I think one of the biggest lies of history, after the idea that the US has ever been meaningfully democratic, is the idea that the aristocracy disappeared or lost power.
Generation after generation we have these small, petty tyrants who wield astronomical fortunes and play with lives of normal people. Sometimes they are loud and sometimes they operate in the shadows, but they have never stopped being the only truly dangerous minority.
The notion that billionaires have something to do with new technologies has gotten into the American psyche to such a depth that its essential goofiness never seems to get examined (outside of venues like this). The core technical discoveries or inventions of our hype cycle were made by grad students for whom the prospect of interesting work loomed larger than remuneration- and remuneration in the hundreds of thousands or millions no doubt saturates that mechanism as surely as billions. No doubt big technical projects and infrastructure take big heaps of money, but...isn't that why finance exists, whose managers are presumably just as capable when they take a slightly smaller fraction of the fortunes that pass through their hands- and the rest could, you know, actually be invested into interesting work?
If someone profoundly wealthy really wanted to speak some common sense, it'd be 'the interest on having $50M in the bank lets me consume as much of anything it makes sense to buy as I could possibly stand. Much past that puts me into a realm of turning into a real freak show trying to bend the world to my unremarkable and increasingly insular whims out of boredom. I stopped being the technical driving force at my organization about the time I got interested in buying islands instead- if I was ever actually an idea guy at all. The next billion I get is not going to people that might actually have undeveloped ideas in their head instead. Please, save me from myself.'
Musk has provided exactly zero new technologies. He did not found Tesla, despite what he wants us to believe. As for Altman, he has actually dragged us backwards, as new research on people who use his garbage has shown.
Thanks for this good post, as always. So many fine thoughts. Your words: "To me, it is common sense to say that, first, the distribution of power in society should be made more equal (in order to give everyone a fair shot at creating a good life), and second, we should prioritize the needs of the neediest people." I keep feeling that we have to go much further in defining 'common sense'. We are slow in grasping natural authority, i.e. cause and effect, balance, sustainability. We are so slow in grasping the cause and effect of ourselves, what we are and could be. You used the word 'maturity'. That is a key. Thanks again. I appreciate your work so much.
Whenever I read block quotes which showcase the unfathomable pinheadery of dipshits like Musk and Altman, I am shocked at how high participation trophy winners can rise. Anyone who has had to face the withering criticism earned by showing up unprepared knows better than to try that stunt again. Those of us who benefitted from constructive criticism were motivated to learn, and discouraged from just phoning it in. Obviously these billionaire halfwits are not motivated by anything except positive self regard.
Great post, Hamilton. It blows my mind that mainstream media/the population generally consider billionaires to be rational actors. Musk’s ketamine fueled tantrums, Peter Thiel’s recent unintelligible interview, Altman’s obsession with mythical trickle down economics prove that they are, frankly, all just selfish idiots.
This seems pretty accurate, and also I think can be said in an even simpler way: the current system worked pretty well for billionaires, so they are fundamentally unincentivized to change it.
This exists in tension with the vague cultural wisdom we Americans have that in order to be a billionaire, you had to have done something that nobody has done before. It is probably high time that we jettison that "wisdom," and try and accept instead that for anyone to be sufficiently powerful means that they are fundamentally, structurally, necessarily opposed to any sort of change that would alter the system that lends them that power.
This puts me in mind of what a friend told me about the city where we both live…where people claim to want progress but don't want change, where people are willing to share as long they don't have to give anything up.
These clowns could lose 99% of their net worth tomorrow and improve the quality of life for millions but will not. And as Piketty told us, they would soon recoup their millions, from the spending of the rest of us. As has been pointed out many times, a dollar in the hands of the working class doesn't linger there…it will be in the strongbox of some merchant by the end of the week. Or more piquantly, in the words of Omar Little…"money ain't got owners, only spenders."
There's an old trope about the inevitability of oligarchy which would probably make me sound a tad smarter, but my leads usually go more like this one.
Our system, like every system available to historical analysis, concentrates wealth and power. Our justification for doing so is the same as that of the ancient Chaldeans: "Those with all the wealth deserve to siphon off all the wealth because they're the ones with all the wealth."
This has been the basic problem since the day after we learned to store a seasonal surplus for an annual sufficiency. Because that was the day the first gang of slackers and parasites showed up with pointy sticks to take control of the surplus. I wasn't there, but somehow I know.
So, that's politics; control of the surplus. That's why all of our dialog about politics is about distribution of the surplus. Pick any -ism, that's what it's about. What gives politics dynamic energy is the struggle to constrain the wealthy and powerful within guardrails that prevent them from destroying the people who produce their wealth and power. This would be easier if the system that concentrates wealth and power did not also concentrate psychopathology and congenital idiocy in the same population, alas.
