[hackyhacky]

> This has been going on since I've been alive to witness it.

Modern billionaires have more wealth (adjusted for inflation) and therefore more power than any human being has ever had before in history.

Do you like feudalism? Because that's how you get feudalism.

You're right, we've previously had enormous power concentrated in few hands. And it resulted in such a terrible society that we spent a century fighting wars to build a better system. And Thiel et al want to bring us right back to the old way, and they might succeed.

[kev009]

You misunderstand my point because I probably agree with you. But feudalism in the USA goes back to the beginning, and no other country is a particular exemplar although you can find a few social democracies that are or were functional while the population was largely homogeneous.

You are misinformed about the relative power. The industrialists eclipsed the current technocrats in every way imaginable, several of them had whole number percent of GDP level of wealth. Musk is the only one that comes close in modern times, yet a lot of this is in notes on largely speculative enterprises while the industrialists controlled the literal engines of society. If Palantir or Google or Amazon collapse, it will make a dent in the stock market for a couple years but it doesn't matter the same as losing your national industrial base. So they are kind of sock pupating their own stakes.