertarians who have completely just failed on this very important issue.
And it really is embarrassing.
And I'm really proud that we, me and you, and a lot of the people in our camp, pretty much all the people in our camp of libertarianism, have pretty much been good on this from day one.
That actually know however you feel about the free market, you know, the private sector versus the public sector, that this is a really big problem.
It's a really big problem if you are going to allow, you know, dissenting voices to be silenced.
That's a real issue.
That's a real issue for what we're trying to do here.
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Corporate Influence on Platforms00:16:29
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All right, let's get back into the show.
But more, probably even more importantly than that, is what actually happened here.
And this is something I've been talking about for quite a while now: is that what actually happened here?
Let's take a look at this.
How much is this the free market?
And how much is this not?
So what Elon Musk, let's just say Elon Musk was, okay, he takes over Twitter.
What's the best case scenario as far as we're concerned?
And the worst case scenario, as far as the establishment corporate press is concerned, is what?
That he'd let Donald Trump back onto Twitter?
Well, Donald Trump used to be on Twitter.
That he'd let fucking the people who have been kicked off back on.
Well, they used to be on before they got kicked off.
Or that he wouldn't kick off more people.
Well, that used to not be a fear.
So really, what you're talking about is that he would bring back what this used to be.
That's what it was.
You know, Twitter And all the social media platforms back in 2014 and 2015 and 2016, back when Bob Murphy was making that video, that's the point he was making was that no one was clamping down on this.
That social media really was the wild, wild west.
And as a libertarian, I say that as the highest possible compliment.
That it were, you know, that is not a pejorative.
That's, and by the way, if you actually want to go research the wild, wild west, it was, it was like one of the safest societies that's ever that had ever existed in human history at that time.
And yeah, this was true.
You could say whatever you wanted to, and no one really worried about getting kicked out.
I mean, some people here or there got kicked off, but it really wasn't.
There wasn't this threat of social media censorship the way there is now.
You didn't have to mind your P's and Qs.
And you didn't know a whole bunch of people who were friends of yours who had lost several accounts and had to restart their accounts and all of this stuff.
This just wasn't, this wasn't how it worked.
You know, tell me in 2015, in 2016, what very influential person, what sitting member of Congress, what president of the United States, what, you know, huge influencer had been kicked off social media.
Anyone got a name for me?
Okay.
This was not a thing.
Whereas now, if you were to ask that question, right?
Who would you say?
Okay, well, Donald Trump was the president of the United States.
And, you know, what's her name?
MTG was the Congresswoman.
And you mentioned Alex Berenson and like all these different people who have like, you know, all just unpersoned.
Alex Jones and I'm not even saying like whether you agree with them or not.
I'm just saying we could all name a whole bunch of people who have been kicked off of these sites.
Even, you know, like people, whoever, you know, some Milo Yiannopoulos or Gavin McGinnis or Owen Benjamin or like any of these people, there's so many you could name in the last few years who have been kicked off.
People with huge audiences, people who a lot of people wanted to hear from.
Now, why was it that none of that had happened before 2016?
I was saying none of that, but why wasn't this a big thing before then?
Well, probably because of market incentives, right?
And Twitter is probably not in a free market incentivized to kick off big accounts.
They probably want big accounts on their platform, right?
Because that's the whole game is to get more people on your platform.
And the big accounts draw in the most amount of people.
And also think about that your biggest accounts are there for free.
You're not paying them a dime.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, think about like a television network.
You want talent there and you want them creating content.
You got to pay them.
Here you've got people that have built up a natural following that are creating content for free on your platform and keeping them on your platform for free.
I mean, that's every contract that's ever existed in media was to go create content.
Like you had to pay for that.
Yep.
It's a wild thing to consider that there are people who are entertaining people for free on your platform.
And now you get to capture the advertising dollars and you're going to remove those individuals.
That's right.
Exactly, Rob.
So what could make you want to do that?
You don't like profit.
Thank you.
There's other things that are more important.
Well, right.
But what could make you not want that?
But like profit, like this, that's a very strong incentive.
Well, look, what I've been saying for a long time is that it's obvious.
It's obvious what happened.
What happened was in 2016, Donald Trump used Twitter in large part to win the presidency.
And I'm not saying there weren't other things involved, but holy shit, are you going to tell me Donald Trump wins in 2016 without Twitter?
I mean, come on.
That was his bread and butter that he used Twitter not only to do an end around the corporate press and speak directly to his people, but also to kind of like dictate what the corporate press would be talking about today.
He used it in a different way than anyone had ever used it.
And once Donald Trump won and the corporate press had been telling you he can't possibly win, and then he won, and then Twitter was how he won, they had to do something.
And one of the things that gets misremembered in history, because Donald Trump, you know, who said fake news?
Who used the term fake news?
Well, everyone says Donald Trump, right?
But actually what happened was Donald Trump reappropriated that term.
Fake news was something that the corporate press started using.
It was a term they started using about the threat of fake news on the internet.
