this is magically clear thinking and Brewster's millions is a great launching point for the discussion and the inspection of our culture and its relationship to wealth
Based solely on the title of your piece (“Billionaires are awful…”), I was prepared to strongly disagree with whatever I was about to read. But your piece is indeed thought provoking. Generally speaking, billionaires are no more or less “evil” than anyone else. I don’t resent Jeff Bezos’ extreme wealth, but rather, I appreciate the “value” and broad elevated living standard that his vision created.
But as you say, human nature is what it is, and evolving structural economic concentrations can have huge negative consequences for our society and political process as a whole.
I mourn the sick polarized society we’ve become and the loss of trust in our institutions and in each other. Too much money in politics is not responsible for all this, but it’s definitely a big factor.
Bryan, this is without a doubt your best post ever,and I've been reading you from the beginning.
I'm a lifelong blue collar worker and my goal was always to get rich enough to retire early and help the less fortunate. For part of my career I was a General Contractor who did handicap accessibility. Living in WA most of my work was funded by the state, because it's cheaper to keep people in their homes than in a nursing home. But there were a certain percentage of people who didn't qualify for state services through no fault of their own. I did a fair amount of pro-bono work just to keep them in their homes. I contacted the Gates Foundation to see if they could help and they blew me off because they were more interested in helping the rest of the world than blue collar Americans who'd worked their whole lives and sacrificed their bodies to make someone filthy rich.
So as far as I'm concerned billionaires should cease to exist. By any means necessary. And I mean any means. I'd be happy to build the guillotine.
Well... I'm not in favor of death... :P just regulation.
And I think the distinction again remains this...
There's wealth... and then there's sovereign.
The key is this... society needs to exist for these people to achieve that status. Thus, society has a legitimate stake in the regulation of those people who threaten it.
Billionaires threaten the rest of society (as we have it currently constructed anyway). That's why I want to point out they're not the same as just "being wealthy."
You have a 100 million dollars? Ok. You're set forever. Pretty much anything you want.
500 million? Really set. Almost your own gravity well.
Billion? Now you are a gravity well.
10 Billion? You're slowly asymetrically more powerful than governments.
100 Billion? You're on that plane with governments.
State charters... not federal. But yes, in 1790 there wasn't "legalzoom dot colonies" or whatever, you couldn't just go and file an LLC. You had to be chartered. This was because the framers (and others) harbored a deep sense of distrust against centralized economic power, and they also wanted corporations (since they were a liability shield) to be limited. Thus, charters were granted by States, typically limited in duration, scope, or both, and were regulated heavily. They were also prohibited from lobbying, electioneering, and owning each other's stock issuances. :D
That all goes out the window by 1890. Hence, Trump's fascination with the "Gilded Age."
State charters... not federal. But yes, in 1790 there wasn't "legalzoom dot colonies" or whatever, you couldn't just go and file an LLC. You had to be chartered. This was because the framers (and others) harbored a deep sense of distrust against centralized economic power, and they also wanted corporations (since they were a liability shield) to be limited. Thus, charters were granted by States, typically limited in duration, scope, or both, and were regulated heavily. They were also prohibited from lobbying, electioneering, and owning each other's stock issuances. :D
That all goes out the window by 1890. Hence, Trump's fascination with the "Gilded Age."
BTW - I'd argue the "beginning of the end" viz. State chartering and the system we have now? Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886). The Supreme Court concludes that the 14th Amendment applies to corporations, effectively making them "people" with respect to the law, not artifices.
I totally agree with this writing. That said, one piece not covered in the talk of the post-war boom is that the US was the single, unddamaged, producing country that rebuilt the war-ravaged ones. That gave us a market beyond our shores that bolstered our own economy, somewhat similar to what China is doing now with its export market development. This doesn't argue against the point of the article. But had we been producing for only our own population, the national growth may not have had the same level of growth, we would not have had the same level of Federal income based on taxes, and our investments in our own future may not have been so broad. The consumer-focused growth would have been there as industry refocused away from war production. I would argue that it would not have been such a "miracle" had we been producing only for ourselves.
Do you remember when the US government hit Rockefeller and Bell with antitrust?
Well, in 2026, the US government defended Elon Musk from a French court, relying on the First Amendment: Musk's product generates images of naked children from real images, this is illegal in the EU, but in a oligarchy it's a Freedom.
