From Rockefeller to Musk — how wealth inequality and the death of noblesse oblige are reshaping capitalism
Want to play a game?
Earth is about to be hit by an extinction-level event. No, I’m not going to be specific. Because, what’s the point? There’s no shortage of candidates at the moment.
Your task? Save the human race.
An embryo bank has been created in a safe bunker, representing a genetic cross section of the human species.
You can assume that the bank requires no additional upkeep, and that when activated, the artificial wombs will grow, and birth, the babies that will, eventually, repopulate the planet.
Deeply disturbing thought, yes. But don’t quibble with the details. This is a mental exercise.
The bunker is kitted out with all the things its occupants need to survive five years underground, which is how long they need to be sheltered from whatever shitstorm is going on up on the surface.
Your job is to choose the one hundred people who get to survive. They will raise the newborns to adulthood and ensure our species lives on.
Who’s going to make it onto your list?
Read more: Who Gets a Seat on the Ark? Lessons from Wealth InequalityThink about it for a minute. Or scribble it down. You can go with general occupations or include specific individuals. Up to you.
Here’s some thinking time for you:
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Right.
What did you end up with?
Me, I’ve gone with groups.
Emergency services people, for a start. People who know how to save lives and tend the ill.
Then, disease experts. Epidemiologists. Virologists.
We’ll also need people who know how to build and make things. Homes. Wells. Ways to get around. And “tradies” as we call them here in Australia: plumbers and electricians.
Let’s not forget the farmers and animal husbandry experts who know how to grow things and tend crops.
Not to mention people who cook and make clothes.
Then, we’ll need teachers and custodians of knowledge. Philosophers and historians. Definitely reserving some spots for First Nations people who know the land.
And, because it’s me and I do have some vested interests, we’ll need creative souls to lift us up and record our times. Because it will get pretty grim without something to make us smile and warm our collective heart.
Funnily enough, the only individual I’ve included is David Attenborough. Which is patently stupid, because the poor man’s over 100 now, and is the kind of person who would refuse a spot in the ark, even if it was offered.
If your list is anything like mine, the people you’ve included are dedicated to service, and making a contribution… doing and making things that improve others’ lives.
People who make things. Build things. Preserve life. Nourish our collective. Make the world a better place.
You know who’s missing from my list?
Billionaires. And tech bros.
I bet they’re missing from your list, as well.
Why?
Because they’re no fucking use to anyone other than themselves.
They would no doubt regard themselves as evolutionarily superior to the likes of you and me.
But unplug them from their mainframe, and leave them without flunkies to doff their caps, do what they’re told, and clean up after them, and how well do you think they’d do?
They. Would. Be. Cooked.
Because they bring absolutely nothing to the table.
Yet, the world is being reshaped in their image. And they are hoarding its wealth.
We’re living in “A nerd’s wet dream.”
That’s how I’ve seen it described. And it’s uncannily accurate.
Under their model, the masters of this world seem set on making the human race redundant.
Why else do you think they’re building their own bunkers across the planet? I’m quite sure they’re hoping for a mass extinction event where they can hole up until the dust settles and emerge to a depopulated planet.
Why?
Because we’re no longer any use to them.
It wasn’t the same during the last, great, technological upheaval.
The billionaires of the Industrial Revolution needed human labour in their factories. We were a necessary evil.
But then, the birth of unions to protect workers’ rights threw a literal spanner in the works. The eight-hour day, pioneered in my hometown of Melbourne, and limitations on child labour complicated things. As did the requirement to have a certain skill base in the workforce. An illiterate worker is no help in a factory where reading and writing is a necessity.
Ever wondered why we ended up with universal education, public museums, and libraries during the 19th century? That’s why. To educate the workforce.
It’s also why we have so many vast temples of knowledge emblazoned with the names of the 19th century robber barons.
A new Gilded Age?
The bedazzled Enshitificator-in-chief likes to point back to this era, claiming he’s led America into a second Gilded Age. Because, of course he would. Also because: gold.
The term was coined by Mark Twain in his 1873 novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today.
It was also the age of America’s Robber Barons.
The term came from medieval Germany. Raubritter, or “robber knights” were lords who charged illegal tolls on roads crossing their lands.
In the 19th century, America’s feudal thieves demolished competitors, bought politicians, and rigged markets. Sound familiar?
Sure, there was progress. New railroads crisscrossed the continent. Factories pumped out new technology — typewriters, archaic calculators, cash registers. And the steel and coal mining industries went gangbusters.
The pockets of the obscenely wealthy few were lined through the exploitation of the workers who manned their production lines and hacked minerals out of the earth for them.
You know the names, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Duke, and Frick.
They didn’t throw cash at universities, schools, and public institutions just because they wanted to be seen to be doing good (although there was a little of that). They did it because they needed well-educated and literate people to work in their (then) high-tech factories.
