It must be noted that vast wealth makes people crazy. Surrounded by sycophants, unrestricted by normal social inhibitions, people develop enormous and infantile egos. They think they’re gods. Their perfect access to every pleasure and indulgence eventually renders all these pleasures meaningless. They’re bored and jaded. So all that’s left for them is to exercise power, compete with one another for the most toys or zeroes, or if they’re really nasty, inflict pain. And they do know their hoarding is hurting everyone else. So they need to construct a powerful self-justification (I’m superior, I’m transformative, I’m going to survive the apocalypse and you’re not!). The vast carelessness Fitzgerald described is more like a vast sociopathy.
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly. The rich have always objected to being governed at all." - G. K. Chesterton
Absent a serious foreign military threat, the very rich simply don't care. With no need for cannon fodder, they have no interest in the general public at all. French or Russian revolutions are infrequent. In general, the rich stay rich, no matter how foolish they are, and the wealth ultimately ends up being hereditary.
"Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day."
One thing I've heard that strikes me as bang-on is that modern techbros and their beliefs in increasingly insane ideas like this are the modern-day equivalent of the aristocrats and industrialists a hundred years ago who went down the rabbit hole of occultism.
It's just that the pop cultural background has changed since then. So a hundred years ago, one percenters became obsessed with things like divination, mediumship, telepathy, and lost precursor civilizations, i.e. the kind of thing Lovecraft, Conan-Doyle, or Maupassant might've written about. Whereas today they end up obsessed with things like robot sentience, colonies on Mars, or Thiel's immortality quest. Things whose common denominator is "I was a teenager in the eighties and I desperately want to believe that Skynet, the Genesis Device, or the X-gene is a real thing, or at least will be if I just throw enough money at it."
Notably, the two eras have two things in common:
1) Skyrocketing private fortunes leading to a large number of loons with a lot more money than sense.
2) The number of people whose insane beliefs ended up guiding them right down the rabbit hole of fascism.
I'm never sure of the direction of causality here... Are they insane a**holes because they are incredibly wealthy, or are they incredibly wealthy because they are insane a**holes?
Either way, their wealth means that they are insulated from both their insanity and a**holery...
Not all people. You may not agree with everything they say or do but there are some — a few — like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates who are not crazy or disinterested in the welfare of others.
You are right it is not all uber wealthy are horrible people but they are few and far between. BTW I would hate to leave Bezos’ 1st wife, MacKenzie Scott, who has been generously supporting philanthropy, off of the too short list of wealthy good guys.
Women, as a group, are notably more interested in the welfare of other human beings than men are, and less attracted to the gameification of power. And yes, there are some very rich men who’ve supported philanthropic causes (perhaps not without some ego gratification, as mostly they seem to want their names on things rather than contribute anonymously). But I suspect even so that they too are psychologically very distorted by their wealth.
I agree but I recently read “ Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” by Sarah Wynn-Williams about working for Facebook back in the day. It’s an entertaining, disturbing read. I was surprised at how badly Sheryl Sanberg treated her female staffers.
There is a missing law of societal behavior here (like Parkinson's, Murphy's, the Peter Principal: Human Beings will push any system of laws to its breaking point. Any attempt to regulate will be nibbled to death by a thousand ducks - death by a thousand cuts.
Not always. Some elites have pulled back from destruction. I like Peter Turchin's analysis in "End Times: Elites, Counterelites, and the Path of Political Disintegration".
(But how I wish he hadn't used the term 'End times' in the title -- the book has nothing to do with the popular meaning of that term.)
Philanthropy is typically a good thing but what we really need is not beneficent giving rather we need the uber wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes and let We The People make our own decisions how to pay for our Country’s needs.
My nephew’s computer engineering degree required a couple of “soft” courses, but that was back in 2016-20. At the time universities were responding to IT companies complaints of poor interpersonal skills and lack of basic social knowledge. Tech companies had started hiring non-specialists because the specialists had such difficulty in understanding what end users needed. The soft skills deficit caused corporate and government customers enormous frustration as tech companies delivered poorly functioning systems. Now it seems they’ve decided to return to ignoring customer needs and expect everyone to adapt to the technology, rather than the other way around.
Musk, Thiel, Andreesen etc all appear to be frustrated by their poor social skills as much as expecting everyone to venerate them. Like my nephew and his classmates, they just KNOW what the most efficient engineered course is, regardless of whether the outcome meets the needs of humans.
As a middle-class IT retiree who, through a combination of luck, native intelligence, planning and bag-lady syndrome can now fly first-class, I notice that once I board, a sense of entitlement and superiority occurs.
Nevertheless, I'm capable of noticing this and dismissing it as rationally and ethically unjustified. Is this just my nature, (maybe inherited from concientious forbears) or do the extensive liberals arts studies that came before the computer science classes come into play?
Bingo. Our last best hope is to get money out of politics. The sooner the better. It seems a lost cause, but American Promise is working on a constitutional amendment that could do just that.
My fave take so far on repairing the Supreme Court:
"We need a presidential candidate who vows to hold the Supreme Court as currently constituted to have invalidated itself through its open corruption and fraternization with anti-constitutional insurrectionist domestic enemies of the United State, to treat all its rulings as void, and to replace it." --A.R. Moxon
Ironically, both of the two main political sides currently describe their opponents with language like that. Which, if any, are correct is left as an exercise for the reader.
Yep. While Newsom is not everyone's cup of tea, I think he'd be the kind of fighter we need to pack the court and fight gerrymandering. Biden and so many Dem leaders are too caught up in morality and tradition to fight MAGA effectively.
13 makes it a 7:6 court unless a Democratic president gets to replace Thomas, Alito and possibly Roberts. Also, Justice Sotomayor has type 1 Diabetes and reportedly is not all that well. So there's that. Finally, the chance that one of the 4 new justices would turn out to be a reverse of Justice Souter is always a possible—meaning thought liberal but ends up conservative. I'm in favor of adding 6 to make the number 15 and buying some insurance with a 9:6 court.
Reorganize entirely. Say, 41 justices, organized into subcourts: one for taxes, one for enforcing citizen rights, one for federalism, one for limiting government by weighing in on what the Constitution allows or doesn’t, each odd numbered with a Deputy Chief elected by the sub court. Some overlapping allowed but a limit on how many subcourts a judge can be on. An overall 13 member or so central Supreme Court to adjudicate differences between subcourts. And once a year, all 41 meet en banque to affirm a whole year’s previous rulings; in the deliberately rare cases where they don’t affirm, they may appoint a special subcourt to reconsider, or reconsider themselves.
After that we can periodically redistrict the states (why do we have two Dakotas, and why isn’t New England all one state, and why haven’t Pennsylvania and Maryland long ago split Delaware and absorbed that wretched hive of corporate villainy?)
Yes, but the only way to do that is to tax away their obscene power by making them pay for their wealth, which we voters and our tax subsidies have enabled. We can do it now or wait until the 2nd Great Depression, when we will all be praying for the reincarnation of FDR to save us.
It's a good thing I don't have kids--I'd be like my parents--or worse. My brother & I were left with the exact amount of money needed for entrance into a water park, no more. Once inside, one needed money for the locker to keep one's street clothes, towels (thankfully, they weren't stolen!), money for concessions, maybe to rent inflatable toys, whatever. Today, parents want to join their kids and relive their adolescence! Disney, galore! These privileged little twerps gifted computers to take apart and fiddle with during the last generation are not the 99% who are only going to scroll social media while thinking they'll monetize it & become an influencer, when only a minute percentage do. I think it's telling that the tech moguls don't allow their children access to the internet unless it's to learn Mandarin.
Really? I have a well to do son, but he & his wife have a lot of parental control over what tech they indulge their 2 children with. It’s up to the parents to not over-indulge their children with every new tech gimmick that’s put out each & every year. They also monitor what they watch on television & movie they see. The result thus far has been great. My grand-children are very will adjusted and nice kids.
