[davidgay]

The annual budget for just San Francisco is $12 billion (https://sfbos.org/supervisor-fewer-budget-information). That's 20% of Sergey Brin's net worth.

So no, I don't think that any billionaire is even remotely close to being able to sustainably spend what any country-level government can.

For another reference: the smallest GDP listed at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no... is ~$40B, and government spending is usually some 10s of percent of GDP.