{"id":90913,"date":"2023-03-18T11:04:23","date_gmt":"2023-03-18T16:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=90913"},"modified":"2023-03-18T11:04:23","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T16:04:23","slug":"90913","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=90913","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

With standard human corruption, these elitists delude themselves by believing that since they were just enough smarter than the average bear in one subject to wind up suuuuper<\/em> rich, they must be as smart in everything else. Thus they walk themselves right into stupidity.<\/p>\n

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The rich are eating themselves<\/a>
\nThe oligarchs are playing a dangerous game by pouring trillions into woke causes.<\/p>\n

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Beware of plutocrats bearing gifts. The\u00a0annual clown show at Davos<\/a> epitomizes how today, the global elites have embraced an unholy trinity of \u2018progressive\u2019 doctrines: climate-change apocalypticism, a belief in systemic racism and racial \u2018equity\u2019, and radical gender ideology. The super-rich hope that by genuflecting to these causes, they can buy themselves political protection and fend off the activists lurking\u00a0in the ranks of their own companies<\/a>. Yet, in the long run, this could end up fuelling their demise.<\/p>\n

The recent \u2018Great Awokening\u2019 of our elites reflects a long-standing shift among executives in terms of priorities and perspective. The capitalist class first arose out of the middle orders, and even from within the peasantry, as the industrial revolution, particularly in the Netherlands and Britain, challenged the autocracy of both the church and the monarchical state. These were often tough, ruthless entrepreneurs embodying values of hard work, thrift, family and faith.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But with the managerial revolution of the 1950s, the nature of executive elites changed. As sociologist\u00a0Daniel Bell<\/a>\u00a0first identified half a century ago, business leaders were no longer upstarts and thus the natural opponents of state power. Instead, they reflected a new type of individualism, unmoored from religion and family, a worldview which transformed the foundations of middle-class culture. The goal of this new executive class, as Bell saw it, was not so much building great companies, but gaining accolades from their peers, the press and the public \u2013 a trend also set out in Alvin Toffler\u2019s 1980 book,\u00a0The Third Wave<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The rise of the socially conformist business executive was briefly obscured during the entrepreneurial boom of the 1980s, when Wall Street and tech leaders embraced Reaganite deregulation. The era of financier Mike Milken, Apple founder Steve Jobs, AMD founder Jerry Sanders and FedEx founder Frederick Smith<\/a>\u00a0seemed to reflect a resurgent \u2018cowboy capitalism\u2019. These entrepreneurs were too busy making money to care about controlling the lives of the common folk. So much so that in 2006, economist\u00a0Carl Schramm<\/a>\u00a0argued that Joseph Schumpeter\u2019s prediction of bureaucratic capitalist decline would be overcome by an \u2018entrepreneurial America reborn\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This era came crashing to an end with the 2008 financial crisis and\u00a0the massive state bailouts of large banks<\/a>. The banking sector became\u00a0more concentrated<\/a>, with the number of American banking institutions falling by a third between 2000 and 2020. By 2020, the\u00a0five largest banks<\/a>\u00a0controlled over 45 per cent of all assets in the US, up from under 30 per cent 20 years earlier. Worldwide, the five largest\u00a0investment banks<\/a>\u00a0now control roughly one-third of investment funds; the top 10 control an absolute majority. In\u00a0Europe<\/a>, such oligopolies are even more powerful, with\u00a0the top three banks<\/a> accounting for a majority of assets in most European countries.<\/p>\n

It is the same story with the technology sector. Once the vaunted centre of grassroots entrepreneurialism, a lack of antitrust measures from both Republicans and Democrats has allowed technology companies to morph into quasi-monopolies. Google controls over 90 per cent of the search-engine market<\/a>; Microsoft owns over\u00a074 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of computer-operating-system software;\u00a0Amazon<\/a>\u00a0has nearly half of the US online retail market share and a significant proportion of\u00a0cloud computing<\/a>; Google and Apple together account for\u00a090 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of smartphone operating systems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Such immense market power encourages executives not to take risks and innovate, but rather to consolidate their dominance by acquiring smaller competitors.\u00a0Amazon, Meta and Google<\/a>\u00a0now account for two-thirds of all online-advertising revenues, which now represent\u00a0the majority of all ad sales<\/a>. These oligopolies also seem poised to dominate emerging technologies, from\u00a0cloud services<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0underwater fibre-optic cables\u00a0<\/a>to AI.<\/p>\n