That is proof positive that bad parenting is one significant cause of our P2P culture. GenZ has more spoiled brats than ever in modern history, but they are not economic Nepos, kids are just not to hearing "No."
And how do we do that J? Elon Musk's big election loss in the WI Supreme Court race may be a template of how to beat the big money elites.
In WI, every dirty money driven trick Elon pulled was made public almost immediately. By just announcing that big money donors are trying to subvert a race and doing nothing else has proven pointless. But, if you outline how Elon or others spread misinformation about a candidate. In other words, expose WHAT the donors are doing and HOW they are influencing elections.
This is true, but Musk was a uniquely repellent character. What worries me is that a person with similar intelligence and money, and a similar viewpoint but possessing a sense of humor and a kinder-appearing persona could subvert political campaigns more effectively.
Paul your words are so true as are J French's. "nothing makes a privileged man angrier than criticism of his privilege.". Isn't this the whole story of not only tech bros and Wall Street, but MAGA today.
That’s what I was thinking when I read that. Rich people rage is real, but Maga boys feel the same. Always talking about how they don’t get enough respect like they did in the old days. They sympathize with the tech bros because they feel they are somehow equal in their male privilege and want everyone to tell them how great they are. But the tech billionaires are truly on a higher level of rage that unfortunately affects the rest of us.
You said it. I spoke with someone riding the economic escalator with fat pockets who rebutted my condemnation of the trump regime and said their personal goal was to try to understand MAGA. Which told me they were drinking the Kool aid. my musical coda which came to mind -caberet Lizza Minnelli and Joel Grey https://youtu.be/eBtn2NQ5k58?si=XGA-lIeK7JnkNkPH
The railroad barons behaved much like the tech bros - I recall hearing that Falling Water was built on the backs of laborers who were paid 5 cents a day during the Great Depression (onsite tour). I suspect something similar will take them down, as the income gap continues to widen.
Yep - I used to live close and visited several times. Well worth visiting if you're in the area. The son retained control for a long time, so what was said on the tours was usually not quite so candid.
I was in Pennsylvania last fall and unfortunately, my trip in an rv was much too ambitious, as it was thwarted by deaths in the families of two different relatives. I would have rearranged my route to view Falling Water if time wasn't then of the essence.
If you get the chance again... Cucumber Falls SP is a great place to walk; there's swimming at the bottom of one trail. There's a lot of white water in the area, but it's most def not for the inexperienced/faint of heart - even if you are just rafting. And my condolences...
Omg! You are the type “i am drowning… let’s get everybody under”. No way my dear. If you sink, you will have to sink alone (or maybe just take your closest neighbour. Sure he / she will be delighted). Good luck. LOL
Well, hate to say it, but the folks saying, "we need to get rid of Citizens United" or "we need a Constitutional amendment" might as well be saying, "We need flying pink unicorns and then everything will be great!"
I don't think that's quite it, Jack. I'm as depressed as "meme" about the direction in which our country is presently headed, but I don't think a global collapse is necessary for our direction to be changed. What we need is an alert and engaged citizenry, and if enough of us get hurt enough to pay attention to what has happened, we may be able to take action. The present course of our country was directed by human beings, and human beings can change it, if enough of them want to.
Maybe what Jack or Meme is saying is that it will take a repeat of the last century's world wars & global depression for another FDR to come along or a much needed attitude adjustment the oligarchy didn't receive as Europe & Asia's oligarchies did.
Collapse into a new decentralized order. "Breaking together" into human-scaled communities. Outrage can turn into organized action to protect ecosystems. Research "The Great Turning."
Writing a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics is easy. Getting a government that is filled with people who depend upon there being money in politics to vote against the corruption that sustains them is hard.
Writing a Constitutional amendment to get money out of politics would be easy. Getting it actually passed and added to the Constitution would be impossible.
"Impossible" is true for now, but too cynical for all time. The issue is not actually writing and passing a constitutional amendment, but recovering and advancing the sense that for us all to live together, we must be fair to each other. The oligarchs do not believe that. If they did, we could merely pass a fair tax code and have the problem solved. Of course, we'd also have to impeach and replace the corrupt (in)justices on the Supreme Court, because some fool would surely challenge this, and we have seen how after the lower courts by and large support the law, which the Supreme Court then overrules based on ideology couched as law. (Packing the Court would only compound the mess, so forget that. Bad idea!) To fix the Supreme Court, we'd need better educated voters in so many states... I'll quit there.
It's hard, but if the colonists could dethrone a bad king and separate from corrupt ministers, our current problems are in the range of possibility to be fixed. The questions are whether we can smarten up and stop the nonsense now, or how many generations must first pass, and whether we could solve this peacefully at the ballot box. I'm not saying I'm hopeful for the rest of my lifetime, but only that the descent into total defeatism equals acquiescence to the regime, so I refuse to grant it that much power.
People of all political persuasions need to be persuaded to vote for Democrats in the midterms (if we have midterms...), regardless of whether they like the policies of the Democratic Party, because the Democrats still believe in democracy.
All of this is a tough, tough, tough sell, yet is still only difficult, but not impossible. If you give up, you let the regime win!
It’s deeper than getting money out of politics. We need a fundamental separation of concerns between the public and private sector. Consider the many ways the Paramout/CBS merger is playing out… we need a restrained executive with an independent judiciary, independent DoJ, independent Fed, and so on. This likely ultimately all depends upon constitutional reforms.
No one would choose to run a 25 year old operating system on their new laptop. Well, that’s how we are trying to run this country with the world’s oldest Democracy. It’s another race of the political reform called for in the abundance agenda.
You offer a good example here. The metastasization of mergers and acquisitions in our current economy leads to what Dr. Krugman has pungently described as the "tyranny of the big."
Agreed. Let’s start somewhere, and I don’t think it’s impossible to pass a constitutional amendment on this. Americans of all political persuasions get that money in politics is a huge problem.
I think the quacks fronting the abundance agenda are just the opposite side of the coin as the quacks like Laura Loomer, Steve Bannon, & all of the other MAGAts....lot's of noise these opportunists profit from, but the agenda never changes.
Updating operating systems would be desirable, but keeping working systems working is hardly the problem we face right now. The problem is that the tech bros who could afford to fix those systems want to fix them to consolidate their own power, not to empower the country. Forget the operating systems for now. Fix the politics!
Forget a constitutional amendment. This would take years and open the right wing crackpots up to changes they have wanted like banning abortion. We just need to change the tax code.
I have some faith in the upcoming generation. THEY are recognizing how dangerous tech is to their mental health, their progress in learning and generally …l happiness.
Yesterday, a bunch of kids were headed out to shady bars with “fakes” and we sort of shook our head and reminisced about youth….and the “tech” they brought wer disposable cameras, digital cameras to record it. Why? Because they’re sick of having their lives on phones for anyone to use any which way. Even the boys are aware their images are being monetized by others. They say all the time….”I’m not for sale”. Plus they have to think about their future boss stalking their social media.
That isn’t making society better, we had the luxury of being an idiot without it haunting us for the rest of our level they see how powerless their votes are but haven’t given up hope they might be able t change it.
I'm not young but was recently shopping for a non-internet enabled camera. This also shows how committed the tech companies are to enshittification. They're willing to alienate what should be their target demo because they have no ideas. They're hoping that if they feed it enough of earth's resources, AI will come up with some for them.
A constitutional amendment is just words on paper to these people. You will have to speak with more uh, “concrete” messaging. Just watched on PBS “My Grandfather’s War” about the French resistance, and thought, the bad guys today are much better equipped to track down resisters. The IDF can send a missile into the bedroom window of officials a thousand miles away, because their cell phone broadcasts exactly where they are in real time. Try to get around without that. And the most fanatical Nazis didn’t hesitate to slaughter an entire innocent town as reprisal. Just like the IDF does today. Is MAGA any better?
I think that like today's Supreme Court, the answer to money in politycs and guns, is to impeach the obviously biased members of the court, possibly have more judges as well due to work liad, mandatory retirement, etc. And then have the reinterpreted (like Roe, Presidential immunity, et al.). I think that is the fastest way forward, and not depending on constitutional amendments.
