[ben_w]

It might be one of the cover stories for a Bond villain, but they have lots of mundane cover stories. Which isn't to say you're wrong, I've learned not to trust my gut in the category (rich business leaders) to which he belongs.

I'd be more worried about the guy who tweeted “If this works, I’m treating myself to a volcano lair. It’s time.” and more recently wore a custom T-shirt that implies he's like Vito Corleone.

[hnbad]

> I'd be more worried about the guy

Or you could realize what those guys all have in common and be worried about the systems that enable them because the problem isn't a guy but a system enabling those guys to become everyone's problem.

I don't mind "Vito Corleone" joking about a volcano lair. I mind him interfering in my country's elections and politics. I shouldn't have to worry about the antics of a guy building rockets that explode and cars that can chop off your fingers because I live in a country that can protect me from those things becoming my problem, but because we have the same underlying systems I do have to worry about him because his political power is easily transferrable to any other country including mine.

This would still be true if it were a different guy. Heck, Thiel is landing contracts with his surveillance tech in my country despite the foreign politics of the US making it an obvious national and economic security risk and don't get me started on Bezos - there's plenty of "guys" already.

[ben_w]

Sure, but "the systems" were built by such people and are mere evolutions of the previous "I have a bigger stick" of power politics from prior to the industrial revolution.

Not that you're wrong about the systems, just that if it was as easy as changing these systems because we can tell they're bad and allow corruption, the Enlightenment wouldn't have managed to mess up with both Smith and Marx.

[hnbad]

I don't think it's accurate to say that anyone messed up with Smith or Marx. Smith didn't anticipate modern finance capitalism and his musings apply perfectly well to earlier iterations of capitalism - though he'd probably have had a stroke if you showed him the finance economy. Marx didn't anticipate capitalism's resilience but he had very little to do with the ideologies built on his work let alone their implementations (or attempts thereof).

That said, "I have a bigger stick" wasn't all we had before the present systems. I'm not a primitivist but I think it's a thought-terminating cliché to just look at what we have now and what came immediately before and decide that the local plateau is the best we can have.

Humanity invests a ton of resources in enforcing the status quo of power dynamics - both through overt force (be it military violence or the mere threat of violence necessary to assert contracts and claims to private property) and through more subtle means (e.g. narrative framing in education, news media and entertainment). Maintaining these systems takes immense resources and effort. But in moments of crisis our cooperative human nature can shine through until order is restored and we are ushered back into learned helplessness and mutual distrust as "the authorities" take over.

The problem isn't that the systems "allow corruption". The systems are inherently bad and corrupting. We build hierarchies of absolute power and then try to come up with solutions for the problems those hierarchies cause in the first place.

The problem isn't who rules. The problem is having rulers. Quoth Bakunin: "the people will feel no better if the stick with which they are being beaten is labelled the 'peoples stick'. [..] not even the reddest republic - can ever give the people what they really want."