There’s No Such Thing As A Good Billionaire

Democrats want us to believe that there is some cohort of “good billionaires” who can be relied upon to fight for political progress. But as the right-wing turn of tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk suggests, this is nonsense.

By Carl Beijer, Jacobin

Joe Biden said, in his farewell address:

I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And that’s the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of very few ultra-wealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked. Today an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.

Biden’s parting comments have been hailed among liberals and leftists alike for its rare acknowledgment of oligarchy in the United States; Bernie Sanders, for example, praised him as “absolutely right” and added that the danger of oligarchy is “the defining issue of our time.”

But later in his speech, Biden added crucial context to that warning: “I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.”

Though comprehensive campaign finance data is still unavailable, it is already clear that Silicon Valley played a major role in Trump’s reelection and that it is already exercising enormous influence on his administration. And this, Democrats have made it clear, is their real concern: not with capitalism’s vast concentration of wealth per se, but with its specific concentration into the hands of Republican donors.

“There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats, who share our values, and we will take their money,” Ken Martin, a leading candidate for Chair of the Democratic Party, said at a forum on Sunday. “But we’re not taking money from those bad billionaires.”