We missed our opening. We should have been doing this stuff when Biden was in office and we didn't. You know, b/c Dems respect "norms" and didn't want to be accused of packing the court or something. B/c then what would the Repubs do when they were in office??
Well, that ship has sailed and now it ain't gonna happen.
I don't think they have to be impeached, just retired. Court reform (in both senses of the term) is needed. It would be useful to have age limits on voting justices, particularly if they could be imposed retroactively.
I think term limits as well, given the stupidity of confirming younger justices with little actual experience. Term limits would stop that destructive trend. Apparently “lifetime” is explicitly stated in the Constitution, but some system of rotation on a fixed timeline should be allowable. But look - it is a group of self-interested judiciary apppointments who decide the constitutionality. Who gets around them having the final word on imposing accountability?! Once corruption is introduced into the system, it's very hard to claw it back.
I say impeach because it says corrupt, and we need bipartisan agreement on it. But I'll claw it back any way I can.
"Our last best hope is to get money out of politics."
----
Be careful what you wish for.
Have you seen the Keeling Curve lately? We're well on track to shoot past +2°C, and even +1.5°C* takes out a significant part of the ice sheets.
Today's high net worths will plummet. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but irrevocably when the priorities of what's left of the world economy shifts.
__________________
*Recent research says that every +0.1°C shift is markedly worse, so every gigatonne of CO2 matters, and the Trump admin is pushing coal and fossil gas power plants.
Speaking of CO2, MAGA are convinced that global warming isn’t happening. The oil companies poured money into a massive propaganda campaign and it worked.
I have been thinking a lot about this; thanks for bringing it all together. The recent interview with Peter Thiel in the New York Times was shocking to me in its myopic self-centeredness . Firstly, slightly off topic, Thiel bemoaning the death of new ideas. Holy Cow, if we were to release 51% of the population (women) from thrall we would have plenty of ideas, not to mention other discriminated persons. This powerful man, (given a platform like the Times WHY?) reminded me of my four year old on Christmas morning, up to his ears in opened presents and wrapping paper standing in the middle of the living room red-faced and wailing. “What’s wrong?”, we asked. “I want more of what I want!”, he cried.
They're empty inside. Acquisition of either wealth or power provides them a little dopamine hit. Then it wears off and they crash, thus setting up the need for another dopamine hit. So they pursue further acquisition, get the hit, then the crash, rinse, repeat.
I’ve started to wonder if this effect might also explain the MAGA multitudes. The people of Western and developed Asian nations like Korea and Japan are materially much better off than their ancestors 100 years ago. Men in particular seem to want to blow it all up. They sound like bored kids on a rainy day, willing to start squabbling to generate a little excitement.
White men in America are generally better off than their predecessors in the absolute sense. But the privilege gap between them and women or men of color is smaller now than it used to be, and many would rather blow it all up then see that trend continue.
Couldn’t agree more. Reading the Washington Post these days is like watching a snake slowly digest a hippopotamus. Good people have offered to buy and rebuild the once-excellent newspaper, but Bezos has developed a taste for hippo meet.
My family and some friends who have been coming to Nantucket for decades prefer to call it the douche baggification of pretty much our entire society. Downtown has become so cringey, even the very privileged girls who are staying with us think the men surrounding them have just become the largest assholes of all time. “Oh, nice yacht and nice gut, grandpa” was thrown out the other day which was not fun to hear as a person the same age as “grandpa”. But we also don’t hit on little girls we have been around since they were in braces.
The UNJUSTIFIED egos, the snowflake insecurity and the fact that pretty much any bozo on the bus can now code and they never really created anything that didn’t already exist is catching up with bro culture (includes females) in every industry. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t create the objectification of women or gossip. He just created a way to be a posing asshole quicker with a larger audience. Jeff Bezos didn’t create shopping. My mother got Amazon which was the Spiegel catalog decades before Bezos destroyed small business and ruined our roads. PS. Jeff, you’re welcome for We, the People, footing the bill for all your transport. Imagine that billion dollars tab coming due each year for planes, roads, etc.
And my only critique is not mentioning crypto…just the latest nonsensical instrument the nerds are using to confuse and rob the rest of us. I mean that was the point, right? Use it to launder money, support actual pedophiles and get people to invest in a Ponzi scheme. It’s so stupid and not innovative. There’s a reason it needs to be tied to the dollar which does have actual value.
Tech came along and finally these misfits were useful to cooler kids. I can remember trying to learn to use a computer decades ago…a laptop and the Geek Squad may as well have been speaking Greek or Swahili to me. No clue until finally, I said, “can you just explain it to me like I’m a third grader. Preferably in English” Voila….turns out you actually don’t need a masters in computer science, just need to know the language in plain English. But that was the point…same with finance…our financial adviser would be using all this language we had no clue about and the acronyms…EBITA, shit like that and they’re spitting it off like an auctioneer yo explain what they’re doing with my money. Again, slow it down, explain. Earning before interest, taxes…whatever…just say it, for goodness sake. Like young golfers now…tracts, degrees…what the hell are you talking about? You mean “the course”, “my 3 wood”? I have a lot of respect for my financial advisor, as I do my doctor and we shopped along for both before landing on people who just spoke clearly, made sure we understood, didn’t talk down to s and respected our business as if they actually cared about it. Basically, not a egomaniacal jerk.
The techies KNOW their products are addicting kids, especially young men, to porn, GAMBLING, and gaming for their own selfish profits. It’s why they brag their own children aren’t given access to their products. Telling. Most people who create useful things want everyone to use their product.
I am speaking from a point where I have worked really hard and have been extremely lucky in life which has afforded me comfort and access to many things but after a certain amount, it’s all gravy and if you aren’t connected to actual humans and finding joy in life, it is meaningless. These people BRAG about making humans obsolete. Who is going to buy their crap when they have no job? Robots?
I don’t look at these guys and feel envy. I think they’re incredibly miserable. Donald Trump and his quest for power and money seems like the unhappiest person on the planet. Thin skinned, vengeful, greedy, never enough must be agony to live in daily. To have all that and still feel the need to lie, cheat and steal does not project masculinity and strength. It projects insecurity and fear.
Mr. Debon, I’ve been waiting to read what you wrote. My father, who started with his fine math brain, taught me that enough to “enjoy life” was enough.
One of my favorite people in the world was a teacher and coach who could have made all the money in the world but just loved teaching. Would show a kid 10 different ways to get a math problem. Tough coach but not a jerk, not belittling, just expected and encouraged the best from kids. Made them feel “you can do it”. Or at least “you will get better.”
He actually made more money doing his side job during the summer than from teaching but I’m telling you….those kids - from the ones in their teens who he has currently to grown ups who send their kids to the same school and beg to have them in his class …. The way they look up to and how he changed their lives, makes me envy his career.
I don’t know when we started to worship money and think the size of one’s bank account equals their worth. We saw it with Musk….another guy who didn’t create anything. And would be a nobody without the generosity of the people who so callously thinks are “lesser than” a hunk of metal. He’s a very bright guy for sure. But rockets and electric cars existed before he was born. He’s good at “selling” himself to people who definitely equate money to all value.And we saw first hand the dangers of thinking a success in one area translates to success in any and all areas they stumble into.
Yes! He gave even when he had little. As he loved to fish, he taught poor boys to fish; he gave me the college education he never had, but had given his sisters. The crowd at his funeral who couldn’t get into the church reminded me of who he had been to the community to whom he had given so much time (and laughter).
I spent summers on Nantucket as a kid in the 60s, and worked there as a carpenter while in college in the 70s. I used to hang out and get drunk with fishermen in bars.
Even by the 80s, it was getting so shi-shi. I cannot imagine what it is like now. I imagine giant houses built on all the moors.
Either way, it still has the same catastrophic effect on the innocent bystanders and people who actually care about people.
