How are billionaires getting away with it?
If having a billion dollars is the moral equivalent of slavery, as this blog contends, then why would any American like a billionaire?
Take Warren Buffett at 52% favorable and only 26% not favorable. People must be aware of how billionaires like Buffet wage class warfare in general. But Buffett’s corruption is an open secret.
For instance he actively supported the 2008 financial bailouts of “too big to fail” banks because he was invested heavily in one:
Nor was that even Buffett’s first time making sure the government supported his investments.
In 1987, Berkshire Hathaway had acquired a 12% interest in the investment banking firm Salomon Brothers.c
In 1990, the news came out that a rogue trader had submitted bids in excess of Treasury rules and CEO John Gutfreund had failed to take disciplinary action. The U.S. government threatened to hold Salomon accountable. Buffett stepped into the breach; he directly intervened with the U.S. Treasury to reverse a ban on Salomon bidding in government bond auctions.
Buffett famously signed The Giving Pledge, and has given about $43 billion to the Gates Foundation.
First, as this blog previously explained, ill gotten gains cannot be redeemed by charity anymore than slave owners could justify owning slaves with philanthropy. Second, where billionaires use their wealth and power to lean heavily on the laws and governance of a society to support the wealthy, their charities make no effort to reverse this policy damage.
Ross Perot maybe came closest with his run for president:
In 1992, Perot announced his intention to run for president and advocated a balanced budget, an end to the outsourcing of jobs, and the enactment of electronic direct democracy.
However a closer look at his plans casts doubt that he would do much:
The most prominent element of the plan was Perot’s proposal to raise the income tax bracket of 4% wealthiest households from 31 to 33 percent, and to raise it further to 35 percent in the future.
There is no hint of Perot embracing Limitarianism, and, as with slavery, one either breaks with allowing extreme inequality or doesn’t.
In 2026, everyone can experience the havoc that billionaires like Trump and Musk can wreak on America. An amount of money that threatens our nation is clearly too much for a person to have.
However, if you limit everyone to under a billion dollars or even under 20 million dollars then how do we prevent multitudes of millionaires from crushing it at class warfare?
According to the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve, only about 12% of U.S. households have a net worth over $1 million. Slaying the oligarchy head of the Cerberus could conceivably make the gerontocracy and meritocracy heads even worse.
There’s Obama chiding that you are not educated enough for the global economy and now here’s Trump offering to end the global economy.
The American elections of this century are about deciding which Cerberus head bites you:
- George W. Bush — oligarchy
- Barack Obama — meritocracy
- Donald Trump — oligarchy
- Joseph Biden — gerontocracy
- Donald Trump — oligarchy and gerontocracy
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez graduated cum laude from Boston University IE she maintained an over 3.5 GPA at a school known for harsh grading. She has a small asteroid named after her for second place in a science fair. Would an AOC presidency be another bite from meritocracy? Her platform says:
Alexandria co-sponsored the College for All Act, a law that will establish tuition-free public college and trade school, and through the Student Debt Cancellation Act, we will forgive outstanding federal and private student loans of all previous and current students in our education system.
AOC’s platform doesn’t mention anything about Universal Basic Income, UBI, or challenge the meritocracy in any substantial way. Plus, meritocracy is anti-racist:
“It wasn’t until I took a high-stakes test where I scored in the 99th percentile across the board where they figured out I did not need remedial education,” AOC told the crowd. “It took a test instead of understanding the child in front of them.”
If you prefer non-whites be kept second class regardless of aptitude than meritocracy is more the enemy. If you prefer young people be kept second class regardless of aptitude than meritocracy is again your enemy.
On the other hand AOC is no Barack Obama. Here she is explaining that, “the United States has chosen, particularly trade policies, that prioritize the interest of capital over the interest of workers.” In the same video she also explains that college education is not the solution as when she was waitressing she and all of her peers were college educated.
But in order to fully break with Barack Obama globalization meritocracy, AOC has to also come out against H-1B visa programs and so called skilled labor making more than others in general.
Still in first place in polling for the 2028 Democratic nomination over AOC’s second, Kamala Harris is the daughter of a Berkeley National Laboratory scientist and a Stanford professor; practically a meritocracy princess. Tim Walz didn’t make the list.
For forming political opinions Americans only use wealth, age, wit, sometimes looks, and sometimes a signature policy like Bill Clinton’s.
Opportunity for all means a health-care system that holds down costs, improves quality and expands preventive and long-term care, one that gives customers a choice and covers everybody.
Obama had the same signature policy. Then Bernie Sanders also ran mostly on health care.
However even if AOC gets a College for All Act passed the upper middle class can just further move to paying for their children’s graduate schools. Plus the upper middle class can live in gentrified neighborhoods with schools that better prepare one to fight for GPA.
Even if AOC medicare for all is free, the upper middle class will still enjoy healthier work conditions, vacations to exotic locales, and early retirement. Plus they are the ones below that are able to have more children:
With America now at 1.66 births per woman, even the 2018 to 2022 line above will be difficult to reach again and the most wealthy are also below the replacement level of 2.1.
So this is how the billionaires are getting away with it. Their wealth defense industry is pushing policies that make everyone (even them) worse off and these policies are also supported by a gerontocracy representing older Americans unwilling to pay taxes.
However what’s more in the face of 2024 Trump voters are an upper middle class touting a raceless, genderless, nationless, religionless meritocracy to explain that they are legitimately superior.
These superiority claims go back to a cultish like philosophy that the billionaires have been pushing for a long time. In this cult, money and power are their own objective outside of any utility to society.
The popularity of this cult really goes back to America never taking the time to reflect on slavery. Slave traders were the original so called innovators. The fast ships they used were latest inventions by others and the financing they actually did invent let them scale. Plus efficiency:
It doesn’t matter if Warren Buffet has actually benefited humans other than himself to earn billions. It doesn’t matter if Buffet made the world worse.
No one reflects on the impact of global financialization when evaluating Buffet. If a member of this cult were to reflect on Buffet’s impact then they would have to reflect on their own as well. Buffett explicitly rejects any kind of moral economy. In 2014 he said:
I don’t think in making an investment decision on Berkshire Hathaway, or most companies — virtually all of the companies I can think of — that climate change should be a factor in the decision-making process.
This is exactly the slave trader ethos — do whatever you are allowed to do and don’t worry about it. Last week! this plaque was installed in Bristol:
The statue was put up after the end of the American civil war in 1865, 174 years after Colston’s death, as a statement piece.
Why would the people of Bristol, who were no longer benefiting from Colston — assuming they ever did, want a statue of him displayed prominently? It’s not American style racism as there were very few blacks living in Bristol in 1895 (now ethnic people are almost 20% and so the statue came down). No it’s pride.
Americans are proud of their billionaires and want to give them the benefit of the doubt — right up until it’s no longer reasonably possible and maybe a bit further. There is no national American identity feeling pride around unions, child labor laws, women’s suffrage, or 5 day work weeks because we are not currently very progressively exceptional.
America was never going to be a capital of history and culture like London, Paris, or Rome. Aside from Hollywood, what we exceptionally have is banks, tech, oil, and billionaires (who come in two flavors — tech and financial). Even when we used to have manufacturing that was tech also.
Much has been made of woke this or that, but the American, and in some ways global, identity crisis would be there even if humanity were all one race, gender, and nationality. We are no longer about reproduce at all costs so if we are not about religion or “innovation” then who are we?