- When 20% of the population controls 80% of the wealth, you get grumbling and jokes.
- When 10% of the population controls 90% of the wealth, the poor die too often and the alienation of the rich makes them scared and dangerous.
- When 1% of the population controls 99% of the wealth, some rude beast, th'indignant birds, and so on.
I'm trying for accessible, not flip, but I'm not perfect.
So if your tech level generates a societal surplus, seizing control of it will be the prime motivation of every atavistic sociopath in the crew. That is the sandbox in which the political imaginations of billionaires and internet randos must play. So far, all of our attempts at revolution have consisted of putting a new gang in charge of the same old machinery of coercive violence. Hence, a very strong preference among the hoi polloi for reformist policy.
If I want to live in a system that does not concentrate wealth and power, I have to start living that way right here, right now, under the current system's coercion and violence. All of my extra must belong to my brothers who have not enough: today. So, "Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, then come and follow me." Straight to a bloody cross, no thanks. Nit-picky, tweaky, and unimaginative reform it is.
While billionaires write vapid manifestos, some people in my small town are having an open meeting with a pot-luck, making silk screens that say Always Be Brave and figuring how to organize around the closing of the local food shelf. Could any one in my community write their own manifesto? Yes. But we’re finding it more effective to pool what we’ve got and feed those in town who are hungry. Always Be Brave. There are a lot of people who need you.
Another excellent piece! You pose two impt. questions:
1) What should happen to the existing distribution of power in society—should it get more equal, less equal, or stay the same? And 2) Whose needs in society should be most prioritized, if there are limited resources?
I say these are great starting points but will push back with a third and crucial point: HOW, exactly will the working class wrest power from these "pitiful but powerful" people and liberate ourselves? Marx, Lenin, Mao, Fanon and other theorists dedicated their lives to that endeavor. They understood the enormous task at hand, and are coaching us from their graves. If we're still mired in a capitalist mode of production, these theories *are* urgently relevant to our struggles today. We must ignore misguided reactionaries who tell us that "these dead white men are a relic of their time" or "their theories are outdated and don't apply to 2025." I recently read Lenin's Letter to American Workers and it could have been describing our current situation even though he wrote it in 1918! Read theory, study theory! We desperately need political education as a starting point if we're going to get ourselves out of this mess.
This is tangential to HN point; but most every time I read a characterization of billionaires, often the tech billionaires, like this HN post, it always mentions the immaturity of these guys, the childish world they imagine we all will Iive in. Its cute and endearing when an 8 year says it, but its terrifying when grown men, who’s individual wealth exceeds the GDP of some countries, actually have the means to impose their fantasies on the most powerful nation in world. Even scarier is our government not only accommodates these man-children, but are now willingly and openly absorbing them into our government; merging private and pubic into a seamless singular entity. There is always been private public partnerships, contracts for entrepreneurs and businesses with government, but there now is an integration of private and public, that is at least as far as I know, unprecedented. According the WSJ, Zuckerberg and Palantir’s Shyam Sankar are now part of a military corp created just for them and their ilk. They actually have military ranks of Lieutenant Colonel.
To NH point, billionaires are emotionally stunted adults, who actually have no working concept of the real world, but now, simply because of their wealth and influence have been given access to the most powerful army and surveillance system in world.
It’s been said before, but it’s true now more than ever, we have given the 8 year olds a loaded gun.
We fail to adapt our economy as society has evolved. It makes no sense to accept a binary economy in our diverse society. Redistribution as a means to build permanent fairness in society does not work. People do not want to pay tax and debt financing, which is born by the general population, is limited. Debt is being used to finance social need because the economy is not fairer, producing activity and wealth for consumer and wider societal benefit in the first place.
It makes no sense that the market economy is not reshaped. In our post-socialist age, nationalisation, which does not work systemically anyway, is not a pathway to a fairer society. The billionaires Hamilton refers to enjoy a monopoly over the market economy, through personal ownership rights. This makes no sense. So, reform depends on opening up the market economy. To societise it. Through purpose-driven enterprise, working primarily for consumer and wider societal benefit. Neither owned by government or shareholders but steward-owned for the benefit of the general population. And marginalised groups within it, including those discriminated against by gender, age, race and social class. Financed by commercial, government (which of course is public) and impact assessed sources of capital. An economy has to work for the majority who want a more equal society, It is all about societal political rights and and an economic model which embeds those rights and values permanently, directly to the market economy. Peter Ellis - thesocietyproject.org.uk
Those sneakers are Onitsuka Tigers, and they aren't available in the US anymore. A shame, because it's hard to find fashionable sneakers that fit my wide feet.
I think one of the biggest lies of history, after the idea that the US has ever been meaningfully democratic, is the idea that the aristocracy disappeared or lost power.