Billionaire wealth as you cogently explain in precise detail is a virus infecting the very society that enabled that wealth to grow. It is akin to an attack on the auto immune system of a living body. A society's auto immune system is the structures that exist to keep society's working parts healthy. As you point out in one instance, labor unions need to be strong, in order to advance worker's rights to benefit from the fruit of their labors, not just spin the wealth generated by worker productivity up to the top managers. Leaving the worker in economic life support, while the top managers become the 100 million to billions of dollars of wealth accumulators with no possible way for that wealth to be spent, and thus just accumulates for no purpose for the owner or society. Nor was it earned in the sense of one's direct input, given how wealth begets wealth in human financial systems. Your logic shows the uselessness of so much wealth except to make the owner a de facto sovereign nation. Not a good system for benefitting the people in society who are not in that soverign nation. And for a society to thrive, all the people in it need a stake in the society to be economically secure, safe, and healthy. That's why billionaires are useless, they suck up most of the capital, the money wealth, and resources, which does not allow too many others to simply survive. Your arguments about higher tax rates for the wealthiest, and strong anti-monopoly measures enforced routinely, as in the period 1945 to 1975 in the US; show how a nation's wealth could be distributed more equally, and which also enables the most innovative inventions you categorized. Your essay is a brilliant, straightforward analysis of society and the mechanisms of billionaire power that inhibits a society's true goal: its parts should benefit the whole population.
When you tax rich people it kills poor people because rich people invent the things that everybody needs to survive. It's nowhere near as simple as you would like to believe.
We would be smarter to subsidize rich people than to tax them because they are the ones who invented everything we have that got us from the Stone Age to here. Do you understand now?
Until capitalism was invented everybody died by age 32 because there were no rich people inventing great stuff to keep them alive until they were 80. Sorry to rock your world.
When you tax rich people it kills poor people because rich people invent the things that everybody needs to survive. It's nowhere near as simple as you would like to believe.
We would be smarter to subsidize rich people than to tax them because they are the ones who invented everything we have that got us from the Stone Age to here. Do you understand now?
Until capitalism was invented everybody died by age 32 because there were no rich people inventing great stuff to keep them alive until they were 80. Sorry to rock your world.
Billionaires should be arrested, not taxed. The path to billions is strewn with broken laws. Assets should be seized, the money followed, the math done. The incriminating evidence is there.
this is magically clear thinking and Brewster's millions is a great launching point for the discussion and the inspection of our culture and its relationship to wealth
Based solely on the title of your piece (“Billionaires are awful…”), I was prepared to strongly disagree with whatever I was about to read. But your piece is indeed thought provoking. Generally speaking, billionaires are no more or less “evil” than anyone else. I don’t resent Jeff Bezos’ extreme wealth, but rather, I appreciate the “value” and broad elevated living standard that his vision created.
But as you say, human nature is what it is, and evolving structural economic concentrations can have huge negative consequences for our society and political process as a whole.
I mourn the sick polarized society we’ve become and the loss of trust in our institutions and in each other. Too much money in politics is not responsible for all this, but it’s definitely a big factor.
Damn good essay. Another excellent contribution to our understanding of the shameless clusterfuck the GOP has promulgated.
Bryan, this is without a doubt your best post ever,and I've been reading you from the beginning.
I'm a lifelong blue collar worker and my goal was always to get rich enough to retire early and help the less fortunate. For part of my career I was a General Contractor who did handicap accessibility. Living in WA most of my work was funded by the state, because it's cheaper to keep people in their homes than in a nursing home. But there were a certain percentage of people who didn't qualify for state services through no fault of their own. I did a fair amount of pro-bono work just to keep them in their homes. I contacted the Gates Foundation to see if they could help and they blew me off because they were more interested in helping the rest of the world than blue collar Americans who'd worked their whole lives and sacrificed their bodies to make someone filthy rich.
So as far as I'm concerned billionaires should cease to exist. By any means necessary. And I mean any means. I'd be happy to build the guillotine.
Well... I'm not in favor of death... :P just regulation.
And I think the distinction again remains this...
There's wealth... and then there's sovereign.
The key is this... society needs to exist for these people to achieve that status. Thus, society has a legitimate stake in the regulation of those people who threaten it.
Billionaires threaten the rest of society (as we have it currently constructed anyway). That's why I want to point out they're not the same as just "being wealthy."
You have a 100 million dollars? Ok. You're set forever. Pretty much anything you want.
500 million? Really set. Almost your own gravity well.
Billion? Now you are a gravity well.
10 Billion? You're slowly asymetrically more powerful than governments.
100 Billion? You're on that plane with governments.
That's the point I'm making.
I still like the guillotine idea. It would make becoming a billionaire much less appealing.
Did wonders for the French. :P
In general, I'd prefer not to have "revolutions" - they end messy.
When will you be writing the piece about the steps that need to be taken to deconstruct the parasites and reform a working economy?
And to think, when this country was founded, corporations were required to be authorized through congressional approval to incorporate.