My guess is that subsequent generations of billionaires have been working towards a point at which they could kick us to the kerb ever since.
But what do these people contribute to the world?
Look at the list of the wealthiest and most powerful people.
Most of them don’t create anything other than elegant strings of code or efficient supply chains.
Jeff Bezos is a jumped-up delivery man.
Elon Musk should still be in his mother’s basement playing Assassin’s Creed and planning his Star Trek costume for Comic-Con.
And Mark Fuckerberg (no typo)? Well, his US$300+ million yacht ignored a request for assistance and left two women and a child adrift in a skiff that had run out of fuel in Alaska.
What would they bring to our ark?
Sweet. Fuck. All.
Yet, they control an obscene amount of the world’s wealth.
While we quibble over pay-rises for nurses and teachers, middle-men who have done little more than work out more efficient ways of shuffling things from one place to another—bags of dog food… information… money… communication—are making a motza.
Coupled with the narcissism and ego-driven politics motivating the dullards behind the far-right movements who are making such a mark in Western politics, and is it any wonder that a push to the left is happening amongst the kids locked out of a system created to maintain the status quo?
They’ve got nothing to lose. Because this stage of human evolution in the West ain’t got nothing for them.
I call it MEvolution
Used to be that people blessed with power, wealth, or privilege were obliged to act with honour and help those less fortunate than themselves.
The French called it noblesse oblige.
The Bible has this to say about it: “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required.”
Even Spiderman got it: “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Yeah. Those were the days.
MEvolution means everyone for themselves. Even though there’s more than enough to go around, the one-percenters keep cutting themselves a bigger slice of the pie, leaving less for the rest of us.
The billionaires’ club is bigger and richer than ever.
Fifteen per cent of the world’s wealth is controlled by just three thousand (mostly) men. That’s fewer than a quarter of the number of spectators you see on Wimbledon’s Centre Court.
Those three thousand individuals control US$16 trillion between them. You have to combine the GDP of Japan, India, and the UK to equal their combined wealth. The only countries with a higher stand-alone GDP are the US and China.
phoneying Stark: the world’s first trillionaire
Sure, Elon Musk (aka: phoneying Stark) has seen his wealth dip a bit since launching his SpaceX house of cards on the stock exchange.
But to put his revolting pot of gold in context, imagine you were lucky enough to be given a million bucks a day. Want to know how long it would take for that to add up to a trillion dollars?
2,700 years.
That’s not a typo.
To put it in context, 2,700 years ago, Homer decided it might be cool to tell a story about the Trojan War.
When that can happen, it means the system is broken.
It’s happened because the world’s biggest economy has become a pyramid scheme.
Laws were written that were intended to stop things like monopolies and insider trading being used to siphon wealth into the hands of the few.
Why is that important in a consumer society? Because wealth is supposed to circulate. It’s the oxygen in the blood that stops limbs from becoming gangrenous.
Instead, capitalism has devolved into the bastard child envisioned by Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s 1987 masterpiece, Wall Street.
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms. Greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed, you mark my words, will save… that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”
Only, greed is not saving that malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
What it’s doing is debasing the democratic system, and stuffing even more into the already bloated pockets of the would-be (if not actual) crime boss at its helm and his friends.
Meanwhile, according to a recent Washington Post investigation, Trump has thrown almost a billion dollars on his Washington “improvements,” including the algae-ridden swamp formerly known as the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the planned Arch of Infamy, and his enormous ballroom… ironic, given the man has none. Balls, I mean.
Given that you know he’s lying anytime his lips are moving, colour me not at all shocked to learn that, despite Trump’s assurances that the ballroom would come at no cost to American taxpayers, almost all the funds are coming from government coffers.
As for those suggesting this is all par for the septic-tank-outflow-sodden course, and that other presidents spend taxpayers’ money “improving” the White House, try this on for size. The Executive Residence historically received around US$2.5 million a year from Congress for upkeep. Since Trump returned to office, that figure has ballooned to US$875 million.
So, in a year and a half, Trump has thrown 350 years’ worth of cash at the White House to make the place that was once the epitome of 18th century neo-classical architecture look like a suburban Thai restaurant meets mining town brothel, with a liberal dose of ‘80s dictator chic thrown in for good measure.
Why? Because like the tech bros, it’s all about him.
He must exist in a world of mirrors, where all he sees is his own reflection. History means nothing to him, because he wasn’t there. Why else do you think he keeps posting those horrific AI mash-ups of him with real leaders from the past?
MEvolution sucks.
It serves nobody other than the people calling the shots. And the last thing we need as the world confronts a perfect storm of environmental, economic, and political catastrophes, are men and women tossing the rest of us off the lifeboats and keeping all the supplies for themselves.
Back to our ark. With the challenges we’re facing, we need people with humanity and empathy at the wheel. People who live for others. Not the hybrid inhuman beings this evolutionary cul-de-sac has produced.
