Wednesday Morning Rant

It's no secret that the "oligarchs" (I think "plutocrat" is more accurate, but will not fight the zeitgeist) wield enormous influence and power in the private sector and in various "non-profits," and partner with the government. Whether an industrialist or a tech tycoon or a banker, in the East or the West, they have the means and more importantly, the desire to "change the world" according to their own visions. Governments in every major country on earth are eager to both use and be used by them in a dance of sinister symbiosis.

As should surprise nobody, the oligarchs' vision for the way things ought to be is generally undesirable for the rubes on whom those visions are imposed. The rube class understandably bristles when oligarchs wants to replace meat with lab-grown synthetics, eliminate single-family housing, install robot sentries around the cities, prohibit air travel, etc. The rubes may not know the reasons, but they do know the score, and they generally don't like it. They also know how few options they have to change it.

When an oligarch has different plans - it needn't even be better, just different from what most of the other oligarchs want - he will necessarily make waves. He's still an oligarch and he still has enormous power and influence, but he's also disliked by his own crowd. This is what we see day in and day out with Elon Musk. He's an oligarch who breaks with his brethren and thus gains a lot of support.

There are several reasons for this, some of which are simple. Musk's motives appear to be less sinister and unsettling than those of most of his oligarch peers. He doesn't want to force the rubes into tenements and make them eat nutrient slurries while a select few few labor under robot task masters and the rest get subsistence welfare. Musk apparently wants people to go on with their chaotic selves and be less restrained by censors while they do so. That's appealing. As to his own ambitions, Musk doesn't seem to desire his spot in a dark-paneled room where they divvy up the world. He wants to be the Emperor of Mars. It's brash, ambitious, different and weird - so many find it appealing.

That's all icing, and Musk's appeal and popularity have deeper roots. We're post-republican. Not just in the United States or the West, but in every major country, the traditional means of redress by citizens are ineffective. Voting, lobbying, protesting, etc. result not in reform, but in persecution. The Party and her affiliated oligarchs are not interested in reform. In the post-republican world, they are the game-players and the people are pieces to moved around or removed from the board at their sole pleasure.

In an environment where the Party and the oligarchs rule all that anyone surveys, a new mechanism for reform becomes apparent: get an oligarch of your own to impose his will instead. Musk's popularity isn't merely because of his enormous and bombastic personality, it's because he appears to be different from his peers. He might not be on your side, but he is at least not on theirs. I think this is the real reason for both Musk's broad popularity and the state's regular actions against him.

When having an oligarch becomes a method of redress, people will happily support one who might be able to deliver.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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