America Doesn’t Have Kings. It Has Billionaires.

Citizens still cast ballots, but the largest political investments increasingly come from concentrated wealth. The resulting trend, accelerated by the Trump administration, is a democracy whose rules increasingly favor those who can afford to shape them.

Two years ago, I was asked to make the keynote address at a conference held at the London School of Economics and Political Science. A significant portion of my topic was about under-regulated US-based corporate monopolies that have proven to be relentlessly lacking in both ethics and morality, inevitably becoming predatory. Under the altogether corrupt Trump Administration, this threat has accelerated considerably. The result was predictable. The rich are getting richer, and everyone else takes the hindmost.

Bill Piekney of The Steady State recently made the point in his superb essay, entitled The Robber Barons Never Left, that “The original Barons, Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and others, laid the groundwork…” The owners of major corporations today named Musk, Huang, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and more are powerful, politically astute, and often ruthless in pursuit of the maximization of profit. What are names of some of their exploitative businesses? The list is well known – Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, META, Nvidia, and many more qualify. Monopolies are always dreadful, leading inexorably to negative consequences for American citizens.

I term this group the New Nobility, constituting the growing ranks of billionaires chasing their own interests. This class of people predictably cares predominantly for itself. The remaining mass of our citizens are the new serfs as defined by former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. It is simple enough. Money is what matters.

Money translates into political influence. The political right in America slavishly supports business interests. The New Nobility rewards these politicians with monetary donations for election campaigns and sometimes even provides them with jobs when they leave government. It is a good deal. Election campaigns have now become beauty contests governed by “dark money” as defined by brilliant author Jane Mayer. Beautiful for the well-heeled are those who serve their need to exercise influence in their own interests

Nothing could be less democratic in the 21st or any other century. George Orwell was prescient. To paraphrase him, “some people are obviously more equal than others,” meaning that today the morbidly wealthy have corrupted democracy. Donald Trump has become Orwell’s unintended poster child for this pathology and has taken corruption to an entirely new level. Operating out of a White House without any remaining guardrails, there will be no investigations or indictments forthcoming while Todd Blanche is acting attorney general and Kash Patel is running the FBI; Trump has courted multiple uber-wealthy donors, and they, him.

Americans and other nationalities have made massive direct and indirect donations for multiple rationales to Trump and his family members. Apple, META, Google, and Microsoft all contributed millions so that Trump could tear down the East Wing of the White House and construct an enormous garish ballroom. Son-in-law Jared Kushner, a personal White House envoy without portfolio, has enriched himself via Affinity Partners, largely funded by the current ruler of Saudi Arabia. Trump’s sons both benefit from their association with the president’s cryptocurrency and meme coin businesses. Jeff Bezos of Amazon funded Trump’s wife’s vanity cinematic project “Melania” to the tune of 40 million dollars, knowing that the film would never pay for itself. This president’s corruption is daily in-your-face. Please also note the number of suspicious insider stock trades made by Trump and his inner circle of both family and associates.

Of course, many Americans sense that the-fix-is-in. Some of these subscribe to conspiracy theories in the hope of coming to better explain why. But conspiracy theories in this case are not needed. Adam Smith, in his still widely read Wealth of Nations, proposed that the “invisible hand” of self-interest is all that is required to explain the success of Capitalism. But Smith also warned that the government would have to step in to curtail Capitalism’s excesses. His attributed quote is memorable in this context: “There is always enough for the needy, there is never enough for the greedy.”

Regrettably, the law no longer serves to level the playing field. One example is the 2010 US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Citizens United decision. That outrageous decision equates corporate political contributions with individual free speech, aiding and abetting the ongoing process in America of disenfranchising the many in favor of the few. It is an absurdity now baked into the body politic by ostensibly legal means by the heavily right-leaning Supreme Court. It is also clearly anti-democratic. The same can be said about the striking down of the Chevron Doctrine that supported public safety over business interests. Regrettably, SCOTUS has become the best court that money can buy.

What is the only entity that can counter the New Nobility that is so well represented by Mr. Trump? It can only be honest government in pursuit of “the common good” as defined by the Framers.

Please remember to vote in the mid-term elections. Our future as a democracy depends on it.

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