(Since the justification for the “opioid crisis” and “mass shootings” are so wildly different: ‘the PILLS made me do it’ and ‘it’s NOT the guns that make them do that’- the only thing I’ve come to be sure of is: IT’S NOT THE SUBSTANCE. It’s the ADDICTION-a gaping black hole that can never be filled no matter what you do.)
Acquiring money works like an addiction. It re-wires the brain. This is why they keep striving for more rather than just relaxing and enjoying what they have.
The Atlantic points to him as the chief architect of the emerging autocracy in its online edition today (7/21/25). I’ve been thinking the same thing, and he spent decades as the Trojan horse of the right wing.
Most of the big tech company leaders have degenerated into a bunch of greedy, cowardly Trump sycophants, and anti-democracy traitors who are convinced they are God’s gift to the world. As one of the many customers who made them by purchasing something from them, I know we can break them. Even as they cower from power, they spit on the country that helped them to become fabulously wealthy. When the tide turns, as it always does, the power of the people will regulate them into the pathetic losers they have always been.
I hope that the tide turns soon. The hypersonic pace of destruction under our current oligarchic-fascist regime is so fast that if the tide doesn't turn soon, i fear that we will have lost so much that it will take generations to recover. I think of the loss suffered by Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and how long it is taking them to recover, and I worry that our fate might be similar.
How? How do we break them? What are we waiting for? Where is the gray hat hacker resistance willing to wield the Internet (or an alternative internet) to fight these evil shitbirds?
It's different now. In the past, the damage inflicted by despots, although considerable, was rather localized and relatively short-lived. Now the technology exists to make those horrors global and permanent. It will take more than storming a Bastille or two to get us out of this mess.
I've been giving money to Common Cause forever, it seems, because it's so evident that Citizen's United needs to be reversed in order to reduce the influence of corporate money in politics. And even if it is, though, we will still be a struggling democracy. But maybe one with an enhanced chance of surviving, in some meaningful way. If anyone doubts how much power and influence we've ceded to the wealthy, they need only look at the oligarchies of Russian, Hungary, Turkey and the like--as well as those countries teetering on the brink: India, among others. Once the diabolical twinship of politics and big money establishes itself, it appears to have staying power. So what we need from you and others like you, Dr. Krugman, is some robust examples of how to fix the system, and better yet, how to establish a nation based on true sharing of power, as there appear to be in the social democratic countries of Northern Europe and Scandinavia. I don't think we understand them nearly well enough.
A very bright person—columnist Mark Shields—said once that Citizens Untied was the Supreme Court's worst-ever decision, one that could destroy our very democracy. Turns out he was right.
Reversing Citizens United (which is a pretty Orwellian tag to begin with) won't actually change anything by itself. All it did was invalidate statutory regulation of campaign spending. Now that they've had 15 years of rolling in unlimited money, how can we expect Congress to enact meaningful regulation if the constitutional restraint went away overnight? Or any president who witnessed the orange mob boss's continual shakedowns to advocate for and sign such legislation?
The lobbying would be intense, and it's not hard to imagine ad campaigns warning of silencing the political voices of the little people, when in fact their voices are effectively drowned out by all that dirty money in the first place.
Amazon wouldn't have taken off if it wasn't able to avoid most state sales taxes for years when it started. Facebook and X should always have been subject to rules regarding defamation that the rest of media has to follow. Government is always too little, too late when it comes to regulating new industries. Regulation of AI is following that trend. Good regulation is the hardest thing that government needs to do but is necessary to reign in the rampant greed in our economy.
There is a difference between creating wealth and capturing. Once you start capturing too high a percentage of the wealth you created, your net contribution becomes negative.
And many started capturing the wealth created by others. Notice that a number of those TechBros didn't even start the companies that they made all of their money off of but just jumped in a the right time.
I still find it inconceivable that the deregulated and bailed-out financial services industry managed to largely avoid blame for the 2008 financial crash. Instead blame was put on government spending and immigrants. As a certain German observed, the masses will believe a bigger lie than a smaller one.
He really should take the next step and point out that it is the Supreme Court that took steps to corrupt democracy with money. That result was deliberate, not accidental. It was a primary objective of the Koch Organization’s program described in Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money”. Citizens United was a major contributor. All the right-wing Justices come from the Kochs’ Federalist Society and have been nurtured for years.
People want to talk about the Court as an independent branch of government with a role in defending democracy, but they were actually the first step in the dictatorial takeover.
It must be noted that vast wealth makes people crazy. Surrounded by sycophants, unrestricted by normal social inhibitions, people develop enormous and infantile egos. They think they’re gods. Their perfect access to every pleasure and indulgence eventually renders all these pleasures meaningless. They’re bored and jaded. So all that’s left for them is to exercise power, compete with one another for the most toys or zeroes, or if they’re really nasty, inflict pain. And they do know their hoarding is hurting everyone else. So they need to construct a powerful self-justification (I’m superior, I’m transformative, I’m going to survive the apocalypse and you’re not!). The vast carelessness Fitzgerald described is more like a vast sociopathy.
The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly. The rich have always objected to being governed at all." - G. K. Chesterton
Absent a serious foreign military threat, the very rich simply don't care. With no need for cannon fodder, they have no interest in the general public at all. French or Russian revolutions are infrequent. In general, the rich stay rich, no matter how foolish they are, and the wealth ultimately ends up being hereditary.
To quote a now-famous post from Twitter:
"Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day."
Peter Thiel wants to live forever and thinks he can. Money can buy delusions but not eternity.
One thing I've heard that strikes me as bang-on is that modern techbros and their beliefs in increasingly insane ideas like this are the modern-day equivalent of the aristocrats and industrialists a hundred years ago who went down the rabbit hole of occultism.
It's just that the pop cultural background has changed since then. So a hundred years ago, one percenters became obsessed with things like divination, mediumship, telepathy, and lost precursor civilizations, i.e. the kind of thing Lovecraft, Conan-Doyle, or Maupassant might've written about. Whereas today they end up obsessed with things like robot sentience, colonies on Mars, or Thiel's immortality quest. Things whose common denominator is "I was a teenager in the eighties and I desperately want to believe that Skynet, the Genesis Device, or the X-gene is a real thing, or at least will be if I just throw enough money at it."
Notably, the two eras have two things in common:
1) Skyrocketing private fortunes leading to a large number of loons with a lot more money than sense.
2) The number of people whose insane beliefs ended up guiding them right down the rabbit hole of fascism.
Definitely, we are in a Loon Explosion. We must cultivate more foxes and otters to restore balance.
And with that money comes the belief that they have the right to run things, and the mandate to remake the world into their own fantasy video game.
I am reading "The Haves and Have-Yachts" by Evan Osnos, which totally confirms every point you've made in this comment.
Ordered it. Looks interesting.
I'm never sure of the direction of causality here... Are they insane a**holes because they are incredibly wealthy, or are they incredibly wealthy because they are insane a**holes?
Either way, their wealth means that they are insulated from both their insanity and a**holery...
Stephen, I've had that question myself. Here is a link to an article that answers the question as to one of the tech bros in particular. I found it in Jamelle Bouie's latest newsletter under "Now Reading." I've hated every quotation I've ever read from they guy who is the subject of the article, and having read the article I feel fully vindicated. https://www.liberalcurrents.com/marc-andreessen-is-a-traitor/?campaign_id=129&emc=edit_jbo_20250719&instance_id=158848&nl=jamelle-bouie®i_id=56240656&segment_id=202218&user_id=b90401655cbd1cc50b52c0badb58ed94
Yes, Andreessen’s a real creep.
Not all people. You may not agree with everything they say or do but there are some — a few — like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates who are not crazy or disinterested in the welfare of others.
They are just another generation of inequality and quasi-philanthropy, which should have been a social fund or public good 😅
Buffet is not a techbro - and there are plenty of his generation who are as bad if not worse.
