How rowdy billionaires turn their wealth into power

Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager, is an annoyingly persistent contrarian.

Not content with having helped remove the president of Harvard University, Claudia Gay, Accused of plagiarism and making public statements of which he disapproved, Ackman used his social media presence (which includes his 1.2 million followers on X) to campaign for the ouster of Sally Kornbluth as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

It doesn’t matter whether you think he’s a braggart billionaire or a courageous iconoclast,

Ackman is part of a paradigm shift on social networks, where the rich are increasingly capable of converting financial capital into social capital.

He is by no means the first nor the most scandalous beneficiary of this unfortunate reality: that distinction probably belongs to his fellow billionaires. Donald Trump AND Elon Muskwho, like Ackman, has also found that social media platforms, unlimited and unfiltered, are heaven for those with unconventional views and God complexes.

But why do rich people like Ackman make such a fuss about X, publishing one long rant after another?

His passion for the platform, especially since Musk bought it, suggests he wants to enlist someone other than other wealthy Harvard and MIT donors in his battles.

You want to reach the public, an audience that he doesn’t enjoy it of his own freedoms on social networks.

Causes

Pierre Bourdieu, The great French academic of great social distinction postulated that individuals could convert money into various types of social position and vice versa, but that the conversion would not be perfect.

If you think of this conversion as a kind of exchange rate, what is happening today is that the rich are taking advantage of one of the most favorable opportunities ever offered to convert their wealth in buzz and status on social networks and therefore in enormous power and social influence.

I think this is for two reasons: first, I increasingly accept a theory of world of social networks known as “preferential attachment”” – The tendency of the rich to become even richer applies not only to money, but also to the ability of well-connected people to attract more attention.

Second, I believe that enormous wealth insulates the rich from the consequences of their speech.

Pure acceleration, without brakes.

The Supreme Court’s decision on the case Citizens United 2010— which declared political spending a protected class of free speech — began as a legal ruling, but has also slowly become a cultural norm, as a growing number of media outlets, including

Furthermore, the rich are also more insulated from the consequences of their speech.

Freelance billionaires like Ackman, Musk, and Trump can say whatever they want on social media without fear of economic or political repercussions, because their extreme wealth protects them.

They cannot be fired, and even if they could, it would have no impact on their lifestyle.

This is a privilege enjoyed by only a few Americans, despite the high frequency with which our society likes to claim that we all have the same “freedom of expression”.

This simply it’s no longer trueif it ever was.

A few wrong words, spoken in public, can get you fired from your job, without having many resources to avoid it, or get you fired”Cancel“, or both, or worse.

These were the Harvard Gay cases; or Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, who recently resigned as president after being criticized for her comments to Congress on the issue antisemitism on campus (as Gay and Kornbluth were) and for other alleged missteps; or Yao Yue, the Twitter employee whom Musk fired for publicly criticizing his order “Back in the office.”

Privilege

Ackman, an activist investor known on Wall Street for relentlessly and publicly creating agitation to achieve desired outcomes, recognizes the unique position he finds himself in.

In a January 12 interview with CNBC, Ackman admitted:

“If you say something that offends someone, you can lose your job. You can be excluded. “They can erase you.”

Then he added: “I’m not afraid. “I’m not afraid of being canceled, I’m not afraid of losing my job, and financial independence gives me the resources to speak out.”

It is considered a “repairer” and sees no difference between his activist campaigns to “fix” a company and an activist campaign to “fix” a university.

“It’s all the same,” he said.

He sees no irony in the fact that Gay, Magill and Kornbluth do not enjoy similar privileges.

Ackman sparked another major controversy in X in defending his wife, a former MIT professor, from accusations of plagiarism exposed in a series of Business Insider articles.

When only billionaires can basically afford to speak freely without consequences, what does free speech really mean?

There is a trend among the super rich Ackman, Musk and Trump of misinterpreting the First Amendment as permission to uphold their particular vision of how public discourse should work.

Although the amendment is a negative freedom – individuals and businesses can limit free speech however they want, but the government is largely prohibited from limiting it for them – rich people like to present the First Amendment as a recommendation that there are no restrictions on people who want to express themselves, regardless of the content of that speech.

Because it is there every time fewer safety barriers regarding what can be shared on these social media platforms, it’s no surprise that the wealthy benefit disproportionately.

This is a strategy designed to make power, not access, the primary determinant of who can participate in free speech.

On platforms like crazy definition of freedom of expressionPeople who are harassed for not speaking out are considered to be a loss to public discourse, but rather harassers who are appropriately restrained.

This reasoning is unacceptable.

Ackman confuses his area of ​​expertise – activist investing – with his private opinions, such as who should be the president of Harvard and MIT and whether his wife is a legitimate target for plagiarism charges.

The current climate provides you with both the financial means and freedom from any consequences to insert your private opinions into the public sphere.

On some level, this is how it should be.

But when those of us without Ackman’s megaphone or wealth cannot dare respond to him – or his ilk – without fear of facing significant retaliation, we risk entering a world where free speech is another luxury, more than only the rich can afford.

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