Money Is Power and Billionaires Can Subvert Democracy

Money is the ability to tell other people how to spend their time: what to make, what to do. It is that simple.

The Washington Post has a story about how the Gates Foundation pushed the Common Core curriculum. The details are there, but the bottom line is that once they decided to do it, it happened fast:

The result was astounding: Within just two years of the 2008 Seattle meeting, 45 states and the District of Columbia had fully adopted the Common Core State Standards.

This wasn’t done “democratically,” it was done with money, which bought officials.

The biggest problem with vast wealth isn’t that it directly makes other people poor, it is that it makes rich people disproportionately powerful. They have so much money that they can buy the state.

When they do so, they usually do so in their self-interest. Sometimes, as with the Gates’s in this case, they do so out of a desire to good.

But their idea of good may not be the same other people’s idea of good. They have vastly more weight than ordinary people, and in an unequal society, they can buy people.

It is that simple.

One way vast inequality corrupts is that it makes some people powerful enough to overthrow democracy; in general (as with Citizen’s United), and in particular cases.

Most rich people are not good people. It is well established now, in the academic literature, that rich people have an empathy deficit, that they give less as a percentage of their wealth and income, and that (to put it unscientifically) they tend to become assholes. They don’t need to care what other people think, or about others’ welfare.

And even when they do try to do good, well, they don’t need to go through normal democratic processes; they just buy the results.

Nor are they effective. There is a weird myth that “the private sector” is why solar power is cheap now. That’s effectively a lie. Solar power is cheap now because countries subsidized the markets for years (Germany in particular), and because China pushed it as a policy as well.

The Internet exists because of the public sector. Also, for decades, the US government bought the vast majority of all low-to-high-end computers. If they had not, you would not have cheap, modern electronics. Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar or doesn’t know the actual history.

Money is power. When the government relies on rich individuals and corporations to do what should be done by government, it takes longer and produces less welfare than it should, and it leads to the capture of the government by the rich.

A 90 percent top marginal tax rate and punitive capital and estate taxes aren’t necessary because “government needs the money,” they are necessary so that the rich don’t become so rich they buy the State.

And that includes the ones who try to do some good, like Gates.

(More on rich states vs. rich individuals soon.)

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