I’ve said that I think Trump admires how Putin has structured the Russian oligarchy, and that I think we will see him funneling government money to his rich friends. I also think we’ll see an effort to create monopolies under some of these people.
I thought it made sense to have a place to collect examples of these things.
Here’s one: Musk is starting to crap on the Verizon contract to supply the FAA with infrastructure, and is sending Starlink in.
“What conflict of interest?”
Stranger
The premise makes sense for Trump as opposed to the more traditional autocrats arising from representative governments. Trump views everything in terms of wealth as power, or power in terms of retribution. He’s a very petty, unimaginative person.
The more traditional autocrats, who often arise from the military or security organizations, would probably disagree: see Putin’s Russia, where you can be as wealthy as you want and it still doesn’t insulate you.
Trump’s version is going to work (sadly, IMHO) for about a generation. Gutting regulatory organizations that aren’t directly answerable to him, creating epic chaos in the military by promoting unrespected, underqualified individuals who owe all their power directly to him, and consolidating all power in his personal executive authority with the aid of a congress beholden to him (or they’re primaried) and a Court that is either venially corrupt, or subject to other pressure.
I have zero doubts that if Trump survives his 4 years, he will stay in power past that, via whatever figleaf is managed, but when he eventually becomes non-functionally senile or dies, that’s when we’ll see if we end up in an oligarchy.
Because there’s the political critters that wish to take over from Trump (DeSantis and his ilk), the plutocrats (the main subject of this thread), the Christian Nationalists (who aren’t always in fully agreement with either), and FSM knows who else. I’d also put money on an ambition Flynn-type who smarms his way to military power under Trump and has his own ambitions for the “good of the nation.”
So take your pick. Figure we have pretty much equal chances between a slowly dissolving oligarchy as the center rots away, a hybrid political-economic aristocracy similar to Cold War to Pre-Putin USSR, various flavors of semi-Civil War, or a combination of any/all that lead to a fundamentally failed state.
Just to be clear, I don’t disagree with the OP - Trump’s ideology of power is an Oligarchy where only he gets to cheat. And the Musk/Bezos/etc groups sure think that they’ll be the new rulers. I just doubt it’s going to be as easy for the future heirs as they think. People who are smart (or consider themselves smart) always seem to ignore the chaotic element that results from breaking everything in their way, and just assume it’ll keep working the way they expect.
I honestly give us less than a 10% chance of pulling our Democracy’s nuts out of the fire.
I think there are a not-insignificant number of people who would argue that “Democracy’s nuts” have been in the fire for quite a while already, and Trump just exploited the existing deficiencies, precedents, and loopholes (in addition, of course, to running an extralegal ‘shadow executioner’ in the guise of Musk and DOGE which is somehow getting away with exercising powers that the executive branch doesn’t have and that the Republican-dominated Congress isn’t holding them accountable for). A lot of the executive overreach is actually just extending the presumption made by presidents of both parties going back fifty years or more that they could issue Executive Orders with the force of law and engage in anything not specifically prohibited by the Constitution as long as they could keep it tied up in courts. What Trump has really done is just throw the corruption in sharp relief by doing it out in the open on a clear day without any but the most trivial obfuscation.
Stranger
I’m pretty sure I agree. And I have also mentioned (both IRL and in prior threads) that the ever-growing use of Executive Orders to circumvent the issue of the day by both parties has just encouraged ever-more overreach.
We can argue degree of responsibility (I still put more on the Republican side), but Trump has certainly broken the pencil-thin backbone of the “honorable opponent” of the former Republican party, making things far worse, while simultaneously being extremely open in his anti-Constitutional claims and efforts.
I still think that the emphasis on Oligarchy is a reflection of what the oligarchs are wanting, and that the actual result is totally up in the air, at least medium-to-long term. But it isn’t going to be anything pleasant for 99.9% of the rest of us.
Although a piece in favor of the oligarch watch from today’s news:
Court filings indicate that the consumer watchdog has decided to dismiss lawsuits previously filed against Capital One, Rocket Homes, a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and a student loan servicer. Just weeks earlier the CFPB accused Capital One of “cheating” millions of customers out of billions of dollars of interest payments.
The decision to abandon the cases demonstrates the hands-off approach to regulation from the Trump administration, which has scrambled to sideline the CFPB in recent weeks in an effort led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Trump-appointed officials have ordered staff to halt all work – including fighting financial crime. Now the CFPB is dropping multiple cases it had previously pursued.
“The most important consumer financial watchdog is no longer on the beat,” Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah and former CFPB official, told CNN in a phone interview. “This means that major corporations who have ripped off ordinary working people are going to get away scot-free.”
How much did “ Rocket “ contribute to the Trumps campaign?
Its gratuitous but I like to imagine that Liz Warren is going to transform into her She-Hulk secret persona and start rampaging down Pennsylvania Ave., smashing the cars of White House staffers she finds along the way, heaving the Andrew Jackson statue though the Oval Office window, and yeeting Elon Musk wearing his ‘Dark MAGA’ hat and ‘TECH SUPPORT’ t-shirt into the Potomac.
Stranger
I enjoy your fantasy and would like to subscribe!
Though, if I’m going to enjoy that sort of thing, I really want to lower the bar on good taste, and want to see Elon yeeted into dumpster full of weeks old Congressional snack waste that has been fermenting because the staff responsible for emptying it has been fired.
I need the little ironic touches.
Which lets me bring it back to the thread. One of the many problems with Oligarchs and their 40k foot view is that they have so little idea about the realities of the bedrock levels that support their lofty perch. All they see (if they even bother to look) are the numbers. And yet it’s the basic levels constantly working and interacting behind the scenes that make things actually, you know, work. And while not exactly fragile, the negligent yet enthusiastic wielding of the chainsaw to huge swaths is just the sort of thing, combined with constant threats of tariffs is the sort of thing to tank your internal consumer support.