The use of Eminent Domain to build and protect railroad lines is very well established, and if any owner of a newly purchased major rail company was dramatically destroying the effectiveness of said railroad, the government would be motivated to step in, especially if war loomed.
In the internet age, Twitter is a vital public thoroughfare and meeting place. To cause it to crash and burn is sure to cause a loss of well-being and income for millions of people who have integrated it into their personal and business lives. To cause Twitter to crash and burn, not from normal business miscalculations or bad luck, but by reckless and arguably illegal actions taken within days of seizing control — seems like a perfect case for government intervention.
There are many reasons why the sale should have been blocked ‘a priori’ , especially given the vital role Twitter has ended up playing in the public sphere … and given Musk’s previous vocal contempt for regulations and normal behavior (including on Twitter itself) , even without any additional scrutiny of the foreign investors, with their own troubling past behavior, who also co-owners.
A free market is supposed to be the perfect allocator of resources and talent, but nothing about the treatment of Twitter employees, advertising customers, professional and amateur users of Twitter, etc. … is even remotely close to rational and adequate, never mind optimal.
If a billionaire wants to buy a sports franchise, or maker of specialty sports cars, and run it into the ground; that is sad and wasteful, but not necessarily enough to warrant actual government intrusion.
When a billionaire — with strong political leanings (MAGA libertarian it seems) and very unusual motivations, buys up what he calls “the public square” and then destroys it, this should be seen as an attack on free speech, especially the left-leaning parts thereof; and a silencing of the critics of Plutocracy and Autocracy … in the USA and around the world.
Just as we were right to try to shut down Russian troll-bots, even if the website owners were reluctant to act, so are we justified in protecting the hard work of thousands of Twitter employees and millions of users from either the erratic mistakes or the deliberate sabotage of a man who has let praise blind him. In a modern information war, protecting Twitter and fighting harder to control bots and abuse on the platform, is a form of national defense. If Putin or MBS want to undermine democracy and its ability to fight autocracy, aiding and abetting is unpatriotic and wrong.
So far Eminent Domain has been much misused by developers of shopping malls and by companies wanting to build more pipelines, both of which hurt the climate and are ethically dubious; in contrast stepping in to protect the employees and users of Twitter would be exactly in the original spirit of Eminent Domain — and thanks to Musk’s shenanigans the net price should be far, far below what he bought if for … before he trashed it so badly.
Meanwhile, if Musk would just focus on making Tesla cars with less manufacturing defects, and with ever lower prices to really encourage the use of electric cars, he can put all this behind him.