Generation after generation we have these small, petty tyrants who wield astronomical fortunes and play with lives of normal people. Sometimes they are loud and sometimes they operate in the shadows, but they have never stopped being the only truly dangerous minority.
The notion that billionaires have something to do with new technologies has gotten into the American psyche to such a depth that its essential goofiness never seems to get examined (outside of venues like this). The core technical discoveries or inventions of our hype cycle were made by grad students for whom the prospect of interesting work loomed larger than remuneration- and remuneration in the hundreds of thousands or millions no doubt saturates that mechanism as surely as billions. No doubt big technical projects and infrastructure take big heaps of money, but...isn't that why finance exists, whose managers are presumably just as capable when they take a slightly smaller fraction of the fortunes that pass through their hands- and the rest could, you know, actually be invested into interesting work?
If someone profoundly wealthy really wanted to speak some common sense, it'd be 'the interest on having $50M in the bank lets me consume as much of anything it makes sense to buy as I could possibly stand. Much past that puts me into a realm of turning into a real freak show trying to bend the world to my unremarkable and increasingly insular whims out of boredom. I stopped being the technical driving force at my organization about the time I got interested in buying islands instead- if I was ever actually an idea guy at all. The next billion I get is not going to people that might actually have undeveloped ideas in their head instead. Please, save me from myself.'
Musk has provided exactly zero new technologies. He did not found Tesla, despite what he wants us to believe. As for Altman, he has actually dragged us backwards, as new research on people who use his garbage has shown.
Thanks for this good post, as always. So many fine thoughts. Your words: "To me, it is common sense to say that, first, the distribution of power in society should be made more equal (in order to give everyone a fair shot at creating a good life), and second, we should prioritize the needs of the neediest people." I keep feeling that we have to go much further in defining 'common sense'. We are slow in grasping natural authority, i.e. cause and effect, balance, sustainability. We are so slow in grasping the cause and effect of ourselves, what we are and could be. You used the word 'maturity'. That is a key. Thanks again. I appreciate your work so much.
Whenever I read block quotes which showcase the unfathomable pinheadery of dipshits like Musk and Altman, I am shocked at how high participation trophy winners can rise. Anyone who has had to face the withering criticism earned by showing up unprepared knows better than to try that stunt again. Those of us who benefitted from constructive criticism were motivated to learn, and discouraged from just phoning it in. Obviously these billionaire halfwits are not motivated by anything except positive self regard.
Great post, Hamilton. It blows my mind that mainstream media/the population generally consider billionaires to be rational actors. Musk’s ketamine fueled tantrums, Peter Thiel’s recent unintelligible interview, Altman’s obsession with mythical trickle down economics prove that they are, frankly, all just selfish idiots.
This seems pretty accurate, and also I think can be said in an even simpler way: the current system worked pretty well for billionaires, so they are fundamentally unincentivized to change it.
This exists in tension with the vague cultural wisdom we Americans have that in order to be a billionaire, you had to have done something that nobody has done before. It is probably high time that we jettison that "wisdom," and try and accept instead that for anyone to be sufficiently powerful means that they are fundamentally, structurally, necessarily opposed to any sort of change that would alter the system that lends them that power.
This puts me in mind of what a friend told me about the city where we both live…where people claim to want progress but don't want change, where people are willing to share as long they don't have to give anything up.
These clowns could lose 99% of their net worth tomorrow and improve the quality of life for millions but will not. And as Piketty told us, they would soon recoup their millions, from the spending of the rest of us. As has been pointed out many times, a dollar in the hands of the working class doesn't linger there…it will be in the strongbox of some merchant by the end of the week. Or more piquantly, in the words of Omar Little…"money ain't got owners, only spenders."
There's an old trope about the inevitability of oligarchy which would probably make me sound a tad smarter, but my leads usually go more like this one.
Our system, like every system available to historical analysis, concentrates wealth and power. Our justification for doing so is the same as that of the ancient Chaldeans: "Those with all the wealth deserve to siphon off all the wealth because they're the ones with all the wealth."
This has been the basic problem since the day after we learned to store a seasonal surplus for an annual sufficiency. Because that was the day the first gang of slackers and parasites showed up with pointy sticks to take control of the surplus. I wasn't there, but somehow I know.
So, that's politics; control of the surplus. That's why all of our dialog about politics is about distribution of the surplus. Pick any -ism, that's what it's about. What gives politics dynamic energy is the struggle to constrain the wealthy and powerful within guardrails that prevent them from destroying the people who produce their wealth and power. This would be easier if the system that concentrates wealth and power did not also concentrate psychopathology and congenital idiocy in the same population, alas.
- When 20% of the population controls 80% of the wealth, you get grumbling and jokes.
- When 10% of the population controls 90% of the wealth, the poor die too often and the alienation of the rich makes them scared and dangerous.