So if we tax billionaires out of existence we’ll actually be doing them a favor by improving their mental health. 👍
You are right it is not all uber wealthy are horrible people but they are few and far between. BTW I would hate to leave Bezos’ 1st wife, MacKenzie Scott, who has been generously supporting philanthropy, off of the too short list of wealthy good guys.
And Melinda Gates
Sorry - Melinda French
Women, as a group, are notably more interested in the welfare of other human beings than men are, and less attracted to the gameification of power. And yes, there are some very rich men who’ve supported philanthropic causes (perhaps not without some ego gratification, as mostly they seem to want their names on things rather than contribute anonymously). But I suspect even so that they too are psychologically very distorted by their wealth.
I agree but I recently read “ Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” by Sarah Wynn-Williams about working for Facebook back in the day. It’s an entertaining, disturbing read. I was surprised at how badly Sheryl Sanberg treated her female staffers.
Reminds me of the truth in scripture : there is more happiness in giving than receiving. Jesus Christ 🕊️
Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene owns The Atlantic (lots of good writing there).
Luv the ‘Lantic! David Frum et al.
Love the reference to F Scott Fitzgerald and his careless people.
You may appreciate this quote also then : Logan P. Smith
To suppose as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.
Well, it's not actually unheard of, but people like that often fail to *stay* rich.
There is a missing law of societal behavior here (like Parkinson's, Murphy's, the Peter Principal: Human Beings will push any system of laws to its breaking point. Any attempt to regulate will be nibbled to death by a thousand ducks - death by a thousand cuts.
It is just a corollary of Murphy's. Anything that can be broken will be.
Not always. Some elites have pulled back from destruction. I like Peter Turchin's analysis in "End Times: Elites, Counterelites, and the Path of Political Disintegration".
(But how I wish he hadn't used the term 'End times' in the title -- the book has nothing to do with the popular meaning of that term.)
Philanthropy is typically a good thing but what we really need is not beneficent giving rather we need the uber wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes and let We The People make our own decisions how to pay for our Country’s needs.
Power corrupts and the corruption is to the person and the body politic.
Male entitlement on steroids, fueled by vast amounts of money and influence.
Perfect reference.
My nephew’s computer engineering degree required a couple of “soft” courses, but that was back in 2016-20. At the time universities were responding to IT companies complaints of poor interpersonal skills and lack of basic social knowledge. Tech companies had started hiring non-specialists because the specialists had such difficulty in understanding what end users needed. The soft skills deficit caused corporate and government customers enormous frustration as tech companies delivered poorly functioning systems. Now it seems they’ve decided to return to ignoring customer needs and expect everyone to adapt to the technology, rather than the other way around.
Musk, Thiel, Andreesen etc all appear to be frustrated by their poor social skills as much as expecting everyone to venerate them. Like my nephew and his classmates, they just KNOW what the most efficient engineered course is, regardless of whether the outcome meets the needs of humans.
People who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.
"People who don't study the mistakes of the future are doomed to repeat them for the first time." - Ken M.
"It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future."
Yogi Berra
As a middle-class IT retiree who, through a combination of luck, native intelligence, planning and bag-lady syndrome can now fly first-class, I notice that once I board, a sense of entitlement and superiority occurs.
Nevertheless, I'm capable of noticing this and dismissing it as rationally and ethically unjustified. Is this just my nature, (maybe inherited from concientious forbears) or do the extensive liberals arts studies that came before the computer science classes come into play?
Bingo. Our last best hope is to get money out of politics. The sooner the better. It seems a lost cause, but American Promise is working on a constitutional amendment that could do just that.
Or pack SCOTUS and get Citizens United overturned.
My fave take so far on repairing the Supreme Court:
"We need a presidential candidate who vows to hold the Supreme Court as currently constituted to have invalidated itself through its open corruption and fraternization with anti-constitutional insurrectionist domestic enemies of the United State, to treat all its rulings as void, and to replace it." --A.R. Moxon
Ironically, both of the two main political sides currently describe their opponents with language like that. Which, if any, are correct is left as an exercise for the reader.
Or make changes to the court to remove the corruption.
A code of ethics would go a long way to achieving that, especially if it were to be established by Congress and enforced by a non-partisan board.
Yes. A lot of sunshine on their life histories and their votes on all court decisions would help.
Both
Senator & then PRESIDENT Steven Colbert, will Save us(a
Stewart/Colbert 2028! 😆
Yes. One for each judicial circuit; as proposed by Norm Ornstein. It's not packing. It's rebalancing.
Yep. While Newsom is not everyone's cup of tea, I think he'd be the kind of fighter we need to pack the court and fight gerrymandering. Biden and so many Dem leaders are too caught up in morality and tradition to fight MAGA effectively.
Willie Nelson would get high and pass out.
Code of ethics with a sharp axe.
13 makes it a 7:6 court unless a Democratic president gets to replace Thomas, Alito and possibly Roberts. Also, Justice Sotomayor has type 1 Diabetes and reportedly is not all that well. So there's that. Finally, the chance that one of the 4 new justices would turn out to be a reverse of Justice Souter is always a possible—meaning thought liberal but ends up conservative. I'm in favor of adding 6 to make the number 15 and buying some insurance with a 9:6 court.
Reorganize entirely. Say, 41 justices, organized into subcourts: one for taxes, one for enforcing citizen rights, one for federalism, one for limiting government by weighing in on what the Constitution allows or doesn’t, each odd numbered with a Deputy Chief elected by the sub court. Some overlapping allowed but a limit on how many subcourts a judge can be on. An overall 13 member or so central Supreme Court to adjudicate differences between subcourts. And once a year, all 41 meet en banque to affirm a whole year’s previous rulings; in the deliberately rare cases where they don’t affirm, they may appoint a special subcourt to reconsider, or reconsider themselves.
After that we can periodically redistrict the states (why do we have two Dakotas, and why isn’t New England all one state, and why haven’t Pennsylvania and Maryland long ago split Delaware and absorbed that wretched hive of corporate villainy?)
Yes, but the only way to do that is to tax away their obscene power by making them pay for their wealth, which we voters and our tax subsidies have enabled. We can do it now or wait until the 2nd Great Depression, when we will all be praying for the reincarnation of FDR to save us.
more fighters and empathetic ladies like Francis Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt to whom
credit is due for our social security programs. Behind every great man is….
Do you mean the New Zealand suffragist Frances Parker, or maybe Frances Perkins, who influenced FDR to create Social Security?
thanks Cheryl, I edited it! I was thinking of Frances Perkins.:)
Yes to fighters and empathetic ladies!
What does “abd” mean? I’ve seen it before.
it's typo for "and"
lol! 😺 I was puzzled!
sorry, Frau. That was a typo. I edited to and. Thanks for flagging.
But parents feel they have to buy the latest tech stuff for their kids for the holidays, or else they're a bad parent.
It's a good thing I don't have kids--I'd be like my parents--or worse. My brother & I were left with the exact amount of money needed for entrance into a water park, no more. Once inside, one needed money for the locker to keep one's street clothes, towels (thankfully, they weren't stolen!), money for concessions, maybe to rent inflatable toys, whatever. Today, parents want to join their kids and relive their adolescence! Disney, galore! These privileged little twerps gifted computers to take apart and fiddle with during the last generation are not the 99% who are only going to scroll social media while thinking they'll monetize it & become an influencer, when only a minute percentage do. I think it's telling that the tech moguls don't allow their children access to the internet unless it's to learn Mandarin.
Tech is fine. It's the way they abuse it to gain political power.
Really? I have a well to do son, but he & his wife have a lot of parental control over what tech they indulge their 2 children with. It’s up to the parents to not over-indulge their children with every new tech gimmick that’s put out each & every year. They also monitor what they watch on television & movie they see. The result thus far has been great. My grand-children are very will adjusted and nice kids.
Thank you for being a caring parent.
That is proof positive that bad parenting is one significant cause of our P2P culture. GenZ has more spoiled brats than ever in modern history, but they are not economic Nepos, kids are just not to hearing "No."
Indeed! Gut Soros!!