State charters... not federal. But yes, in 1790 there wasn't "legalzoom dot colonies" or whatever, you couldn't just go and file an LLC. You had to be chartered. This was because the framers (and others) harbored a deep sense of distrust against centralized economic power, and they also wanted corporations (since they were a liability shield) to be limited. Thus, charters were granted by States, typically limited in duration, scope, or both, and were regulated heavily. They were also prohibited from lobbying, electioneering, and owning each other's stock issuances. :D
That all goes out the window by 1890. Hence, Trump's fascination with the "Gilded Age."
State charters... not federal. But yes, in 1790 there wasn't "legalzoom dot colonies" or whatever, you couldn't just go and file an LLC. You had to be chartered. This was because the framers (and others) harbored a deep sense of distrust against centralized economic power, and they also wanted corporations (since they were a liability shield) to be limited. Thus, charters were granted by States, typically limited in duration, scope, or both, and were regulated heavily. They were also prohibited from lobbying, electioneering, and owning each other's stock issuances. :D
That all goes out the window by 1890. Hence, Trump's fascination with the "Gilded Age."
BTW - I'd argue the "beginning of the end" viz. State chartering and the system we have now? Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886). The Supreme Court concludes that the 14th Amendment applies to corporations, effectively making them "people" with respect to the law, not artifices.
That was more or less the nail in the coffin.
Try spending it on feeding hungry people around the world.
I totally agree with this writing. That said, one piece not covered in the talk of the post-war boom is that the US was the single, unddamaged, producing country that rebuilt the war-ravaged ones. That gave us a market beyond our shores that bolstered our own economy, somewhat similar to what China is doing now with its export market development. This doesn't argue against the point of the article. But had we been producing for only our own population, the national growth may not have had the same level of growth, we would not have had the same level of Federal income based on taxes, and our investments in our own future may not have been so broad. The consumer-focused growth would have been there as industry refocused away from war production. I would argue that it would not have been such a "miracle" had we been producing only for ourselves.
And once the parasite consumes the host? Then what?
Do you remember when the US government hit Rockefeller and Bell with antitrust?
Well, in 2026, the US government defended Elon Musk from a French court, relying on the First Amendment: Musk's product generates images of naked children from real images, this is illegal in the EU, but in a oligarchy it's a Freedom.
Billionaire wealth as you cogently explain in precise detail is a virus infecting the very society that enabled that wealth to grow. It is akin to an attack on the auto immune system of a living body. A society's auto immune system is the structures that exist to keep society's working parts healthy. As you point out in one instance, labor unions need to be strong, in order to advance worker's rights to benefit from the fruit of their labors, not just spin the wealth generated by worker productivity up to the top managers. Leaving the worker in economic life support, while the top managers become the 100 million to billions of dollars of wealth accumulators with no possible way for that wealth to be spent, and thus just accumulates for no purpose for the owner or society. Nor was it earned in the sense of one's direct input, given how wealth begets wealth in human financial systems. Your logic shows the uselessness of so much wealth except to make the owner a de facto sovereign nation. Not a good system for benefitting the people in society who are not in that soverign nation. And for a society to thrive, all the people in it need a stake in the society to be economically secure, safe, and healthy. That's why billionaires are useless, they suck up most of the capital, the money wealth, and resources, which does not allow too many others to simply survive. Your arguments about higher tax rates for the wealthiest, and strong anti-monopoly measures enforced routinely, as in the period 1945 to 1975 in the US; show how a nation's wealth could be distributed more equally, and which also enables the most innovative inventions you categorized. Your essay is a brilliant, straightforward analysis of society and the mechanisms of billionaire power that inhibits a society's true goal: its parts should benefit the whole population.
This is called The Long Memo. You were warned.
Good point.
Sorry you're not bright enough to comprehend.
true. I am pretty thick.
Looking forward to hearing what the solution might be.
When you tax rich people it kills poor people because rich people invent the things that everybody needs to survive. It's nowhere near as simple as you would like to believe.
We would be smarter to subsidize rich people than to tax them because they are the ones who invented everything we have that got us from the Stone Age to here. Do you understand now?
Until capitalism was invented everybody died by age 32 because there were no rich people inventing great stuff to keep them alive until they were 80. Sorry to rock your world.
When you tax rich people it kills poor people because rich people invent the things that everybody needs to survive. It's nowhere near as simple as you would like to believe.
We would be smarter to subsidize rich people than to tax them because they are the ones who invented everything we have that got us from the Stone Age to here. Do you understand now?
Until capitalism was invented everybody died by age 32 because there were no rich people inventing great stuff to keep them alive until they were 80. Sorry to rock your world.
Billionaires should be arrested, not taxed. The path to billions is strewn with broken laws. Assets should be seized, the money followed, the math done. The incriminating evidence is there.
https://brutusmac.substack.com/p/a-wealth-tax-on-billionaires-is-not?r=6aexdu&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web