Welfare for the Rich?
In the January 3, 2021 episode, Bob Zadek introduces Elon Musk as the successor to a different political symbol. Recalling Ronald Reagan’s campaigns against a “welfare queen,” Zadek declares that “the queen is dead” and that “we now have a welfare king.” That king, he says, is Musk, who has found a way “quite legitimately, quite legally” to build a business empire that lives off welfare — not welfare of the kind Reagan attacked, but “welfare for the rich.” Zadek calls the amount flowing to the rich “staggering” compared to what allegedly flowed to the poor decades earlier. Welfare for the Rich? (2021)
Zadek’s guest is Lisa Conyers, co-author with Phil Harvey of Welfare for the Rich. Zadek describes the book as written for Americans who care about economic policy and says it highlights governmental programs that provide welfare to those who, in the authors’ opinion, do not deserve it. He calls Musk “the new monarch of the welfare state.” Conyers opens by stating the book’s thesis: that tax dollars end up in the pockets of wealthy people, and that federal, state and local budgets distribute money to wealthy recipients for various projects — farmers, stadium owners, technology company owners among them. Welfare for the Rich? (2021)
Conyers returns to Musk specifically. She says Musk and others in the book, including Bill Gates, like to tell people they built their companies on their own as entrepreneurs and good businessmen, but that pulling back the curtain reveals massive public support. In her account, they are not the stellar, brilliant entrepreneurs they would like people to think they are, but recipients of tax dollars. Asked how tech benefits from welfare to the rich, Conyers says the tech industry’s public image is not what it seems. She acknowledges that many smart people in Silicon Valley created products and built an industry, but says that as they grew, they “hopped on the gravy train like everybody else.” Since 2013, she says, tech has gotten almost $9 billion in state and federal subsidies. Welfare for the Rich? (2021)
The subsidies Conyers describes are not for creating products. She points to data centers in Phoenix, Arizona — one of the places with hundreds of data centers storing data for the products people use. These centers receive supports and incentives to build in Arizona and subsidized energy to run, since they must be kept at certain temperatures. She also describes the giants — Amazon, Google, Facebook — going to cities and saying, in effect, “tell us how much you’re going to give us to move here.” Welfare for the Rich? (2021)
The Twitter Files and Government Pressure
Musk reappears in the 2023 episodes in a different role: as the purchaser of Twitter and the source of the Twitter Files. In the January 31, 2023 episode with Will Duffield, Zadek describes Musk’s purchase of all of Twitter’s outstanding stock as an economic activity that seemed impulsive, and says Musk now owns Twitter the way Zadek owns his laptop. That purchase, Zadek says, set in motion the Twitter Files and the baring of a scary aspect of jawboning that challenges core free speech in America. ‘Jawboning against Speech’ with Will Duffield (2023)
Duffield explains that the Twitter Files are a collection of documents released by a number of journalists from Twitter over the past three or four years, recounting decisions Twitter made and engagements it had with the federal government. Zadek interrupts to correct the word “decisions,” and Duffield accepts the correction: many of those decisions, he says, were not entirely Twitter’s, because another hand was involved or pressure behind the scenes. Duffield describes congressional jawboning — members of Congress publicly browbeating platforms to moderate more or remove foreign influence — and says the Twitter Files revealed the private side of that story. After being browbeaten by Congress, platforms turned to the FBI and an alphabet soup of intelligence community agencies and State Department operations to forward requests, all while Congress threatened to regulate them if they did not do more. ‘Jawboning against Speech’ with Will Duffield (2023)
Duffield also points to a series of lawsuits by the states of Missouri and Louisiana aimed at the CDC and the Biden administration, which revealed communications with Facebook that look similar to the Twitter Files. The pressure was not aimed at one platform but at many. Zadek characterizes Twitter’s decisions as the kind explained by a dark alley and a gun at your head — “your money or your life” — a choice, but not quite. Duffield agrees that jawboning is often compared to the mafioso suggestion that you have an awfully nice business there. ‘Jawboning against Speech’ with Will Duffield (2023)
The February 1, 2023 episode with Duffield repeats much of this exchange. Zadek again says Musk owns Twitter the way he owns his laptop, and that the purchase set the Twitter Files in motion. Duffield again describes the documents released by journalists from Twitter over three or four years, and Zadek again corrects the word “decisions.” Duffield again describes congressional jawboning, the turn to the FBI and intelligence agencies, the threat of regulation, and the Missouri and Louisiana lawsuits against the CDC and the Biden administration revealing communications with Facebook. He adds that after 2016, in the wake of concerns about Russian influence, the intelligence community overwhelmed platforms with requests and demands backed by the specter of regulation, and that platforms failed to do due diligence and defaulted into accepting government demands and removing speech. The New Face of Government Censorship (2023)