And how do we do that J? Elon Musk's big election loss in the WI Supreme Court race may be a template of how to beat the big money elites.
In WI, every dirty money driven trick Elon pulled was made public almost immediately. By just announcing that big money donors are trying to subvert a race and doing nothing else has proven pointless. But, if you outline how Elon or others spread misinformation about a candidate. In other words, expose WHAT the donors are doing and HOW they are influencing elections.
This is true, but Musk was a uniquely repellent character. What worries me is that a person with similar intelligence and money, and a similar viewpoint but possessing a sense of humor and a kinder-appearing persona could subvert political campaigns more effectively.
Musk also actively boasted about what he was doing. The others like to work in the background.
The Koch's have been doing this for years. They own almost all of the Republicans in OK, KS, TX and across the south.
This is also why the public must be informed and engaged in every election. A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf.
Perfect
Paul your words are so true as are J French's. "nothing makes a privileged man angrier than criticism of his privilege.". Isn't this the whole story of not only tech bros and Wall Street, but MAGA today.
That’s what I was thinking when I read that. Rich people rage is real, but Maga boys feel the same. Always talking about how they don’t get enough respect like they did in the old days. They sympathize with the tech bros because they feel they are somehow equal in their male privilege and want everyone to tell them how great they are. But the tech billionaires are truly on a higher level of rage that unfortunately affects the rest of us.
To be a bit more specific, their "white, Christian" male privilege. Ask a Muslim guy or a black guy in the US how privileged he feels.
Good point, but ask the black or Muslim guys how privileged they feel in comparison with women.
Well, we could ask Kash Patel or any of the other non-white males who are in Donald Trump's orbit.
WASPS…
It isn't just the Protestants.
Justice Sam Alito (R - Vatican), Amy Coathanger Barret, Beer Kavanaugh and Clarence "it's not a bribe" Thomas see themselves as the "in" crowd.
MAGA rage is fed by resentment media: Fox, Sinclair Group, red rant radio
You said it. I spoke with someone riding the economic escalator with fat pockets who rebutted my condemnation of the trump regime and said their personal goal was to try to understand MAGA. Which told me they were drinking the Kool aid. my musical coda which came to mind -caberet Lizza Minnelli and Joel Grey https://youtu.be/eBtn2NQ5k58?si=XGA-lIeK7JnkNkPH
Thanks for sharing that clip, Sara. I'd forgotten how funny and how well-performed it was. I shared it with a friend.
Excellent point!
The rich MAGAS, yes, but their cult following. Those people are just either uneducated or hateful, or both.
If that’s our last best hope we are doomed. I have become increasingly depressed over the last few years as the rich tech bros have taken over.
And the financial industry clawed back what little regulations that were put in place.
Only s complete global collapse of world order can save us. And even that is a depressing thought!
The railroad barons behaved much like the tech bros - I recall hearing that Falling Water was built on the backs of laborers who were paid 5 cents a day during the Great Depression (onsite tour). I suspect something similar will take them down, as the income gap continues to widen.
Falling Water was a second home of a department store magnate, Edgar Kauffman, I read in Smithsonian magazine.
Yep - I used to live close and visited several times. Well worth visiting if you're in the area. The son retained control for a long time, so what was said on the tours was usually not quite so candid.
I was in Pennsylvania last fall and unfortunately, my trip in an rv was much too ambitious, as it was thwarted by deaths in the families of two different relatives. I would have rearranged my route to view Falling Water if time wasn't then of the essence.
If you get the chance again... Cucumber Falls SP is a great place to walk; there's swimming at the bottom of one trail. There's a lot of white water in the area, but it's most def not for the inexperienced/faint of heart - even if you are just rafting. And my condolences...
Omg! You are the type “i am drowning… let’s get everybody under”. No way my dear. If you sink, you will have to sink alone (or maybe just take your closest neighbour. Sure he / she will be delighted). Good luck. LOL
Well, hate to say it, but the folks saying, "we need to get rid of Citizens United" or "we need a Constitutional amendment" might as well be saying, "We need flying pink unicorns and then everything will be great!"
I’m Canadian so I’m not as well informed on the background of some of these things. But I never thought the Court would overturn Roe v Wade.
Granted, there’s zero current sign of a liberal majority returning to the Supreme Court.
I don't think that's quite it, Jack. I'm as depressed as "meme" about the direction in which our country is presently headed, but I don't think a global collapse is necessary for our direction to be changed. What we need is an alert and engaged citizenry, and if enough of us get hurt enough to pay attention to what has happened, we may be able to take action. The present course of our country was directed by human beings, and human beings can change it, if enough of them want to.
Maybe what Jack or Meme is saying is that it will take a repeat of the last century's world wars & global depression for another FDR to come along or a much needed attitude adjustment the oligarchy didn't receive as Europe & Asia's oligarchies did.
Collapse into a new decentralized order. "Breaking together" into human-scaled communities. Outrage can turn into organized action to protect ecosystems. Research "The Great Turning."
Writing a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics is easy. Getting a government that is filled with people who depend upon there being money in politics to vote against the corruption that sustains them is hard.
Writing a Constitutional amendment to get money out of politics would be easy. Getting it actually passed and added to the Constitution would be impossible.
"Impossible" is true for now, but too cynical for all time. The issue is not actually writing and passing a constitutional amendment, but recovering and advancing the sense that for us all to live together, we must be fair to each other. The oligarchs do not believe that. If they did, we could merely pass a fair tax code and have the problem solved. Of course, we'd also have to impeach and replace the corrupt (in)justices on the Supreme Court, because some fool would surely challenge this, and we have seen how after the lower courts by and large support the law, which the Supreme Court then overrules based on ideology couched as law. (Packing the Court would only compound the mess, so forget that. Bad idea!) To fix the Supreme Court, we'd need better educated voters in so many states... I'll quit there.
It's hard, but if the colonists could dethrone a bad king and separate from corrupt ministers, our current problems are in the range of possibility to be fixed. The questions are whether we can smarten up and stop the nonsense now, or how many generations must first pass, and whether we could solve this peacefully at the ballot box. I'm not saying I'm hopeful for the rest of my lifetime, but only that the descent into total defeatism equals acquiescence to the regime, so I refuse to grant it that much power.
People of all political persuasions need to be persuaded to vote for Democrats in the midterms (if we have midterms...), regardless of whether they like the policies of the Democratic Party, because the Democrats still believe in democracy.
All of this is a tough, tough, tough sell, yet is still only difficult, but not impossible. If you give up, you let the regime win!
It’s deeper than getting money out of politics. We need a fundamental separation of concerns between the public and private sector. Consider the many ways the Paramout/CBS merger is playing out… we need a restrained executive with an independent judiciary, independent DoJ, independent Fed, and so on. This likely ultimately all depends upon constitutional reforms.
No one would choose to run a 25 year old operating system on their new laptop. Well, that’s how we are trying to run this country with the world’s oldest Democracy. It’s another race of the political reform called for in the abundance agenda.
You offer a good example here. The metastasization of mergers and acquisitions in our current economy leads to what Dr. Krugman has pungently described as the "tyranny of the big."
Agreed. Let’s start somewhere, and I don’t think it’s impossible to pass a constitutional amendment on this. Americans of all political persuasions get that money in politics is a huge problem.
I think the quacks fronting the abundance agenda are just the opposite side of the coin as the quacks like Laura Loomer, Steve Bannon, & all of the other MAGAts....lot's of noise these opportunists profit from, but the agenda never changes.
Updating operating systems would be desirable, but keeping working systems working is hardly the problem we face right now. The problem is that the tech bros who could afford to fix those systems want to fix them to consolidate their own power, not to empower the country. Forget the operating systems for now. Fix the politics!
Forget a constitutional amendment. This would take years and open the right wing crackpots up to changes they have wanted like banning abortion. We just need to change the tax code.
Just enforcing the existing one wd be a boon!
I have some faith in the upcoming generation. THEY are recognizing how dangerous tech is to their mental health, their progress in learning and generally …l happiness.
