Billionaires Gone Wild

2/18/2026 at 1:24:21 PM

A handful of other ideas deserve a seat at the table of this discussion:

- the dismantling of the education system (the GOP's doing, if we're honest), particularly the languishing of training and mastery of rhetoric and critical thinking (I'll throw Florida's book-banning in with this as an example: how can children consider and think about ideas they're not allowed to know exist and aren't exposed to?);

- the dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine (the GOP's doing, if we're honest) — hard for adults to consider, think about, and discuss ideas that they aren't regularly exposed to in equal measure;

- union-busting, through which corporations emasculate a primary check on their growth and influence;

- the languishing of anti-trust / anti-monopoly enforcement, yet another primary check;

- religious zealotry and "politics in church"; and

- the issue at the very root of many of the foregoing concepts — the existence of business entities in the first place, leading to a lack of real skin in the game, as Taleb correctly points out.

by treetalker

2/18/2026 at 12:55:31 PM

> The rational fear of those who dislike economic inequality is that the rich will convert their economic power into political power: that they’ll tilt elections, or pay bribes for pardons, or buy up the news media to promote their views.

> I used to be able to claim that tech billionaires didn’t actually do this—that they just wanted to refine their gadgets. But unfortunately in the current administration we’ve seen all three. -- Paul Graham

by ZeroGravitas

2/18/2026 at 3:59:29 PM

  > Some of the rise in billionaire spending can be explained by growth in the number of billionaires — but not much. The number of U.S. billionaires rose 85 percent between 2010 and 2023, from 404 to 748. But billionaires’ share of political contributions rose by 1700 percent.
  
  > In short, we are in the midst of an unprecedented power grab by America’s oligarchs. This power grab is arguably the most important fact about contemporary U.S. politics. In many ways MAGA is just a symptom.
  
  > What lies behind this power grab? An extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. (..)
  > That said, even billionaires care about more than their own personal wealth. Unfortunately, their non-monetary goals are often worse than their greed.

Ouch.. Carpet bombing with truth, not sure if legal.

It is refreshing to read a piece with a broad perspective that solely focuses on real issues, instead of keeping the layman in the dark with both-sidisms or "let us poke your emotional brain with political distractions". Puts corporate media like the NYT to shame; they could have saved millions on ho-hum opinion pieces if they wanted to.

Share this piece with your network, if you wonder what role you can play. Bottom up is the only way, the top is either clobbered with private interests or still having no other thought then "I believed we could be a bit corrupt, just pushing a bit but keeping it safe, no?"

by exceptione

2/18/2026 at 9:57:33 PM

On one side we have people who know how to build, using their wealth to build more.

On other side we have people who distribute someone else's wealth.

The only status quo I see is that both go hand in hand.

by dzhiurgis

2/19/2026 at 12:52:21 PM

The people that “build wealth” definitely play by the rules and don’t use their outsized resources to tip things in their favor to build more.

by conception

2/19/2026 at 1:18:39 PM

> The people that “build wealth” definitely play by the rules

Are you talking about the workers who actually do the job and build the things others pay money for?

Because they have no other option than to play by the rules - if they don’t, they go to jail and won’t be able to buy a pardon.

by rbanffy