The AI czar is symbolic of the terrible year it's been for American capitalism. Fealty, corruption, regulatory capture. Extracting value from the less powerful instead of creating it.
It was an excellent year for American Capitalism. Get outa here with that "capitalism fights for the little guy" rubbish. We all love a good disruption story, we all love to personally win the game, but on a systems level it is crystal clear that on net the incentives overwhelmingly point in the opposite direction.
The objective function of capitalism is weighted by wealth. "Capitalism is about doing what other people want" is the wealth_gini=0 limit. "Capitalism is about doing what rich people want" is the wealth_gini=1 limit. The USA has a wealth_gini of about 0.85. What do rich people want that poor people don't? Stuff their pockets by extracting value from the poors, of course, which is exactly what we see here. Canceling redistributive programs and taxes is about letting the market do more of what it wants to do: serve the rich, screw the poor.
The objective function of capitalism is weighted by wealth. "Capitalism is about doing what other people want" is the wealth_gini=0 limit. "Capitalism is about doing what rich people want" is the wealth_gini=1 limit. The USA has a wealth_gini of about 0.85. What do rich people want that poor people don't? Stuff their pockets by extracting value from the poors, of course, which is exactly what we see here. Canceling redistributive programs and taxes is about letting the market do more of what it wants to do: serve the rich, screw the poor.