Yesterday, a bunch of kids were headed out to shady bars with “fakes” and we sort of shook our head and reminisced about youth….and the “tech” they brought wer disposable cameras, digital cameras to record it. Why? Because they’re sick of having their lives on phones for anyone to use any which way. Even the boys are aware their images are being monetized by others. They say all the time….”I’m not for sale”. Plus they have to think about their future boss stalking their social media.
That isn’t making society better, we had the luxury of being an idiot without it haunting us for the rest of our level they see how powerless their votes are but haven’t given up hope they might be able t change it.
I'm not young but was recently shopping for a non-internet enabled camera. This also shows how committed the tech companies are to enshittification. They're willing to alienate what should be their target demo because they have no ideas. They're hoping that if they feed it enough of earth's resources, AI will come up with some for them.
A constitutional amendment is just words on paper to these people. You will have to speak with more uh, “concrete” messaging. Just watched on PBS “My Grandfather’s War” about the French resistance, and thought, the bad guys today are much better equipped to track down resisters. The IDF can send a missile into the bedroom window of officials a thousand miles away, because their cell phone broadcasts exactly where they are in real time. Try to get around without that. And the most fanatical Nazis didn’t hesitate to slaughter an entire innocent town as reprisal. Just like the IDF does today. Is MAGA any better?
I think that like today's Supreme Court, the answer to money in politycs and guns, is to impeach the obviously biased members of the court, possibly have more judges as well due to work liad, mandatory retirement, etc. And then have the reinterpreted (like Roe, Presidential immunity, et al.). I think that is the fastest way forward, and not depending on constitutional amendments.
We missed our opening. We should have been doing this stuff when Biden was in office and we didn't. You know, b/c Dems respect "norms" and didn't want to be accused of packing the court or something. B/c then what would the Repubs do when they were in office??
Well, that ship has sailed and now it ain't gonna happen.
I don't think they have to be impeached, just retired. Court reform (in both senses of the term) is needed. It would be useful to have age limits on voting justices, particularly if they could be imposed retroactively.
They need to be impeached because they are not going to retire.
I think term limits as well, given the stupidity of confirming younger justices with little actual experience. Term limits would stop that destructive trend. Apparently “lifetime” is explicitly stated in the Constitution, but some system of rotation on a fixed timeline should be allowable. But look - it is a group of self-interested judiciary apppointments who decide the constitutionality. Who gets around them having the final word on imposing accountability?! Once corruption is introduced into the system, it's very hard to claw it back.
I say impeach because it says corrupt, and we need bipartisan agreement on it. But I'll claw it back any way I can.
Do away with citizens united and that albatross, the electoral college. That would be a great start!
A tough job!
Its too late.
"Our last best hope is to get money out of politics."
----
Be careful what you wish for.
Have you seen the Keeling Curve lately? We're well on track to shoot past +2°C, and even +1.5°C* takes out a significant part of the ice sheets.
Today's high net worths will plummet. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but irrevocably when the priorities of what's left of the world economy shifts.
__________________
*Recent research says that every +0.1°C shift is markedly worse, so every gigatonne of CO2 matters, and the Trump admin is pushing coal and fossil gas power plants.
Speaking of CO2, MAGA are convinced that global warming isn’t happening. The oil companies poured money into a massive propaganda campaign and it worked.
Absolutely
Krugman nails it. Can you imagine how much of this essay would have survived the pasteurization process at the NYT?
Hear hear
But how come interviews like Ezra Klein ones survive?
Klein still tows an acceptable neoliberal line with "abundance."
Klein has a book to peddle and is willing to play ball.
I have been thinking a lot about this; thanks for bringing it all together. The recent interview with Peter Thiel in the New York Times was shocking to me in its myopic self-centeredness . Firstly, slightly off topic, Thiel bemoaning the death of new ideas. Holy Cow, if we were to release 51% of the population (women) from thrall we would have plenty of ideas, not to mention other discriminated persons. This powerful man, (given a platform like the Times WHY?) reminded me of my four year old on Christmas morning, up to his ears in opened presents and wrapping paper standing in the middle of the living room red-faced and wailing. “What’s wrong?”, we asked. “I want more of what I want!”, he cried.
King Stupid’s niece wrote a book about him, “Too Much Is Never Enough.” That about sums it up for all of these greedy bastards.
They're empty inside. Acquisition of either wealth or power provides them a little dopamine hit. Then it wears off and they crash, thus setting up the need for another dopamine hit. So they pursue further acquisition, get the hit, then the crash, rinse, repeat.
That's exactly right. It also explains why MuskRat is addicted to Ketamine, Ecstasy and Mushrooms.
I’ve started to wonder if this effect might also explain the MAGA multitudes. The people of Western and developed Asian nations like Korea and Japan are materially much better off than their ancestors 100 years ago. Men in particular seem to want to blow it all up. They sound like bored kids on a rainy day, willing to start squabbling to generate a little excitement.
White men in America are generally better off than their predecessors in the absolute sense. But the privilege gap between them and women or men of color is smaller now than it used to be, and many would rather blow it all up then see that trend continue.
Dopamine. Hadn’t thought about that. Epstein and his (male, wealthy) crowd?
Couldn’t agree more. Reading the Washington Post these days is like watching a snake slowly digest a hippopotamus. Good people have offered to buy and rebuild the once-excellent newspaper, but Bezos has developed a taste for hippo meet.
My family and some friends who have been coming to Nantucket for decades prefer to call it the douche baggification of pretty much our entire society. Downtown has become so cringey, even the very privileged girls who are staying with us think the men surrounding them have just become the largest assholes of all time. “Oh, nice yacht and nice gut, grandpa” was thrown out the other day which was not fun to hear as a person the same age as “grandpa”. But we also don’t hit on little girls we have been around since they were in braces.
The UNJUSTIFIED egos, the snowflake insecurity and the fact that pretty much any bozo on the bus can now code and they never really created anything that didn’t already exist is catching up with bro culture (includes females) in every industry. Mark Zuckerberg didn’t create the objectification of women or gossip. He just created a way to be a posing asshole quicker with a larger audience. Jeff Bezos didn’t create shopping. My mother got Amazon which was the Spiegel catalog decades before Bezos destroyed small business and ruined our roads. PS. Jeff, you’re welcome for We, the People, footing the bill for all your transport. Imagine that billion dollars tab coming due each year for planes, roads, etc.
And my only critique is not mentioning crypto…just the latest nonsensical instrument the nerds are using to confuse and rob the rest of us. I mean that was the point, right? Use it to launder money, support actual pedophiles and get people to invest in a Ponzi scheme. It’s so stupid and not innovative. There’s a reason it needs to be tied to the dollar which does have actual value.
Tech came along and finally these misfits were useful to cooler kids. I can remember trying to learn to use a computer decades ago…a laptop and the Geek Squad may as well have been speaking Greek or Swahili to me. No clue until finally, I said, “can you just explain it to me like I’m a third grader. Preferably in English” Voila….turns out you actually don’t need a masters in computer science, just need to know the language in plain English. But that was the point…same with finance…our financial adviser would be using all this language we had no clue about and the acronyms…EBITA, shit like that and they’re spitting it off like an auctioneer yo explain what they’re doing with my money. Again, slow it down, explain. Earning before interest, taxes…whatever…just say it, for goodness sake. Like young golfers now…tracts, degrees…what the hell are you talking about? You mean “the course”, “my 3 wood”? I have a lot of respect for my financial advisor, as I do my doctor and we shopped along for both before landing on people who just spoke clearly, made sure we understood, didn’t talk down to s and respected our business as if they actually cared about it. Basically, not a egomaniacal jerk.
The techies KNOW their products are addicting kids, especially young men, to porn, GAMBLING, and gaming for their own selfish profits. It’s why they brag their own children aren’t given access to their products. Telling. Most people who create useful things want everyone to use their product.