Do you want these people making decisions for us during a crisis?
Yeah. Me neither.
An example from here in Australia, where our own low-rent (yes, it’s possible) Temu Trump, Pauline “Fishsticks” Hanson, is pushing the same line of self-interested nonsense her American mentor is flogging like a dead horse.
Case in point. For over a decade, Hanson has been banging on about domestic violence. She’s come down hard on the side of men’s-rights advocates, because apparently spouse bashing is a “two-way street” and women being smashed around by a partner should “just leave.”
Hanson believes that women regularly make false allegations against partners to weasel more out of the family law system, despite truckloads of evidence to the contrary.
The always eloquent (?!?) Hanson put it like this: “Women, mostly women, are going around throwing them around left, right, and centre.” Also: “These are men who have been accused of these things that didn’t, it didn’t happen.”
She claims that many of the domestic violence orders put in place to protect abused women are exploited so female partners can bleed more cash in child support out of their exes, while blocking them from access to their kids.
Meanwhile, according to Hanson, “Domestic violence takes up about 75 per cent of police officers’ time now… That’s why we’re not dealing with real crime out there. The whole thing needs to be wound back.”
… Because the Hanson doctrine holds that domestic violence isn’t “real crime.”
Tell that to the one woman a week murdered by a domestic partner here in Australia.
This is not policy informed by research and advice from experts. It’s policy that expressly ignores facts and expert opinion. And it’s certainly not formulated for the common good.
It’s not policy. It’s personal grievance. Legislation as vengeance.
It’s MEvolution. Transforming the mechanisms of power to serve the interests of one person.
It’s important to ME. So, I’ll change the law to make it so.
But the last few weeks have given me hope.
Feel the winds of change blowing at your back?
Because greed is not good.
It never was.
And the wave of new voters coming of age know it. Forget getting a slice of the pie. The kids of today are lucky to get a lick of the tin once the greedy pigs at the top of the heap have taken their share.
And they’ve got nothing to lose.
They don’t care what’s happening on the stock market, because what the fuck is a dividend, when you can’t pay the rent? And who cares about tax on investment properties when you can’t afford petrol for your car?
Here in Australia, tens of thousands of kids from universities and high schools across the country staged a walk out to protest the bigoted, backwards, and bile-laden policies of Fishsticks Hanson’s One Nation party.
In America, the rising stars of the left—Zohran Mamdani, AOC, Abdul el-Sayed, Jon Ossoff—are making the stale, pale and male old-guard sweat. Because they’re advocating for equality and levelling the playing field.
The only people who worry about that are the handful of sweaty-nutsacked dickheads at the top of what is a very pointy pyramid. It’s why they’re banging on about “communism,” like we’re back in the 1950s confronting the “Red Peril.”
And they have good reason to worry.
Billionaires hate redistribution of wealth.
The reason socialism is such a threat to people like Trump and his billionaire cronies is that there’s no profit to be made.
No shareholders. No CEOs. No dividends.
You don’t get to be as wealthy as the billionaires we have today without capitalism and consumerism.
Without people buying shit, none of these people would have two red cents to rub together.
Remember when fridges lasted thirty years?
Sure, they cost more to buy, relatively speaking. But they were made to last.
A drive along any suburban street on the weekend is a living testament to the culture of waste we’re buying into nowadays.
Flat-pack furniture, TV screens the size of small sedans, enough sofas to break little JD Vance’s heart, all left out on the sidewalk to rot in the rain. There’s no market to resell them, because they’re junk.
And they’re junk because the billionaires, their companies, and their shareholders don’t want you to keep them. They want you to buy them again. And again. And again.
Hands up if you can sew on a button?
That’s the other thing we’ve been encouraged to give up to feed the beast. Self-reliance.
We work all day to earn money to buy things we used to make or do ourselves.
When a button falls off a shirt, and the guy who repairs shoes and does the odd bit of tailoring wants ten bucks to sew it back on, what do we do? Seems a bit pricey. Plus, we don’t have a sewing kit and wouldn’t know how the fuck to sew a button back on even if we did.
So, we buy a new shirt.
Back to our human ark.
These are the people we want to take us into the future. Not billionaires. Not tech bros.
Because nothing they’re giving us is new. Just a new way of consuming things that are as old as human civilisation…
Amazon is a marketplace, with a home delivery service, just as horses and carts once delivered bottles of milk to our front doors.
Microsoft’s Office programs are just fancy typewriters and ledger books.
TikTok is just the 21st century version of catching up with your mates in the town square to hear all the gossip about what’s going on in the capital.
Do we really want art made by a bot, or a song written by ChatGPT?
I know I sure as fuck don’t.
And as our hundred survivors sit around a campfire and teach their young charges about what it means to be human, I’m quite certain they won’t either.
