And that goes for the rest of his super-rich peers as well. Should we fear for our democracy at that prospect? We certainly should, as should the New Yorkerby Charles Duhigg makes frighteningly clear in his just-published analysis of Silicon Valley’s vast new political power.
Back in 1982, the year Forbes began publishing an annual list of America’s 400 richest, while Big Oil dominated the upper ranks of America’s richest. Nine of our richest fifteen on that first top 400 list owed their happiness to the oil industry. High-tech now dominates the world Forbes 400. On the 2024 Forbes 400, billionaires who owe their fortunes to high-tech occupy 10 of the top 15 slots.
Like their Big Oil predecessors, today’s high-tech rich have not just amassed great wealth. They have gained enough political clout to make elected leaders think twice before getting in the way of what Big Tech wants to see happen.
Today’s boldest Big Tech pushers are now coming from the highly speculative cryptocurrency sector. Silicon Valley venture capital firms have invested billions in crypto. These same investors have invested mega-millions in super PACs, with the primary goal of: New YorkerDuhigg details, “convincing politicians that the political consequences of being anti-crypto would be intensely painful.”
The crypto crowd chose California’s U.S. Senate primaries last March as a high-profile opportunity to get that message across. Those primaries attracted a large number of candidates, all trying to become one of the top two finishers to face off in the November election. This broad field included Representative Katie Porter, a nationally known consumer champion. Crypto’s movers and shakers decided to pull out all the stops against her in the primaries.
For her part, Porter had never paid much attention to crypto. But that didn’t matter. For the crypto crowd, joining the California Senate race against Porter, a popular member of Congress, would be an ideal opportunity to intimidate other politicians, “to warn anyone running for office,” as one insider puts it the industry said. New Yorker“that if you are anti-crypto, the industry will come after you.”
Crypto’s top super PAC would flood California’s airwaves with commercials labeling Porter a “bully” and a “liar,” without ever saying anything about crypto. Porter ultimately finished third with just 15 percent of the primary vote. Message delivered.
“Candidates in New York, Arizona, Maryland and Michigan,” notes the New Yorker‘s Duhigg, soon began “releasing crypto-friendly public statements and voting for pro-crypto laws.”
Crypto-related super PACs have spent more than $100 million on political races so far in 2024. Donald Trump, predictably, has now done so too arose as an exuberant crypto champion, and crypto dollars have played a key role in the key defeats of two high-profile progressives in Congress, Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri.
We must remember that the kind of billionaire muscle-building that Big Oil and now Big Tech have done to American politics has an impact that goes beyond the political fortunes of individual politicians. That flexing of muscle serves to keep any serious discussion of America’s grossly unequal distribution of income and wealth off the table.
Ever notice one of those pre-election polls that asks the American public to rate the importance they place on the “problems” facing the nation. For example, the Pew Research Center conducted extensive polling last spring on what the Center considered 16″.top problems‘ that the United States faces, everything from inflation and illegal immigration to domestic terrorism and the affordability of health care.
Nothing on that Pew list directly highlighted any aspect of our entrenched economic inequality. The Pew list of “issues” made no reference whatsoever to concerns ranging from the political influence of billionaires to the vast gap between CEO and employee pay.
And that shouldn’t surprise us. Inequality-avoiding “problem” lists reflect the logical consequence of what happens in modern societies where wealth is explosively concentrated. That wealth funds the think tank reports that shape the country’s ongoing dialogue about which issues matter. That same wealth owns our country’s most influential mass media and can sow fear, as the crypto-political saga shows, among lawmakers who don’t toe the plutocratic line.
In the 2024 election cycle, that concentrated wealth has generally gone unchallenged. We can’t afford to let that happen again.