The tech singularity is coming. Tesla stock surged 10% yesterday and Amazon is up 9% today. It’s a testament to how good I am at this , that out of the 15 or so stocks I have ever recommend, that I choose among the two best performers despite each company being worth $100 billion and 1$ trillion respectively [and also the overall S&P 500 being down 2% on the week on virus fears]. Also Microsoft was up a lot too. This just goes to show how in our post-2008 era of winner-take-all capitalism, you can achieve superior, market-beating gains with the largest of companies, as opposed to investing small companies, which have more risk for worse returns. Microsoft and Amazon will be worth $3 trillion each soon. Tesla soon be worth $1 trillion. [1] Microsoft is back to being a growth stock like it was in the ’90s and ’80s. These numbers may seem absurd, but Amazon is trading at $2040/share, which as recently as as 5 years ago seemed inconceivable. 13 years ago Amazon seemed like a fad that had passed, but it’s taking over retail and its cloud hosting provides infrastructure backbone to thousands of businesses, similar to how Windows not only generates huge and consistent profits for Microsoft but is indispensable.

Imagine a stage of capitalism in which 20 or so companies control almost all the capital and economic activity. That is where we’re headed. Much like how stars have stages of evolution as shown by the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram diagram, advanced civilizations also undergo an evolutionary process, terminating not in a gas giant but possibly a form of extremely centralized, concentrated capitalism.

Federal, state, and local governments will play a smaller role relative to the ballooning, burgeoning private tech sector. Such tech and payment processing companies will begin to take over roles normally associated with governments, which from a libertarian perspective could be considered good news. We’re going to have Uber eats everywhere. Tesla cars everywhere. Amazon will have 12-hour delivery to almost every city in the US, but Walmart will also continue to thrive too. Windows and Office are bigger and more relevant than ever despite the products and Microsoft being 40 years old.

I think the closest historical analogue to where we are now and the future tech-takeover, is before and after the collapse of the USSR. The collapse of the Soviet Union saw the rise of the oil and industrial oligarchs, as the private sector had been freed from nationalization. A handful of companies and individuals profited immensely from this sudden transition. A similar collapse or breakup of the US government, may unfold in a similar manner as in Russia, but rather than these companies and individuals only being worth billions, these companies will be worth $10-50 trillion each. So that means Amazon, now worth $1 trillion ,can in theory be worth $50 trillion within a generation or so.

Censorship of conservatives by tech and payment companies may continue to be a problem, but thankfully Trump is still looking into it. Maybe he will get around to doing something. Or maybe not. Likely not. So that is still going to be problem.

[1] Relative to the total size of the luxury and mid-tier car market, Tesla is still very small. It’s not inconceivable that Tesla will be bigger than Porsche, BMW, VW, and Mercedes-Benz combined.