More than 11% of the world’s more than 2,000 billionaires have run for election or become politicians, according to a study highlighting the growing power and influence of the super-wealthy.
While billionaires have had mixed success at the ballot box in the U.S., billionaires around the world have a “strong track record” of winning elections and “lean to the Right ideologically,” said the study, which is by three professors at Northwestern University.
“Billionaire politicians are a shockingly common phenomenon,” the study said. “The concentration of massive wealth in the hands of a tiny elite has understandably caused many observers to worry that the ‘super-rich have super-sized political influence.’”
There are now 2,000+ billionaires? We’d better get to eating.
The irony is you have to be a billionaire to have a big enough walk-in freezer…
We could make billionaire jerky and pickled billionaire.
To quote Bubba Gump:
Anyway, like I was sayin’, [billionaire] is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. There’s uh, [billionaire]-kabobs, [billionaire] creole, [billionaire] gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple [billionaire], lemon [billionaire], coconut [billionaire], pepper [billionaire], [billionaire] soup, [billionaire] stew, [billionaire] salad, [billionaire] and potatoes, [billionaire] burger, [billionaire] sandwich. That- that’s about it.
First up. I know it’s way too late to respond this comment. I understand the direction taken, but it misses the context of the conversation. I don’t know why, but it’s still getting to me.
Two points. I was talking about the potential for the preservation of billionaire flesh for future consumption, and Two thousand of them would require no preservation efforts whatsoever.
In conclusion,… Only billionaires could afford a reasonable portion of billionaire…?
Oh - that’s quite a deliciously nuanced take, a subtext that I indeed did not catch.
I’m at times a simpleton; I chuckled at “billionaire jerky” and “pickled billionaire,” as the phrases reminded me of the Bubba Gump quote.
I hear your point now - compared to the hundreds of millions of cattle, pigs, and chicken processed annually, 2000 billionaires would be small potatoes. The end product would be so scarce, supply/demand would necessarily dictate an ironically immense price, only affordable to those that served as the raw material.
“Eat the rich” is only an expression, not a literal call for cannibalism. Do not report this comment.
I doubt they taste very good anyway.
Probably pretty good on a barbecue, from all the fat.
No one said WHO needs to eat them though, I’m sure there are volunteers.
Yeah decapitation and mulching seems the better option all around. I don’t want any of their inbred prions messing me or anyone else up
They already run the world. They just don’t want to do it behind closed doors anymore.
The old capitalists were smart… they knew that hiding behind politicians camouflaged the class structure that enabled their privilege and power. But now it seems they’ve forgotten the lesson of the guillotine…
And you have forgotten the power of the bread and circus.
I think they’ve combined politics with the circus. Now even people who think they’re paying attention are really just watching a show.
Oh? And what power is that?
People don’t care what the rulers do if they’re well fed and entertained with distractions.
Yeah, the annual inflation rate reached 3500% in France before the start of the revolution. Things have to start looking pretty destitute before people are willing to put their own lives at risk. When they’re faced with potential starvation, though, eating cake starts to sound pretty good.
Yeah… I’d say that ole’ trope has been thoroughly disproven… but even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t worry about the ruling elites keeping people well-fed any time soon.
It’s a term from the Roman empire. Basically it’s saying if you keep people well-fed and entertained, they’ll let you do anything.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in that… the internet itself has proven that no matter the distractions, better-informed people will always have a habit of caring about stuff the elites don’t want them to care about. And that’s just a very recent example.
Even if we are assuming those who consider themselves well informed actually are, which is a joke unto itself, as most people are capable of and already are victims of misinformation regardless of what side you’re on (believe it or not propaganda exists for both the left and the right) it’s just not realistic to think they’re a sizable enough chunk to do anything of value.
propaganda exists for both the left and the right
If you equate the miniscule amounts of narrative that can be called “leftist” with a straight face with the gargantuan pro-status quo right-wing propaganda machines that sucks up next-to uncountable amounts energy and treasure it simply means you, yourself, must be counted as one of those that aren’t all that well informed.
it’s just not realistic to think they’re a sizable enough chunk to do anything of value.
And you know this… how?
They didn’t forget it, they discarded it when they realised a docile middle class will vote against their own self interests almost indefinitely.
They didn’t forget it, they discarded it when they realised a docile middle class will vote against their own self interests almost indefinitely as long as nobody in power gives them the option of voting in their own interests.
FTFY - it’s the only true “western” contribution to statecraft.
The new capitalist never bothered to read their Machiavelli
That’s because they have the technology to just fuck off to some private island surrounded by a private army if things get shitty.
That’s why they don’t fear the people anymore, they can’t just be dragged from their castles and chopped to bits like the French Revolution.
That’s because they have the technology to just fuck off to some private island
You mean… technology they don’t have the foggiest clue how to maintain and operate themselves? Who will be mining the precious minerals and extracting the fuels that technology requires? And if things really get that shitty, their money isn’t going to be of much use to their army of private goons, is there?
That’s why they don’t fear the people anymore,
Oh, they do… the fact that their first-choice in goon institutions - publicly-funded police - still exists prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Only the narcissistic ones who need the direct adulation of the people. Most of them are still content to buy politicians and spread disinformation through right wing “think tanks”.
Yes, I’m glad they added this (on why there are more billionaire politicians in authoritarian countries):
‘We surmise that this is due to stronger wealth-protection motives for political entry in autocracies and the wide array of ‘stealth’ pathways to informal political influence in democracies,” the study said.
