Elon Musk wants to own Twitter to protect his ‘freedom’, not everyone else’s | Robert Reich

Billionaires like Musk use their vast wealth to build a world unconstrained by laws, shareholders or accountability

Elon Musk has now put together a $46.5bn financing package to buy Twitter - two thirds of it from his own assets, and a third from bank loans secured against Twitter's assets. It's the biggest acquisition financing ever put forward for one person.

Twitter's founder and top managers don't want Musk to take over the company. They offered him a seat on the board but he didn't want it because he'd have to be responsible to all other shareholders. Now they're adopting a poison pill" to stop him. But Musk plans to buy shares directly with a tender offer that shareholders can't refuse. After all, it's a free market.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com