#jackma

If Musk had been given the Jack Ma treatment, a major social-media platform would not have transformed into a cesspool of racism and misogyny, and there might not be a President Trump laying waste to everyone’s basic constitutional rights (and the world economy) today. That would be a better outcome than the one we’re living with right now. Or imagine if U.S. officials broke up Amazon into several competing companies, the way China did with Alibaba, and sent Jeff Bezos on a Ma-esque mandatory vacation for a few years. There is no particular reason we can’t do those things; only the political will is lacking. But instead, we’ve taken the opposite path to China. We’ve allowed our American oligarchs to pretty much do whatever they want, whenever and however they want. As a result, they now dominate our government and our economy from top to bottom.