Alongside this economic concentration, we see as well uniformity of viewpoints and growing control over the means of communication. Companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple largely not only control the biggest platforms, but have also taken direct ownership<\/a>\u00a0of movie studios,\u00a0newspapers<\/a>\u00a0and magazines. All these outlets, along with the AI models these firms produce, tend to reflect\u00a0the worldview of the tech oligopoly<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Monopoly power leads naturally to ever-greater politicisation of corporations. No longer concerned primarily with potential entrepreneurial competitors, these firms have tended to embrace progressive causes as well, most notably in the adoption of\u00a0ESG<\/a>\u00a0(environmental, social and governance) rules that often\u00a0promote progressivism<\/a>\u00a0ahead of profit. Like the feudalism of old, with its concentration of power and knowledge in few hands, these oligarchical firms have become America\u2019s \u2018new corporate tyranny\u2019, as author\u00a0Michael Lind<\/a> notes.<\/p>\n

Of course, there\u2019s nothing new about business magnates seeking control of information, but rarely in history have they shown such fealty to a common perspective. Today, outside of Rupert Murdoch\u2019s news empire, upon which the sun will inevitably set, virtually all the leading oligarchs lean toward the Democratic Party (ironic, given that it was once the less receptive party to corporate power). Tech companies played a major role in the election of Joe Biden in 2020 and also helped finance the Democrats\u2019 remarkably good showing in November\u2019s Midterm elections. Though many of these donations are claimed to be earmarked for \u2018non-partisan\u2019 organisations \u2013 such as the $300million spent in 2020 by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 post-election analysis has found that they were \u2018distributed on a partisan basis that favoured Democrats<\/a>\u2019. In\u00a02020<\/a>, five of the top eight donors to Joe Biden came from tech firms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The new corporate hierarchy is much younger than more conservative funders like Charles Koch,\u00a0Rupert Murdoch<\/a>, Oracle founder Larry Ellison or Irvine chairman Donald Bren, who are all well into their seventies or eighties. These ageing conservative elites are increasingly outspent by the more youthful \u2018enlightened\u2019 rich, who in recent years have consistently\u00a0outraised and outspent<\/a>\u00a0the political right by a margin of nearly two-to-one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The primary means for oligarchic control is not campaign contributions, however. Instead, many gain influence from funding non-profits, which espouse selfless rhetoric even as they push their funders\u2019 own personal agendas and interests<\/a>. In the US,\u00a0non-profits\u2019 assets<\/a>\u00a0have grown by a factor of 12 since 1980. In 2016, non-profits brought in\u00a0$2.62 trillion<\/a>\u00a0in revenues, constituting over\u00a05.7 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of the US economy.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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As philanthropy has grown, it has changed in character. Although the rich have made a show of improving the lives of the hoi polloi since time immemorial \u2013 building cathedrals, libraries, arts venues and soup kitchens \u2013 in recent years, they increasingly have been bankrolling progressive and even far-left politics, as\u00a0Heather Mac Donald<\/a>\u00a0demonstrated as long ago as 1996. The rise of the tech oligarchy has only accelerated this trend. And unlike their early 20th-century counterparts, today\u2019s robber barons \u2013 with a few notable exceptions, like PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel \u2013 are decisively aligned with the left. This was most evident in their massive funding of\u00a0Black Lives Matter<\/a> and other radical groups in the aftermath of George Floyd\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

