{"id":1433875,"date":"2022-04-12T17:45:06","date_gmt":"2022-04-12T21:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1433875"},"modified":"2022-04-12T17:45:10","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T21:45:10","slug":"what-does-elon-musks-stock-purchase-mean-for-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/what-does-elon-musks-stock-purchase-mean-for-twitter\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does Elon Musk\u2019s Stock Purchase Mean For Twitter?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhat-does-elon-musks-stock-purchase-mean-for-twitter%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1433875&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2022\/04\/Elon-Musk-1-scaled.jpg?w=1200&#038;h=800&#038;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p><em><span>On Friday, April 8, entrepreneur and bestselling author Vivek Ramaswamy joined The Daily Wire\u2019s Morning Wire to discuss Elon Musk\u2019s purchase of 9% of Twitter\u2019s stock and what it means for free speech online.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span>The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><b>MW:<\/b><span> So, Vivek, we\u2019ve now got Elon Musk getting invited on the governing board of Twitter. First, how significant is this development?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>VIVEK: <\/b><span>I think this is pretty interesting because he\u2019s paving a path that I think might be the most promising path for driving cultural change in corporate America and in the market more generally; it is not through divestments or through boycotts. It is actually through representing the voice of everyday citizens and everyday shareholders.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>I don\u2019t know what Elon Musk is actually going to be able to do with a 9.2% stake, or if it will tilt the scales at Twitter by very much, but I think that he has paved the path for a really interesting mechanism that I predict we\u2019re going to see a lot more of. That is shareholder activism addressing the problem of the marriage of progressive orthodoxy in big business.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MW:<\/b> <span>What does it mean for Twitter more broadly?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Vivek:<\/b><span> Twitter and other social media companies have engaged in viewpoint-based censorship. And a lot of people, I\u2019m one of them, believe that that\u2019s a real problem. Now there\u2019s three avenues for addressing that. One is state action, and I think you\u2019re seeing that from some of the states, like a Florida statute that was passed about a year and a half ago. You\u2019re seeing federal discussions about it. That\u2019s one track. Another track that we\u2019ve actually seen blossom is the competition avenue where you have other social media platforms like Parler or Truth Social that are aiming to take on Twitter through the marketplace. That is really hard to do. There\u2019s all kinds of algorithms that you have set up as an existing behemoth that make it really hard in a natural monopoly business. And a social network is a natural monopoly business. It makes it really hard for new incumbents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>So I\u2019m not optimistic that those are gonna make a difference, which actually brings me back to, then, what Elon Musk did. What he\u2019s doing is actually bringing true diversity and true competition, not to the marketplace of products, but to the marketplace of ideas in the boardroom of the company. And so he took a 9.2% stake [last week].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MW:<\/b><span> So you\u2019re describing effectively a proactive move rather than a defensive one \u2013 adding influence as a shareholder rather than, say, staging a boycott?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>VIVEK<\/b><b>:<\/b> <span>Exactly. And this is a big part of what the ESG movement has done. A lot of people focus on the so-called ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance factors) movement in capital markets as being focused on not investing in gun manufacturers or whatever. That\u2019s a small part of it. The real issue isn\u2019t that firms like BlackRock, the world\u2019s largest asset manager who manages over $10 trillion of American citizens\u2019 money, is divesting from companies like Exxon.The real problem is that they\u2019re invested in companies like Exxon, and they vote for new boards of directors as they did last year, voting for three new board members. That changed the purpose of that company from being about drilling oil, to being about doing something else. They say drill less oil, do something else. Well, guess what? I think that that is distorting the behavior of companies across corporate America. In part because BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard, those are three of the largest asset managers, they don\u2019t actually represent the shareholders. They\u2019re not the shareholders. They\u2019re the stewards of other people\u2019s money. Everyday citizens\u2019 money. What makes the Elon Musk move really interesting is he\u2019s showing up as an actual shareholder with his money. Now, he\u2019s the top shareholder of Twitter, who\u2019s going to say that I actually, as the shareholder and owner of the company, want to see that company heading in a different direction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>MW: <\/b><span>And in this way, as you note, Musk is countering the ESG movement. For those not familiar with the term, ESG, can you define it for us?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>VIVEK:<\/b><span> Yeah. So it is basically a three-letter acronym that is designed to bore you into submission, to lull you into submission. And it is successful in doing that for most Americans. But it is basically a political ideology that says that companies are supposed to take action to advance particular agendas, especially environmental factors like fighting climate change. An advocate of the ESG movement will tell you that it is through the market itself that we need to solve the problem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>What ESG does is say, \u201cForget the political process, let\u2019s just do this, get this done through the market where people work, where they bank, where they invest, and we can achieve that worldview without the pesky constraints of the constitution or the lawmaking processes that stop us from achieving a more just world. If politics is going to stop us, if the constitution is going to stop us, and the checks and balances are going to stop us, let\u2019s just do it through the market instead.\u201d That\u2019s really what this is all about.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Listen to the full interview here:<\/p>\n<p><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday, April 8, entrepreneur and bestselling author Vivek Ramaswamy joined The Daily Wire\u2019s Morning Wire to discuss Elon Musk\u2019s purchase of 9% of Twitter\u2019s stock and what it means<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1433875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1433875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1433875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1433875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1433875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}