- When 1% of the population controls 99% of the wealth, some rude beast, th'indignant birds, and so on.
I'm trying for accessible, not flip, but I'm not perfect.
So if your tech level generates a societal surplus, seizing control of it will be the prime motivation of every atavistic sociopath in the crew. That is the sandbox in which the political imaginations of billionaires and internet randos must play. So far, all of our attempts at revolution have consisted of putting a new gang in charge of the same old machinery of coercive violence. Hence, a very strong preference among the hoi polloi for reformist policy.
If I want to live in a system that does not concentrate wealth and power, I have to start living that way right here, right now, under the current system's coercion and violence. All of my extra must belong to my brothers who have not enough: today. So, "Go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, then come and follow me." Straight to a bloody cross, no thanks. Nit-picky, tweaky, and unimaginative reform it is.
While billionaires write vapid manifestos, some people in my small town are having an open meeting with a pot-luck, making silk screens that say Always Be Brave and figuring how to organize around the closing of the local food shelf. Could any one in my community write their own manifesto? Yes. But we’re finding it more effective to pool what we’ve got and feed those in town who are hungry. Always Be Brave. There are a lot of people who need you.
Hi Hamilton,
Another excellent piece! You pose two impt. questions:
1) What should happen to the existing distribution of power in society—should it get more equal, less equal, or stay the same? And 2) Whose needs in society should be most prioritized, if there are limited resources?
I say these are great starting points but will push back with a third and crucial point: HOW, exactly will the working class wrest power from these "pitiful but powerful" people and liberate ourselves? Marx, Lenin, Mao, Fanon and other theorists dedicated their lives to that endeavor. They understood the enormous task at hand, and are coaching us from their graves. If we're still mired in a capitalist mode of production, these theories *are* urgently relevant to our struggles today. We must ignore misguided reactionaries who tell us that "these dead white men are a relic of their time" or "their theories are outdated and don't apply to 2025." I recently read Lenin's Letter to American Workers and it could have been describing our current situation even though he wrote it in 1918! Read theory, study theory! We desperately need political education as a starting point if we're going to get ourselves out of this mess.
To be clear I am not against reading theory I just want leftists to be able to talk like normal humans.
The idea that a billionaire needs or deserves more money is absurd.
This is tangential to HN point; but most every time I read a characterization of billionaires, often the tech billionaires, like this HN post, it always mentions the immaturity of these guys, the childish world they imagine we all will Iive in. Its cute and endearing when an 8 year says it, but its terrifying when grown men, who’s individual wealth exceeds the GDP of some countries, actually have the means to impose their fantasies on the most powerful nation in world. Even scarier is our government not only accommodates these man-children, but are now willingly and openly absorbing them into our government; merging private and pubic into a seamless singular entity. There is always been private public partnerships, contracts for entrepreneurs and businesses with government, but there now is an integration of private and public, that is at least as far as I know, unprecedented. According the WSJ, Zuckerberg and Palantir’s Shyam Sankar are now part of a military corp created just for them and their ilk. They actually have military ranks of Lieutenant Colonel.
To NH point, billionaires are emotionally stunted adults, who actually have no working concept of the real world, but now, simply because of their wealth and influence have been given access to the most powerful army and surveillance system in world.
It’s been said before, but it’s true now more than ever, we have given the 8 year olds a loaded gun.
We fail to adapt our economy as society has evolved. It makes no sense to accept a binary economy in our diverse society. Redistribution as a means to build permanent fairness in society does not work. People do not want to pay tax and debt financing, which is born by the general population, is limited. Debt is being used to finance social need because the economy is not fairer, producing activity and wealth for consumer and wider societal benefit in the first place.
It makes no sense that the market economy is not reshaped. In our post-socialist age, nationalisation, which does not work systemically anyway, is not a pathway to a fairer society. The billionaires Hamilton refers to enjoy a monopoly over the market economy, through personal ownership rights. This makes no sense. So, reform depends on opening up the market economy. To societise it. Through purpose-driven enterprise, working primarily for consumer and wider societal benefit. Neither owned by government or shareholders but steward-owned for the benefit of the general population. And marginalised groups within it, including those discriminated against by gender, age, race and social class. Financed by commercial, government (which of course is public) and impact assessed sources of capital. An economy has to work for the majority who want a more equal society, It is all about societal political rights and and an economic model which embeds those rights and values permanently, directly to the market economy. Peter Ellis - thesocietyproject.org.uk
Those sneakers are Onitsuka Tigers, and they aren't available in the US anymore. A shame, because it's hard to find fashionable sneakers that fit my wide feet.
“the compounding magic of capitalism” lmfao sam altman really is just a LLM
Tax them! Go back to the 90% tax rate, and re-institute a profiteering penalty.