The sultans of Silicon Valley are angered by politics, and some billionaires have suddenly turned against the Democrats. It’s not just Elon Musk. Other prominent actors like Jeff Bezos have attacked the Biden administration, and we now know that Oracle’s Larry Ellison participated in a call with Sean Hannity and Lindsey Graham about overthrowing the 2020 election.
The timing of this turn to the right by some tech aristocrats is remarkable given what is happening in US politics. For example, it’s hard to imagine what kind of bubble Musk lives in to declare Democrats “the party of division and hate,” at a time when Tucker Carlson, who is not a politician but is still one of the most influential figures in the Republican Party modern, devotes several programs to “replacement theory,” the claim that liberal elites are deliberately bringing immigrants to the United States to jettison white voters. (Polls show that nearly half of Republicans agree with this theory.)
The plutocrats who protest the Democrats are also remarkably petty; nothing reveals a “visionary industrial titan” like sending poop emojis. But pettiness may indeed be central to political history. What is happening here, I believe, is not primarily about greed (although that too). No, it’s mostly about fragile egos.
It is true that some real economic interests are at stake. Democrats have proposed new taxes for the rich, while President Biden has named officials known for advocating a much stronger antitrust policy. It’s also true that tech stocks have dropped substantially in recent months, reducing the paper wealth of moguls like Musk and Bezos.
But at this point, these seem like fringe policies. Even if Democrats beat the odds and retain control of Congress in November, there is no real prospect of a New Deal-type campaign against extreme inequality. Furthermore, any conceivable redistributive policy would still make billionaires incredibly rich, able to buy anything they wanted (except perhaps Twitter).
What wealth cannot always buy, however, is admiration. And this is an area where the tech titans have suffered huge losses.
Let me be a geek for a minute. At least since the work of Max Weber a century ago, social scientists have realized that social inequality has multiple dimensions. At the very least, we need to distinguish between the hierarchy of money, in which some people own a disproportionate share of society’s wealth, and the hierarchy of prestige, in which some people are especially respected and admired.
People can occupy very different positions in these hierarchies. Sports legends, pop stars, social media “influencers” and, yes, Nobel laureates often do well financially, but their wealth is undoubtedly a paycheck compared to today’s great fortunes. Billionaires, on the other hand, demand deference, even servility, from those who depend on their generosity, but few are widely known public figures and even fewer have dedicated fan bases.
The tech elite, however, had it all. Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg was for a time a feminist icon. Musk has millions of Twitter followers, many of them real humans and not bots, and those followers are often ardent Tesla supporters.
Now the glow is gone. Social networks, once hailed as a force for freedom, are now denounced as vectors of disinformation. Tesla’s wave of success has been marred by stories of spontaneous combustion and autopilot accidents. Tech moguls still possess great wealth, but the public — and the government — aren’t offering the old level of adulation.
And it’s driving them crazy.
We’ve seen this movie. In 2010, much of the Wall Street elite, instead of feeling gratitude for having been bailed out, was consumed by “Obama’s anger”. The financial peddlers were furious that, in their opinion, they didn’t get the respect they deserved after, um… crashing the world economy.
Unfortunately, plutocratic pettiness matters. Money cannot buy admiration, but it can buy political power; it is disheartening that some of that power is being used in the name of a Republican Party that is sinking deeper and deeper into authoritarianism.
Did I mention that the most recent meeting of the right-wing CPAC gathering, which included a video speech by Donald Trump, was held in Hungary under the auspices of Viktor Orban, who effectively killed his country’s democracy?
The right turn of some tech billionaires is also, I might say, pretty dumb.
It’s true that oligarchs can get very rich under autocrats like Orban or Vladimir Putin, who much of the American right deeply admired until he started losing his war in Ukraine.
But these days Russia’s oligarchs are terrified, by many accounts. For even great wealth offers little security against the erratic behavior and vindictiveness of leaders not bound by the rule of law.
Not that I expect people like Musk or Ellison to learn anything from that experience. The rich are different from you and me: they are usually surrounded by people who say what they want to hear.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
