[kennykartman]

I think this is not true. Russia and China come to mind: billionaires are there, but they are not allowed to subvert the regime.

Edit just to clarify: presence of billionaires that are not hostile to the regime does not mean they are allies either.

[smsm42]

Billionaires there are subjects to the regime, and only remain billionaires while they are absolutely loyal to the regime. And threat of disagreement not only would cause them stop being billionaires, but also stop breathing altogether. I mean, running away could be an option, but then one stops being Russian or Chinese billionaire. And also this may not preclude "stop breathing" option, as some examples show.

[kennykartman]

You're right! Still they are billionaires in their countries with many benefits for being billionaires! Except, steering the government where they want - which typically means getting even richer. In the USA this happened, though.

My point is that, even in self-proclamed democracies, it's quite hard to actually give power to the people, precisely as in regimes. It's not a "it's all the same" position, of course: I mean to say that taking some values as absolute is not great if we don't clearly define what we are optimizing for. The USA model of democracy doesn't optimize for individual freedom nor for general population happiness.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Russia and China come to mind: billionaires are there, but they are not allowed to subvert the regime

Putin and Xi are billionaires. So are their cronies. They get richer faster than the rest of their population because they’re literally billionaires in control of the regime with no peaceful path to removing them.

[kennykartman]

I'm aware of that and I agree. So what? My comment was that they are not the only billionaires.