I am speaking from a point where I have worked really hard and have been extremely lucky in life which has afforded me comfort and access to many things but after a certain amount, it’s all gravy and if you aren’t connected to actual humans and finding joy in life, it is meaningless. These people BRAG about making humans obsolete. Who is going to buy their crap when they have no job? Robots?
I don’t look at these guys and feel envy. I think they’re incredibly miserable. Donald Trump and his quest for power and money seems like the unhappiest person on the planet. Thin skinned, vengeful, greedy, never enough must be agony to live in daily. To have all that and still feel the need to lie, cheat and steal does not project masculinity and strength. It projects insecurity and fear.
Mr. Debon, I’ve been waiting to read what you wrote. My father, who started with his fine math brain, taught me that enough to “enjoy life” was enough.
One of my favorite people in the world was a teacher and coach who could have made all the money in the world but just loved teaching. Would show a kid 10 different ways to get a math problem. Tough coach but not a jerk, not belittling, just expected and encouraged the best from kids. Made them feel “you can do it”. Or at least “you will get better.”
He actually made more money doing his side job during the summer than from teaching but I’m telling you….those kids - from the ones in their teens who he has currently to grown ups who send their kids to the same school and beg to have them in his class …. The way they look up to and how he changed their lives, makes me envy his career.
I don’t know when we started to worship money and think the size of one’s bank account equals their worth. We saw it with Musk….another guy who didn’t create anything. And would be a nobody without the generosity of the people who so callously thinks are “lesser than” a hunk of metal. He’s a very bright guy for sure. But rockets and electric cars existed before he was born. He’s good at “selling” himself to people who definitely equate money to all value.And we saw first hand the dangers of thinking a success in one area translates to success in any and all areas they stumble into.
Yes! He gave even when he had little. As he loved to fish, he taught poor boys to fish; he gave me the college education he never had, but had given his sisters. The crowd at his funeral who couldn’t get into the church reminded me of who he had been to the community to whom he had given so much time (and laughter).
Thank you for “a mind unplagued is its own reward.”
Courtesy of NYT, I got to read about your 'hood. Don't know where one goes to avoid it.
I spent summers on Nantucket as a kid in the 60s, and worked there as a carpenter while in college in the 70s. I used to hang out and get drunk with fishermen in bars.
Even by the 80s, it was getting so shi-shi. I cannot imagine what it is like now. I imagine giant houses built on all the moors.
You only need look at the performance of Big Tech in the S&P500 index to know, these guys have never had it so good.
But to quote a James Bond movie title, The World is Not Enough.
I call it money addiction. More horrific than heroin addiction as it affects massively more people-and the planet.
It’s not just addiction to money, it’s an addiction to greed itself.
They haven't learned that you don't own wealth. It owns you.
… POWER becomes the addiction … and the adulation &/or fear.
It’s still greed—for more power, money, control, doesn’t matter. It’s always for more.
Either way, it still has the same catastrophic effect on the innocent bystanders and people who actually care about people.
(Since the justification for the “opioid crisis” and “mass shootings” are so wildly different: ‘the PILLS made me do it’ and ‘it’s NOT the guns that make them do that’- the only thing I’ve come to be sure of is: IT’S NOT THE SUBSTANCE. It’s the ADDICTION-a gaping black hole that can never be filled no matter what you do.)
Acquiring money works like an addiction. It re-wires the brain. This is why they keep striving for more rather than just relaxing and enjoying what they have.
I've been saying for years that insatiable greed belongs in the DSM as a mental disorder...
I can’t agree more. To the point where I might think involuntary treatment could be worth considering.
They remind me of Pavlov’s dogs, with money as kibble.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: "Sam Alito has a lot to answer for." The whole Roberts' court does, in fact.
Including Roberts.
The Atlantic points to him as the chief architect of the emerging autocracy in its online edition today (7/21/25). I’ve been thinking the same thing, and he spent decades as the Trojan horse of the right wing.
Most of the big tech company leaders have degenerated into a bunch of greedy, cowardly Trump sycophants, and anti-democracy traitors who are convinced they are God’s gift to the world. As one of the many customers who made them by purchasing something from them, I know we can break them. Even as they cower from power, they spit on the country that helped them to become fabulously wealthy. When the tide turns, as it always does, the power of the people will regulate them into the pathetic losers they have always been.
I hope that the tide turns soon. The hypersonic pace of destruction under our current oligarchic-fascist regime is so fast that if the tide doesn't turn soon, i fear that we will have lost so much that it will take generations to recover. I think of the loss suffered by Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and how long it is taking them to recover, and I worry that our fate might be similar.
How? How do we break them? What are we waiting for? Where is the gray hat hacker resistance willing to wield the Internet (or an alternative internet) to fight these evil shitbirds?
Work stoppages and general strikes. Shutdowns for Democracy.
Here's hoping!
It's different now. In the past, the damage inflicted by despots, although considerable, was rather localized and relatively short-lived. Now the technology exists to make those horrors global and permanent. It will take more than storming a Bastille or two to get us out of this mess.
Bezos, king of the online Dollar Tree experience
I've been giving money to Common Cause forever, it seems, because it's so evident that Citizen's United needs to be reversed in order to reduce the influence of corporate money in politics. And even if it is, though, we will still be a struggling democracy. But maybe one with an enhanced chance of surviving, in some meaningful way. If anyone doubts how much power and influence we've ceded to the wealthy, they need only look at the oligarchies of Russian, Hungary, Turkey and the like--as well as those countries teetering on the brink: India, among others. Once the diabolical twinship of politics and big money establishes itself, it appears to have staying power. So what we need from you and others like you, Dr. Krugman, is some robust examples of how to fix the system, and better yet, how to establish a nation based on true sharing of power, as there appear to be in the social democratic countries of Northern Europe and Scandinavia. I don't think we understand them nearly well enough.
A very bright person—columnist Mark Shields—said once that Citizens Untied was the Supreme Court's worst-ever decision, one that could destroy our very democracy. Turns out he was right.
I'll check out Mark Shields, thanks!
Reversing Citizens United (which is a pretty Orwellian tag to begin with) won't actually change anything by itself. All it did was invalidate statutory regulation of campaign spending. Now that they've had 15 years of rolling in unlimited money, how can we expect Congress to enact meaningful regulation if the constitutional restraint went away overnight? Or any president who witnessed the orange mob boss's continual shakedowns to advocate for and sign such legislation?
The lobbying would be intense, and it's not hard to imagine ad campaigns warning of silencing the political voices of the little people, when in fact their voices are effectively drowned out by all that dirty money in the first place.
Amazon wouldn't have taken off if it wasn't able to avoid most state sales taxes for years when it started. Facebook and X should always have been subject to rules regarding defamation that the rest of media has to follow. Government is always too little, too late when it comes to regulating new industries. Regulation of AI is following that trend. Good regulation is the hardest thing that government needs to do but is necessary to reign in the rampant greed in our economy.
Their ideas are just souped up Ayn Rand and their contributions to human progress are hardly the printing press or the smallpox vaccine.
There is a difference between creating wealth and capturing. Once you start capturing too high a percentage of the wealth you created, your net contribution becomes negative.
And many started capturing the wealth created by others. Notice that a number of those TechBros didn't even start the companies that they made all of their money off of but just jumped in a the right time.
I still find it inconceivable that the deregulated and bailed-out financial services industry managed to largely avoid blame for the 2008 financial crash. Instead blame was put on government spending and immigrants. As a certain German observed, the masses will believe a bigger lie than a smaller one.
What Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel and co used to do and be were Tech bros. What they do and are now are Enshittifiers.
He really should take the next step and point out that it is the Supreme Court that took steps to corrupt democracy with money. That result was deliberate, not accidental. It was a primary objective of the Koch Organization’s program described in Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money”. Citizens United was a major contributor. All the right-wing Justices come from the Kochs’ Federalist Society and have been nurtured for years.
People want to talk about the Court as an independent branch of government with a role in defending democracy, but they were actually the first step in the dictatorial takeover.
Also circa 2010 came the Citizens United decision.