This marriage of big money and the left may yet have far to run. Alongside the grandees themselves, their ex-wives and offspring are also increasingly influential. Jeff Bezos\u2019 former spouse, MacKenzie Scott, was worth an estimated $60 billion<\/a>\u00a0in 2019, and has since pledged a reported\u00a0$14 billion<\/a>\u00a0in donations to progressive non-profits.\u00a0Melinda Gates<\/a>, ex-wife of the Microsoft founder, is worth at least $6.4 billion and is backing liberal organisations like the Clinton Foundation. The next generation of tech and finance heirs, such as the left-leaning offspring of the founders of Qualcomm, could prove even more radical. As the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0notes, these are \u2018rich kids who want to tear down capitalism\u2019, founding non-profits aimed explicitly at \u2018challenging the system\u2019. Born into the oligarchy rather than working their way to the top, these young trust-funders are not worried if their activities bother customers or even undermine the businesses that created their fortunes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Nowhere is the power of the left-wing rich more evident than in their advocacy for draconian climate-change policies, such as the\u00a0banning of gas stoves<\/a>\u00a0in homes. Tech moguls like\u00a0Ted Turner<\/a>,\u00a0Michael Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Richard Branson<\/a>\u00a0regularly make donations to environmental groups like the Sierra Club, often in amounts as high as $100million. In 2020,\u00a0Jeff Bezos<\/a>\u00a0announced $10 billion in gifts aimed mostly for green non-profits. The current generation of\u00a0Rockefellers<\/a>, heirs to the Standard Oil fortune, now seek to\u00a0punish corporations<\/a>\u00a0that follow the road to riches of their founders, while also funding sympathetic \u2018climate reporters\u2019 at the\u00a0Associated Press<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0National Public Radio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So while the media and activists like Bill McKibben<\/a>\u00a0like to warn gravely that conservative think-tanks and the dreaded \u2018Koch interests\u2019 are contributing to planetary doom, the big climate money actually goes to the greens. As energy commentator\u00a0Robert Bryce<\/a>\u00a0has demonstrated, green non-profits \u2013 what he calls \u2018the anti-industry industry<\/a>\u2019 \u2013 received well over four times as much as those promoting the use of nuclear energy or fossil fuels in 2021.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Tech oligarchs and woke Wall Streeters like to see themselves as what progressive writer David Callaghan calls a \u2018benign plutocracy\u2019. They contrast their success to those who built their fortunes on resource extraction, manufacturing and material consumption. Yet eventually they may well find that they have been financing people who threaten \u2018their own rights and even their existence\u2019, rather like the French aristocracy before the revolution, as\u00a0Alexis de Tocqueville<\/a> later noted.<\/p>\n

This starts with their lockstep support for a Democratic Party in which more people support socialism than capitalism, a trend strongest among the young<\/a>. It is doubtful that these zealous young activists will tolerate ultra-rich climatistas like Michael Bloomberg, John Kerry, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg for long, especially as their private jets emit vast amounts of\u00a0greenhouse gases<\/a>, reportedly almost\u00a0500 times<\/a>\u00a0what the average American emits in a year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ultimately, the oligarchs may find that the environmentalist left has little sympathy for the corporate leaders who fund them. Indeed, the red-green contingent typically agrees with the view of\u00a0Barry Commoner<\/a>, a founding father of modern environmentalism, that \u2018capitalism is the Earth\u2019s No1 enemy\u2019. Bernie Sanders, after all, believes that \u2018every\u00a0billionaire<\/a>\u00a0is a policy failure\u2019, a view also espoused by \u2018Green New Deal\u2019 architect\u00a0Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the oligarchs, kowtowing towards radical groups like Black Lives Matter<\/a>\u00a0or CRT prophets like\u00a0Ibram X Kendi<\/a>\u00a0may prove no more effective. These racial activists similarly decry capitalism as the root of racist evil. Yet despite this, the oligarchs continue to fund woke initiatives on issues such as\u00a0race<\/a>,\u00a0policing<\/a>,\u00a0education<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0gender<\/a>\u00a0that seek to replace merit and competition with the equity agenda of an \u2018enlightened\u2019 state regime.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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An idle bourgeoisie supporting destructive ideologies has been a trend throughout modern history, one that\u00a0Joseph Schumpeter<\/a>\u00a0predicted would lead to capitalism\u2019s overthrow. In the 20th century, this manifested in members of\u00a0Britain\u2019s upper class<\/a>\u00a0embracing Communism and even working for the Soviet Union, the sworn enemy of Britain and the capitalist West. Stalinism may be out of style today, but obsessive zealotry is not. Yet, as\u00a0spiked<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0Brendan O\u2019Neill<\/a>\u00a0notes, rather than embracing red authoritarianism, today\u2019s green elites tend to embrace a \u2018culture of misanthropic dread\u2019 about the climate that strips hope from all other classes and\u00a0the next generation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the very forces funded by the oligarchs could turn out to be their undoing. Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen may see a universal basic income as the \u2018social vaccine of the 21st century<\/a>\u2019. But once the idea of an expanded welfare state is proposed,\u00a0some on the left<\/a>\u00a0logically see no reason to leave the ultra-rich untouched. Many hope to fund a work-free world powered by technology and financed by the oligarchs\u2019 lucre. This leftist dystopia will certainly not herald a bright future for the masses, but for the witless billionaires encouraging it, it does have a ring of historic justice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With standard human corruption, these elitists delude themselves by believing that since they were just enough smarter than the average bear in one subject to wind up suuuuper rich, they must be as smart in everything else. Thus they walk themselves right into stupidity. The rich are eating themselves The oligarchs are playing a dangerous … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crap-for-brains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90914,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90913\/revisions\/90914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}