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I've been having some thoughts recently about the billionaires among us, some opinions, some takes even. My politics on this has evolved over time; at one point they were admirable titans of industry, then they were capitalist parasitic ticks, then they were a necessary part of the incentive structure that drives to economy, and now they are a bloated level of inefficiency preventing the market from functioning efficiently.
But over all this time, I've kinda synthesized a superstructure that I don't think is gonna change, that I think is not on the left right axis, but on another mysterious plane: I'm jealous of china. I think we're gonna have to steven universe meme one of these guys. I don't even really care who, and I don't care who does it. It could be Il Duce Trump, it could be General Secretary Mamdani, it could be some boring centrist whose name we don't know.
Anyone who imposes consequences on or limits the behaviors of the managing class would win my instant approval. This could just be because of my space autism getting triggered unimaginably by space-x getting fucking shackled to a corpse right before IPO/ Artemis being a big fucking waste of time and money* / Boeing doing boeing stuff, it could be the long 2008 hangover, it could be a thousand things.
I guess I'm just kinda over us deciding that once you reach a certain net worth, you are some sort of luminous being. You can go to pedo island and it's fine, you can do drugs that normies go to prison for an it's fine, you can fuck up critical national infrastructure and it's fine, you have infinite money when it's time to do what you want but somehow you have no money (or negative money!) when it's time to contribute to the public good.
I recall Luigi, and I recall the polling: people old enough to have been adults when a the post FDR wealth redistribution program was still around were very unfavorable; people who came into consciousness as the program was being fully unwound in the late 80s and 90s were split 50/50, and people who never experienced that social milieu were yelling "BASED BASED BASED!"
I really think that unless the uniparty plays it's cards right, the next realignment is not gonna be pretty for anyone. We need another FDR type to head that shit off like it's vanguardist communism in the 1930s, and at this point I don't think I care if they are left or right, they just need to be for the bottom and middle and even most of the top, and against the peak.
*Yes I know about pork. Pork can at least do something! highways can get build, parks are nice, and if we need to build bombs somewhere to it might as well be in bumfuck nowhere to give the nowhereians something to do other than meth.
The only meaningful issue I have/had with the ultra wealthy is the possibility of influence on politics, and it does seem somewhat the case but I've become less convinced it matters that much. Despite the flood of money into politics, things seem to be getting worse and worse for our business environment. Even our first billionaire president is literally a big government anti market populist who holds little difference on many topics from the stereotypical redneck and would make many so called commies blush with his strong central planning desires.
Bribery and fraud happens from time to time for specific sectors but most political corruption still seems to be the type that's handing out contracts to your friend's company or whatever. I'm open to the idea that rich people have outsized influence but when we have blue socialist vs red socialist it's hard to see how money actually matters that much for politics as opposed to just general idealogies.
I increasingly think it might even be the other way around; The more you limit the powerful people on the free market, the more the powerful will move into the state and other entities that are harder to control since they are the control. Plenty of ultra-rich are happy to let you do whatever you want as long as you let them do whatever they want. But if the same person is instead managing giant flows of money that aren't actually theirs but technically belong to the people, it's suddenly at the minimum their business to control your behaviour insofar as it concerns that flow of money. And unlike the free market, where they need to find a way to offer you a deal or product that sounds good enough, if they are in the state, they can just straight-up force you. And often enough, that taste of power will only grow; If you're already controlling people, you'll find excuses to extend that control. For their own good, of course.
The key mistake IMO lies in the idea that money equals power. No, money is primarily a consumptive element of power. You can always trivially convert money into gaming consoles, vacations, yachts or any other consumptive good. Once you try to convert it into other elements of power, you'll have to expect losses and/or require sufficient skill to do it correctly: If you want to create something new, you need a good idea and the capability of running at the very least a lab, possibly a lean&mean start-up, often against much larger, established companies with massive legal moats. If you want to change or manipulate society, you need charisma and social acumen. If you want to simply force people to submit, you need to get control of the government, and those who already control it will not appreciate your meddling. A minimum amount of money is certainly required to get things off the ground, but you don't need to be ultra-rich. Upper-middle class money and/or a bank loan is often already enough for most purposes.
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