In that episode Zadek offers a formulation: “The power to tax is the power to destroy,” modified for the conversation to “the power to regulate is the power to destroy.” Twitter, he says, knows its life could be hell if government power is aimed at it — it could be taken apart or attacked on antitrust grounds. He mentions Section 230 as another area where social media feels vulnerable, and compares platforms to banks being persuaded to use their power. In his account, Twitter succumbs to government power, and government hides behind Twitter to carry out policies, so that a regulated industry has little choice but to follow instructions and take the heat for what is really governmental action. Duffield agrees, noting that before the Twitter Files and the CDC-Facebook revelations, these decisions were taken to be solely private, and platforms suffered reputational harms as a result. The New Face of Government Censorship (2023)
The First Amendment Question
In the January 2, 2023 LifeLine episode, guest-hosted by Zadek, the constitutional question is framed directly. Zadek says Musk is disclosing daily, in the Twitter Files, the role Twitter played, which introduces a hard legal and constitutional question: when does the Constitution start to have something to say about the behavior of a private company? Put another way, when does a private company become enough like government that it is government? If it crosses that line and acts like it is under the day-to-day control of a government, Zadek says, then it is not a big jump to say it is government, the First Amendment applies, and Twitter has as little right to censor as the government does. [[episodes/life_line___guest_hosting__robert_mahoney_on__the|Life!Line - Guest hosting: Robert Mahoney on The Infodemic (2023)]]
Zadek describes Musk as now the sole owner of Twitter, exposing heretofore private information in the Twitter files and servers about Twitter’s behavior regarding censorship. He says Twitter, though a private enterprise, had intense and intimate contacts with the federal government, which had a substantial degree of control over what Twitter allowed to be published, circulated and promoted, and what it suppressed. If Twitter was censoring private speech under the guidance of the government, Zadek asks, how is that different from a federal agency doing it? If Twitter was behaving like a federal agency, a court could determine that for First Amendment purposes Twitter is a governmental agency, and then what Twitter did would be illegal. [[episodes/life_line___guest_hosting__robert_mahoney_on__the|Life!Line - Guest hosting: Robert Mahoney on The Infodemic (2023)]]
Guest Robert Mahoney, author with Joel Simon of The Infodemic, cautions that when they did their research, Twitter was a different company under the ownership of Jack Dorsey, and had nothing to do with Musk; the Twitter Files revelations were new and not part of what they studied in 2020. Mahoney says that from what he has seen of the revelations, he does not think the federal government was telling Twitter what to do, but that Twitter was acting under public pressure to edit certain content, particularly tweets from political leaders including Donald Trump about COVID treatments such as anti-malarials and hydroxychloroquine. Those were at first promoted and then de-amplified. [[episodes/life_line___guest_hosting__robert_mahoney_on__the|Life!Line - Guest hosting: Robert Mahoney on The Infodemic (2023)]]
Across episodes
The excerpts show no development in the treatment of Musk across episodes; he appears in two unrelated arguments. In the 2021 episode, Zadek and Conyers use him as the leading example of welfare for the rich. In the 2023 episodes, Zadek, Duffield and Mahoney use his purchase of Twitter and the Twitter Files as the occasion for discussing jawboning and the First Amendment status of private platforms. The two 2023 Duffield episodes cover the same ground, with the February 1 episode adding the point about the intelligence community overwhelming platforms after 2016 and the reputational harms platforms suffered before the Files became public. Welfare for the Rich? (2021) ‘Jawboning against Speech’ with Will Duffield (2023) The New Face of Government Censorship (2023) [[episodes/life_line___guest_hosting__robert_mahoney_on__the|Life!Line - Guest hosting: Robert Mahoney on The Infodemic (2023)]]
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe Musk’s biography, his companies beyond the general reference to tech and Twitter, or his political views. They do not state the terms of the Twitter purchase, the contents of specific Twitter Files releases, or the outcome of the Missouri and Louisiana lawsuits. They do not say whether any court has ruled on the First Amendment question Zadek raises. Conyers’s figure of almost $9 billion in tech subsidies since 2013 is not broken down by company, and no excerpt states how much subsidy Musk’s own companies received.