How does wealth manage to persuade the poor to use their political freedom to keep it in power? By asking this insightful question in 1952, Welsh Labour’s Aneurin Bevan put his finger on liberal democracy’s greatest paradox. In the age of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, JD Vance and their Big Tech peers, the absurdity exposed by Bevan’s paradox has become even more glaring.
Witnessing the elaborate conspiracy of the emerging “broligarchy” [denoting a group of male billionaires driven by a toxic ideology supporting the Trumpist agenda] to extract as much wealth and power as possible from Donald Trump’s second term is legitimately nauseating. These men, who have amassed huge fortunes from government and military contracts while working tirelessly to dismantle government programs offering minimal protection to the poor, have gathered at Mar-a-Lago in Florida to kiss Trump’s ring and prepare to wield government power directly.
From their point of view, the deal they’ve struck with the president-elect is a terrific operation with an unparalleled return on investment. For a few hundred million dollars invested in Trump’s re-election campaign, they reaped, within minutes of his victory, hundreds of billions in additional wealth. The value of Thiel’s company, Palantir, soared by 23%, while Musk’s Tesla share jumped by 40%, reaching a market capitalization greater than the combined value of the world’s 15 largest automakers.
Exorbitant power
In exchange for mere crumbs of their fortune, this Big Tech fraternity receives three extraordinary gifts: massive public contracts; the removal of regulatory safeguards against the dangers of their methods and products – autonomous vehicles, AI-controlled “bots” and drones, massive increases in electricity consumption; and finally, huge bargaining power, legitimized by the state, in their dealings with workers, suppliers, competitors, and the rest of us.
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