The system works as intended then.

It makes a twisted kind of sense: if you believe that "free speech" = you should be allowed to vote with your dollars, as in you having more dollars than most others (those who you choose to surround yourself with anyway, bc despite the facts of how millionaires are absolutely dwarfed by billionaires, somehow they don't seem to see that) should mean then your votes count more. And thus an enterprising little turd could sit there at the center of it all collecting the toll for all that "free speech". Within that worldview, it's entirely consistent.

It is only when that interfaces with the real world that it breaks down: bc no matter how much Nazis pay Musk to advertise their propaganda, we still don't have to choose to listen.

It's all advertising, all the way down.