A Long View of American Oligarchy--
“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both," Louis Brandeis
"If Aristotle saw aristocracy degrading into oligarchy, Trump is oligarchy degrading into kleptocracy," Timothy Noah
"But Aristotle offered no guidance on what to do about an oligarchy that acquires power by democratic means. Nor did he reckon that the middle class [which he saw as democracies' class protector] would dwindle—from 61 percent in 1971, according to a Pew Research Center study, to 51 percent in 2023.
Aristotle could not possibly conceive the proliferation and growing wealth of the American billionaire. In 1976, Getty died the world’s richest man, with $6 billion. Musk has $431 billion. Correcting for inflation, the richest man in the world today is more than 10 times wealthier than the richest man in the world half a century ago. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are each six times wealthier than Getty was. Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett are five times wealthier.
When you possess this much money, buying political influence looks like a bargain. Warren Stephens spent a combined $7 million to purchase his ambassadorship. But that’s nothing compared to the $31 million he paid a decade ago to buy a mansion in Carmel, California. Jeff Bezos spent $250 million to buy The Washington Post a dozen years ago. But he paid twice that to purchase the world’s largest sailing yacht, which clocks in at 417 feet and plies the seven seas with a support vessel that’s 246 feet long and carries additional crew.
The oligarch Donald Trump, in auctioning himself and American government to the highest bidder, may well match or surpass the stew of corruption that Washington created during the Gilded Age. That’s on him. But it’s on the rest of us that over 50 years, through economic policies that coddled the rich under both Democrats and Republicans, American wealth concentrated to such a degree that a Trump presidency—make that two Trump presidencies—was not only possible, but perhaps inevitable."
Timothy Noah @ The New Republic
A brief overview of concentrated wealth and oligarchy in US history. Also includes several relevant book references, only one of which I've already read; including the authors's 2013 book, The Great Divergence, which I plan to read shortly.
(And another "great divergence"! Love the big turning points in history genre and reviewing the cases for them.)
Timothy Mellon, grandson of Andrew Mellon, a big business tycoon and plutocrat who ran the US economy (and much of the government) in the 1920s; his grandson, Timothy, was second only to Musk, maybe first, in donations to Trump's 2024 campaign. Making in a way 2024 perhaps the final total (totalitarian) triumph of the big business Billionaire oligarchy in American history. An 1848 triumph of capital for the 21st century.
True it appears very likely a terrible falling-on-one's-own-sword pyrrhic victory; self-destructive, doubling down on burn-baby-burn climate change denial. MAGA's forever bigot wars have control now and desperately want to become the new mainstream. And the media is maddeningly deferential and plays along. But Trump's regime is still thankfully ten points or more underwater and unpopular. And no wonder, his agenda is bad for everyone but himself and a small circle of his best cronies. Maybe bad for them too? I mean, all this criming has to catch up with them eventually, no? But I know, not yet!
Still, very bad; let us count just a few ways: 1) The grifter's economic idiocy; 2) DOGE's AI surveillance technology takeover; 3) the stupid anti-education and science agenda; 4) the stupid anti-DEI divisiveness; and 5) the anti-worker living wages and condescending rich guy hostility towards the cost of living for workers and care work and the caring economy and the general disdain for the public infrastructure of prosperity.
In world history, or over the last millennia in western Europe at any rate,* the State first created, expanded, and regulated markets for the sake of national security. The goal was to build strong militaries to protect the State and the society over which the state ruled. And then, second, to expand and grow the economic provisioning of prosperity for all of society; which was always in tension with big private capital interests maximizing their take. Some might say the collective provisioning function has always been squeezed by big capital interests; imposing on the real economy austerity and efficiencies that only serve private profits.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a US admin so disdainful of the working classes and encouraging to corruption. It's Hayek's collectivist nightmare and extreme bigotry in revolt against democracy and basic human rights; the latter better known as the "woke mind virus." It's libertarianism radicalized into a narcissistic pathology. I doubt you can keep a good country going for long like this, let alone a democracy. We might have already lost the latter.
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