The Changing Politics of Oligarchy

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In American politics, the main beneficiaries of “dark money” have in recent years tended to be Democrats. Google representatives were reported to have visited the White House at least 427 times during Barack Obama’s two terms. And in 2024, big spenders like Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, Marc Benioff, Alex Soros, James Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, and various donors from Wall Street helped Kamala Harris raise over US$1.5 billion for her campaign, the highest figure in history. This may be starting to change, as a number of powerful Silicon Valley billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have shifted their money to the populist Republican Party.

However, political shifts like these are less important than the unprecedented degree of control that a handful of people and institutions enjoy over our communications, finances, consumer choices, and culture. In recent decades, the influence of billionaires on both of America’s two main political parties has grown. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling, which essentially ended any meaningful control over campaign spending, only accelerated this trend. In 2024, election spending, in real dollars, is estimated to have been more than twice what it was two decades ago.

Political shifts...are less important than the unprecedented degree of control that a handful of people and institutions enjoy over our communications, finances, consumer choices, and culture.

According to Pew Research, eighty percent of Americans now believe that wealthy donors have too much power, and they are right. Google and Apple account for nearly ninety percent of all mobile browsers worldwide, while Microsoft, Android (Google), and iOS (Apple) account for roughly the same share of all operating-system software. Three tech firms now account for two-thirds of all online advertising revenue, which in turn accounts for the vast majority of all ad sales. To find historic parallels for this kind of dominance, you have to go back to the Gilded Age, an era of money men and monopolists that lasted from about 1870 until the early 1900s.

The rise of very wealthy liberal tech entrepreneurs caused many commentators on the Right to worry that American politics would soon be dominated by an alliance of the Democratic Party and major tech firms such Meta, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. That convergence of interests, they feared, would impose a radical progressive agenda on much of America and close down dissent across the internet and social media. Even the ex-wives, siblings, and children of tech oligarchs were now accruing enough money to become reliable funders of the Left’s agenda.

Read the rest of this piece at: Quillette.


Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: screenshot of front row at 2025 Trump inauguration, via YouTube.

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Oligarchy, Monopoly, and Power

I'm a conservative and agree with Robert Reich on almost nothing. But I do agree with him on the ill effects of monopoly which produces oligarchs with power beyond imagination. I support his position on the need for vigorous antitrust action, overturning Citizens United, and a need to limit share buybacks.

I would like to see US law say any company or combination of companies which gain 40% or more of a defined market shall be broken up, period! Google's share of online advertising or four companies with control of beef processing would meet this criterion. No arguments, no 10-year legal battles, just know in advance if you are over 40% of a market, or as your company success approaches 40% you need to plan for divestitures. This law should be written to apply to professional sports as well.

Big government and big companies have a natural affinity for each other. Big government is the only power capable of controlling big corporations. Cook, Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos and the like monitor politics very closely, anxious to please. They don't really care which party is in power. Similarly, big government when it wants dramatic impact in a hurry looks to big companies to make it happen, think Pfizer during Covid. A President doesn't care much what the company's voting record shows.