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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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I feel like you're confusing different categories of people here, which is a common failure mode when it comes to discussions on "billionaires". A lot of generic dislike for both capitalism and rich people (not necessarily billionaires) gets swept up with talk of Musk, Gates, et al., and it seems like it would be useful to break down what we're talking about. Even if you really do mean only billionaires, you're still talking about both the mega successful Musks with dozens of hundreds of billions, local oligarchs and royalty, your mostly unknown investors, and even apex celebrities and sports people.

And then you've got:

Anyone who imposes consequences on or limits the behaviors of the managing class

Billionaires are largely not the managerial class. Even within the managerial class, it's worth splitting up your C-level and CEOs with the PMC that are much more middle and upper middle class

So when it comes to your overall complaints, who do you actually dislike?

  • Billionaire 'founders': Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Gates, etc. The richest of billionaires, but with most of their wealth tied up in the businesses they created and still run. Typically very high profile.

  • Investors: Buffet, Larry Fink, Carl Icahn, etc. Those who largely made their income from hedge funds, PE, and other market moves. They can be further split between the activist investors like Fink and Icahn, and the passive like Jim Simons and John Bogle

  • Old money: Royalty, Rothschilds, etc. Now we're getting into a group which doesn't comprise that many billionaires anymore. I'm tempted to put in second and third generation families here as well like the Walton family, although most wouldn't use old money in that sense.

  • Oligarchs: I'm counting any of the third/second world mega-rich here, the people that essentially just stole their country's wealth. Your emirs and sultans, as well as more typical corruption.

  • Apex celebrities: Swift, Jay-z, Michael Jordan, Ronaldo, etc. The very top of the sports and art worlds, the vast majority of celebs are only multimillionaires and even the richest are <$5bn

-CEO billionaires: Tim Cook, Nadella, Pichai, etc. The very top of the greasy pole, the execs who didn't build anything but are at such large companies they've still reached the billion mark thanks to stock options.

  • The rest? The other thousand+ who have 1-10bn, probably from a business. A ton of people no one has ever heard of and who probably don't have much influence on anything.

Then there are the many who aren't billionaires at all:

  • HNWI, the 1%, the "elite": Basically everyone who has a few million+ in liquid assets, a vastly larger group than the billionaires. At this point you're picking up successful upper middle class professionals even.

And the "managerial classes"

  • C-level execs: All of the other business leaders, from enterprise down to SMEs.

  • The Professional managerial class: The millions of senior management roles that make the vast majority of day-to-day decisions in big business.


When most people complain about billionaires, I think they really mean the 'founder' category, the handful of tech founders with the highest profile. When pushed they'll probably complain about Joe Business who made 2Bn from his real estate company, but they never actually think about that kind of person.

When I read your complaint about the managing class, I feel like you mostly mean the PMCs and C-level people, many of whom won't even be millionaires. And perhaps some of the activist investors?