Billionaires in (so-called) democracies don’t need to get their hands dirty. They can control the whole polity via well-paid lackeys.
Back to feudalism!
Yes, let us farm mud and actually belong to the oligarchs who still had more money than us.
Glory days.
Bring out your dead!
This one isn’t dead!
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I mean… politicians have been rather wealthy throughout history. You think our founding fathers worked fields? They were significant land owners with influence.
Basically anyone could come settle land (literally free real estate), that’s why they had to borrow a system of indentured servitude to produce. While white indentured servants were initially preferred, the Dutch trade routes and invention of the cotton gin turned in to the institution of chattel slavery of primarily Africans as we know it. Out of this period came the modern notion of “race” and conceptions of white-supremacy as a justification. Then you basically had a merchant economy in the north and an agricultural one in the south, and what was a moral concern for the north was the foundation of the economy in the south. Even after they lost Andrew Johnson basically gave all the planters back their seats in local governments.
You mean collonizers?
The people who made collars?
I think they performed colonoscopies?
Marx is spinning in his grave, of course they are. You don’t need to be a communist to read his book. Its called Capital, its almost entirely about capitalism, and much of the critique AND techniques he used for the critique (Dialectics) have become foundational in other aspects of modern society. They should make people read this in school, the only communist teacher I ever had in college made us young lefties who signed up read Milton Friedman and John Smith FIRST. The baby daddies of capitalism, and we did because not knowing only makes us dumber. Why are we dead set on not making ourselves smarter? Remember when General Milley said even he’s read Marx, there’s reasons for that.
Lmao good Marx had bad ideas and got millions of people who believed in them killed.
Also it’s weird to imply Marx invented Dialectics, since he just adopted Hegelian Dialectics in the same style as Engels.
But yes Marx is a very easy read and everyone should analyze his writings, if only to understand the criticisms and why his economic philosophy didn’t age well.
He had bad solutions but his criticisms of capitalism are spot on.
Also I prefer to blame the authoritarian strongmen who consolidated power as opposed to a guy that advocated against hierarchy. Is Adam Smith culpable for the Bengal famine?
As an anti-capitalist, I disagree. He conflated the role of the employer with the owner of the means of production, which led him to the mistaken conclusion that rejecting capitalist appropriation requires rejecting private property per se. It’s really the employment contract that enables capitalist appropriation and exploitative property relations. There are other reasons to oppose private ownership, but that is another story. The classical laborists’ criticisms are spot on not Marx’s
criticisms of capitalism are spot on.
His predictions did not follow reality whatsoever.
“Billionaire politicians are a shockingly common phenomenon,” the study said. “The concentration of massive wealth in the hands of a tiny elite has understandably caused many observers to worry that the ‘super-rich have super-sized political influence.’”
Every aristocracy in history has entered the chat.
In the 1880s the phenomenon of the Robber Baron became a thing- industrial capitalism and corporate power vaulted private citizens into spheres of power and influence to rival that of royalty.
Sure enough, allowing the Robber Barons to become influential led to the collapse in prior regulatory regimes that had once balanced the interests of workers vs. their employers and the resulting abuses (and poverty) led to a crisis of confidence in fledgling democracies, in which socialists would argue for democratizing the workplaces and fascists would argue to reject democracy altogether and revert to a stronger-strong-man model of government that wouldn’t fail the way monarchs had in the face of the democratic revolutions of the 1840s.
It was a messy process, but by the 1930s much of the world had figured out it would be much better off with its billionaires on short leashes, its monopolists tightly constrained, its fascists shamed into hiding (or pushing up daisies). The resulting economic boom is still remembered as a high point of the middle class, and it lasted until the 1970s because until then the PR efforts of the industrial barons were laughed off as being transparent and self-serving. Eventually enough of the folks that remembered life under the Robber Barons passed on and by the time the Boomers came of political age they stopped protecting unions and enforcing antitrust law and defending the New Deal.
Since then, the corporate-power/pro-billionaire lobby has re-asserted corporate power to a state of affairs that has concentrated wealth and power much more than it was even in the deepest throes of the Great Depression or the decades leading up to it.
Of course the Billionaires are feeling ascendant. Also, at this point people are generally becoming as eat-the-rich as they were in times when it took literal violence to re-establish labor protections and re-assert democratic authority over public affairs. This is the second big-cycle of declining/crisis- democracy -> fascism -> resurgent democracy since the wave of democratic revolutions swept Europe in the 1840s and 50s. We’re in the dark part of it now, the forces of fascism are ascendent and extremely powerful but don’t forget they are and will always be a small minority
Wow who would have guessed that the people who have all the time and money checks notes have the time and money to run for office?
So they’re dabbling in politics themselves as opposed to simply buying the politicians they want.
Yeah… this whole capitalism thing sure seems to be on-track to reach it’s logical conclusion - I sure hope there will be humans left afterwards.
One thing that I do respect the Swedish Vänsterpartiet (the left party) is that any MP belonging to the party can only make X ammount of money from their political position, any more has to be sent back to the party.
There are plenty I dislike about the party, but that I can respect.
Cost-savings. Why pay all these middle-men to do things for you when you can do them yourself AND have the state pay you for it?
I’m shocked, shocked I say! well… not that shocked.
It’s because people are proud to lower their standards for what they can get.
They see that the ruling class is tightening its grip, so they convince themselves that this is the best way to go to avoid feeling bad about what we’re missing out on.
