Politicians have always courted the wealthy, but Elon Musk and co represent a new kind of donor, and an unprecedented danger to democracy, writes Guardian columnist Zoe Williams

The concept of “elite overproduction” was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs. It’s a byproduct of inequality: a ton of poor people, sure, but also a superfluity of the wealthy, without enough positions to house them in the influence and status to which they think themselves entitled. In a modern context, that would mean senior positions in the government and civil service, along with the top tier of finance and law, but Turchin tested the hypothesis from ancient Rome to 19th-century Britain. The names and nature of the contested jobs and titles changed; the pattern remained. Turchin predicted in 2010 that by the 2020s it would be destabilising US politics.

Turchin didn’t specify exactly how much wealth puts you in a situation with an overproduced elite, but he didn’t mean debt-laden students; he didn’t mean MPs; he meant, for brevity, billionaires or the top 1%. When a lot of your media are billionaire-owned, those media sources become endlessly inventive in taking the heat off billionaires, nipping criticism in the bud by pilfering its vocabulary and throwing it back at everyone.

Elon Musk could never have got himself elected into office in the US. But as the cost-cutting tsar, a made-up role Trump has promised him, he would exert extraordinary power to cause pain, with the only choice left to citizens being whether or not to hug it. Another billionaire donor, John Paulson, has been floated for the treasury secretary job, and Trump has a track record of rewarding big-ticket donors with a seat at the table – the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman boasted in print about his role in the new North America Free Trade Agreement negotiations in 2018, and as part of Trump’s “strategic and policy forum” during the 2017 administration.

  • nifty@lemmy.world
    3·
    17 days ago

    I am not saying that. I am saying that if you take a really rich person and and really poor person, and switch their places, then there’s no guarantee that anything effectively changes about society because innate self preservation tendencies enables us to make similar rational decisions. Systems need to counteract these self preservation tendencies because often times these tendencies can be ruinous to the system they benefit from. Look at everything happening now, for example

    • eskimofry@lemmy.world
      4·
      16 days ago

      I appreciate you not escalating in response to my snarky comment with more snark or sarcasm.

      On the subject: I agree that the system needs to motivate certain behaviors and disincentives others. But from the current point onwards in our cursed reality… I see no way this transition to such a system does not involve a violent revolution/uprising. I don’t see how we can even maintain such a system in the future without threat of violence towards those that put profits before everything else. I believe this because it took violence to take back 40 hour work weeks and paid vacations. Those seem trivial compared to a system overhaul from the current starting point.