And Donald Trump brilliantly reappropriated that term and said, you're the fake news, you're fake news.
And which is, you know, what without those terms exactly is a lot of what we do.
We talk about how Brian Stelter talks about misinformation or disinformation on Joe Rogan's podcast.
And then I'll go on Joe Rogan's podcast and be like, well, who really does misinformation?
Okay, let's look at it, you know?
But that's what Trump did in the simplest form.
That, okay, no, you're fake news.
But they, they basically decided that social media is a real problem now.
And sure, they did it under the guise of Russian disinformation or whatever, you know, bots and, you know, what Max Boot was just saying.
Well, we need more content moderation and all of this.
But really what they were doing was they were cracking down.
They said, we need to crack down on social media.
And this isn't just something that they said.
They hauled all of the heads of the biggest social media companies in front of Congress and explicitly threatened all of them and said, you better crack down on fake news or else.
Because that's what the government does or else.
And that led to the rise of this censorship regime.
So for libertarians to sit back and say, oh, it's a private company or, oh, it's not a big threat or, oh, it's like, come on.
What the fuck?
What world are you living in?
Now, in addition to that, some things that I've learned that I'm a little bit embarrassed, that I probably should have known before this happened.
But so, okay.
Number one, like I didn't, look, I didn't really know about any of this shit.
And I will admit that it's probably my fault, but at least I did know about all the shit that I just said.
So, but you know who was the shareholder who wouldn't, who's come out publicly and said he will under no circumstances sell to Elon Musk?
Who?
Saudi prince.
Okay, okay.
It's a Saudi prince who owns, I think, 6% or 4%, something like that of Twitter.
There's also a decent amount of shares that are owned by some European central bank.
I think it was Sweden, maybe something like that.
These are all the people.
So you look at this and you go, at what point libertarians are actually arguing that, like, oh, no, this is, this is just, hey, it is what it is.
People get kicked off.
Some people don't get kicked off.
You're like, at what point do you live in real life where you go, no, that's not.
I'm sorry.
If a Saudi, if a member of the Saudi government owns part of Twitter, then that is not the free market.
If a central bank owns part of Twitter, then that is not the free market.
That is so ridiculous.
And on top of that, we also knew that at least Jen Sackey, whatever her name is, Joe Biden's press secretary there.
Yes, Joe Biden's official liar.
She said that they give lists to the big tech companies of who they think is spreading misinformation and who should be banned and all of this.
At that point, to me, that's an egregious violation of the First Amendment.
In the same way that if the government was telling some newspaper who they can and can't publish, that would be a violation of the First Amendment.
So libertarians, man, they've so I've blasted the left and the right and the establishment and all of this, but libertarians, man, we, god damn, should have been better on this issue the whole way through.
Like this is absolutely not just like, oh, this is the free market.
And then blah, blah, blah.
You know, there's no, we can't support government getting involved.
In fact, what we should have been saying is the free market would have been what Elon Musk is talking about.
And then the government got involved.
And now Elon Musk looks like he's threatening to bring a free market solution to this whole problem.
Sorry, go ahead, Rob.
Well, I gotta ask, don't you run into a problem a little bit with that philosophy that like even in a free market, we would always be competing against the spend of other governments.
So then you could always kind of have a call for that's why we need our government to take some sort of action here because we can't compete against the governments of other, which then becomes an argument for military defense.
It becomes an argument for just about any government activity.
Well, what do you mean exactly?
I mean, no, I wouldn't argue for any of our government and any government activity in there.
I would say that that's a real threat that foreign governments could come in.
What I would, the question is, what's actually going to be a solution for that problem, right?
So if you're saying that, look, there are foreign central banks and foreign governments who want to come in here and fucking, I don't know, own these companies and they're not doing it for profit.
They're doing it to exert their own interests for much bigger profits in other areas.
Then what you'd want to do is have a culture of awareness of that and try your best to exclude those people from coming in.
But to create your own government policy there, what are the odds that you're going to end up with that?
You'll probably just end up with them having their own special interests.
And like we have, right?
So they're coming in.
It's not as if there's an example here of the government excluding those other governments so that we make sure we protect the free speech of the Americans.
It's a nice idea, but I don't see any of that.
What they're trying to do is make sure that they squash Trump or whoever the other side is or whoever is a threat to their entrenched power.
So no, I think what you'd want, ideally, is what Elon Musk is claiming.
You'd want, you know, someone or a group of someones who are powerful enough to get in there and say, no, we really believe in free speech.
So we're not going to allow these foreign governments to come in and influence this.
So I get your point, but I don't think there's, I don't think the argument really is strong that that's why we need a government.
I think the argument is that's why government, both domestically and abroad, is corrupting this whole thing.
Is it considered fraud to run a public company not for profit to benefit another company?
Like, I'll give you the simplest example, just to make it like a really simple example.
Imagine you had a public company that gets paid to like do what the EPA does, basically to like give like an, I mean, now I'm going into the ESG survey, but like to basically regulate if like something's clean water.
They're literally paid on whether or not products are good.
You know what?
I can't even really think through this example.
It's a bad example.
Well, I think the legal responsibility would be to your stockholders.
So if it's, if you're just talking about what was your public company, I would say, by the way, to just not be not mince words here, a public company in the sense that you're saying it doesn't mean a government company, just a company that's publicly available to trade.
And in that case, I think you'd have a fiduciary responsibility to your shareholders.
So it wouldn't necessarily be what your mission statement is, but it would be, are you doing right by your shareholders?
So I would say like a simple example would be if BlackRock, which owns a significant amount of Spotify, tried to get rid of Rogan, but very specifically because they have so much pharmaceutical profits, they don't want him talking about like, even though it would be bad for Spotify, they don't care about the Spotify because their profits and pharmaceutical companies dwarf that.
I see there might, you know, I don't know.
It's an interesting question.
I think that if that were at the, if that were to like not in the best interest of the Spotify shareholders, then yes, I think that would be illegal.
But I don't know.
That's an interesting question.
I'm not completely sure.
But the point is that with this, with this situation, I just think that I think libertarians got to fucking wake up and understand what's going on here and understand that the argument that this is just a private company or this is just the market working itself out is complete bullshit.
Shady Interests and Monopoly Power00:05:10
And the truth is that there are huge state influences involved in this.
And first and foremost, our government, but then also like of other governments and even like I say, a Saudi prince owning like a huge stake in this.
I mean, come on, dude.
This is fucking a government that's the military industrial complex.
Yes, exactly.
That's the military-industrial complex seat at the table.
Can we see the whole list of who the biggest shareholders are?
Yeah, I don't know.
Maybe we can pull that up.
But again, like to your point, it's just like if the government is, let's just say, not spying on American citizens, but having private companies spy on American citizens, then don't tell me that that's not a fucking violation of your rights because they're having a private company do it.
It's like, no, that's the game that they play now.
And that's the system we live under.
And that should be treated the exact same as if the government did it themselves.
And if a government that if a different government that our government is propping up with taxpayer money is doing it, that should be treated the exact same as if our government was doing it.
There's 82.4 million shares in Twitter, about 10.3% of the company.
All right.
Well, look, there's a lot of shady interests involved in this.
Okay, I guess the final thing to say in this episode is that Elon Musk, look, I don't know.
Is he the real deal?
Is there some other, you know, thing that's going on here?
I don't know.
But I do think that he's forced a conversation and exposed a lot of people in a way that if he, this seems like pretty, seems pretty real deal to me.
And he is probably like I mentioned briefly before, it's been reported that the SEC and the DOJ are already now going to start investigating Tesla.
which has nothing to do with this, but they're going to go after him for Tesla.
And maybe there's an argument there.
Maybe I don't know how he's coming up with $54 million billion dollars to make this purchase.
He offered it in cash.
Is he selling a bunch of that stock?
Is he violating his fiduciary responsibility to his shareholders there?
I don't know, you know?
And so they're going to go after him.
They're going to go after, as you pointed out, all of the government, you know, grants or whatever, all of the government, you know, benefits that he gets, probably.
And they're going to, they're going to try to squash him.
What he's done is he's put himself in the crosshairs.
Why is he doing that?
To me, it seems like maybe he's doing that because he's actually fucking really wants to do something here.
And that's that to me is kind of interesting.
Either way, I find this whole thing fascinating and a lot of people are talking about it.
And I don't know if anyone, you know, I always try to in these situations, I want to have a little bit of like a different perspective to give people than just what everyone else is saying.
So I hope we did that on this episode.
So, okay, let's wrap up.
What do you got to say?
Go ahead, Rob.
No, he's also going to get hit with anti-monopoly stuff because he's got Starlink.
And even though Starlink is not the predominant player, government does not like when you own the verticals.
Like in other words, like if you own the roads, they don't want you owning the tolls type thing.
Yeah.
Like they just like typically speaking, that's something that they look to avoid.
So this would be an interesting one where he's both like owning the structure by which he can give you the internet.
And then he's also going to own, I guess, some of the layer underneath that to make it open source or to like provide more free communications.
That's something that they're really going to work against.
Because like, for example, Parlor, which was the big competitor, so they made the mistake.
They were on the Amazon server.
So little do you know, if you don't own both infrastructure, you know, you can lose what you got.
Yeah.
No, the only monopoly that government likes is government.
And all other monopolies are a bit of a problem for them.
So that's a very good point.
All right.
That's our episode for today.
We will see you in Reno at the Alpine.
So come, there's still a few tickets left for the stand-up show and a decent amount of tickets left for the live podcast.
They are separate tickets.
Make sure you go check those out.
We'll put the links in the episode description today.
All right.
Peace.
And I got some gigs.
Summer porch store kickoff party in Florida at Top Lobsters Ranch with the Tower Power Gang.
And then a week after that in California with Brian from Lions of Liberty and more porch tour dates coming your way.