these billionaires want to destroy democracy
and take your power and agency for themselves
There’s a special kind of billionaire who believes they are far superior to you and me. They’ve been gifted by some god a wealth of knowledge and prescience about the current and future states of humanity. Inspired by Curtis Yarvin and also The Lord of the Rings, you and I are getting in the way of their sci-fi pursuit to alter humanity to reflect their worldview.
They have big plans to utilize AI to bring to fruition their vision of a handful of dudes (i.e., themselves) overseeing a society of peons and robots. First up on the chopping block? Democracy. Why? Because we’re too stupid to know what to do with our vote.
This particular group of Silicon Valley billionaires installed JD Vance in the White House as their Trojan Horse, and they have little interest in democracy. These arrogant AF technocrats believe that democracy should die.
Don’t believe me? I'm not surmising; they've put this sh*t in writing. Shocking, right? Let them tell you for themselves.
Elon Musk
We can start with Elon Musk. The man held up a chainsaw to infer what he wanted to do to the government. If you haven’t read that story, you're living under a news media rock. It might feel safer there.
Although Musk stepped away recently from the spotlight in Washington, he likely has already gathered and siphoned off the government and personal data he wanted, leaving his minions to continue working their “magic.”
Given how Musk uses his billions to manipulate elections, we can surmise that he doesn’t value the principles of democracy. He probably posted as much on X, but I don’t use that platform. I doubt I’m missing much.
Sidenote: I drafted this entire post months ago, so it ignores the Musk/Trump pissing match. It doesn’t change my argument. Skip the news and read the memes. They’re amazing, and my fellow Americans never fail to impress me with their creativity. As for the busted bromance, two snowflakes in June. ❄️
Moving on…
Peter Thiel
Many years ago, Peter Thiel wrote "The Education of a Libertarian." It's not long, so I encourage you to read the entire manifesto; however, let's examine a few key excerpts.
"I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual."
So he believes he shouldn't pay taxes. He also believes humans can find a way to live forever! Really?! Do we even want that??!
"I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible."
He wants freedom, which means he thinks democracy ought to be dead. He and a cohort of others even propose the creation of Freedom Cities (like Próspera in Honduras), sovereign enclaves within countries that are free from government oversight.
The book The Hidden Globe lays out how these types of places already exist. Countries like Switzerland, Ireland, and many islands around the world offer favorable tax and legal jurisdictions where the uber-wealthy and multi-national corporations can hide their assets.
We don't need to theorize how these “Freedom Cities" work. We can already see the benefits they offer to the ultra-rich and how they become havens for tax evasion, the exploitation of human capital, and the plundering of the planet.
To highlight just how out of touch Thiel and his hyper-libertarian buddies are, they want the land for these Freedom Cities to be donated so they can create these cities at a lower cost of capital than if they bought the land themselves.
“If we're able to get a legislative transfer of land from the US government to make a public-private partnership, or a trust, or even a private corporation, then it's a lower cost of capital,” explains Nick Allen, president of Frontier Foundation, an organization lobbying the government for development of “freedom” cities. (source)
These billionaires, including Thiel, believe the government should grant them land for free, allowing them to create entire cities that benefit themselves and their billionaire buddies, while the rest of us pay for the land on which to build our modest homes and villages. Are they out of their ever-loving minds?
Here’s another banger from Thiel.
"Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron."
Yep. You heard that right. Thiel specifically calls out women's right to vote as a problem for him and the country. He's essentially saying women are too liberal to achieve the libertarian goals that he thinks are the only path to freedom. He also notes that poor people shouldn't be able to vote, and he doesn't believe in democratic voting at all.
Instead, he thinks that a few influential and more qualified individuals (as defined by him, of course) should lead and dictate how the world works for the rest of us. Are you surprised he thinks he's one of those more qualified people?
While I'm asking the extremely obvious, he thinks libertarianism is a path to freedom. But freedom for whom? Unless he thinks women are voting heavily against their interests because they aren't smart enough to know better, it's not a path toward women's freedom. Many marginalized populations don't seem to be thriving, even when some guardrails exist to protect them.
"Politics is about interfering with other people’s lives without their consent."
Alas, friend, many of us want politics to interfere with our lives in ways that make the world a fairer and more just place. We want Social Security as a backstop to a life of poverty for the elderly, even if that means people have to pay taxes to fund it. We want free lunch for kids who can't afford food, even if that means wealthy people have to help feed the hungry. We want laws that prevent women from being exploited based on their genitalia, even if that makes some men mad.
Maybe those who are more marginalized want politics to interfere in the lives of those who disproportionately exploit everyone else without the interference of government. Men are interfering in women's lives all the time without their consent (sexual abuse, domestic violence, unequal pay, devalued domestic labor, the list goes on). Perhaps that's one reason why women are voting for liberal candidates!
Some of us want the government to protect us from people like Thiel and others who prefer to use their power to their benefit, even when it means others are in harm’s way. Freedom to live a good life requires some level of protection from those who wish to exploit, even without their consent.
don't take away a woman's right to vote, trick her into giving it up voluntarily
Thiel followed up his The Education of a Libertarian manifesto to "clarify" that he doesn't believe we should take away women's right to vote. But that doesn't mean he wants women to vote.
He has little faith in voting at all; he doesn't want anyone to vote. He can accrue more power in a techno-fascist system than in a democracy, and he believes he and his Silicon Valley brethren have a monopoly on knowledge and innovative thought to move humanity forward.
He knows that reversing the 19th Amendment is dead on arrival. Instead, he and his anti-democratic friends promote legislation like the SAVE Act, which creates all sorts of barriers for lots of people (especially women and welfare beneficiaries) to vote without technically taking away their "right" to vote. Disenfranchisement can be just as effective as direct removal of the right if it is executed appropriately.
Furthermore, Thiel bolsters media campaigns that encourage women to relinquish their rights and independence voluntarily. He's one of the principal funders of Evie magazine, a media operation clandestinely leading women toward being submissive wives who, among other things, defer their vote to their husbands.
Dressed up like the women's magazines of the past, so much so that it's nearly a rip-off of Elle magazine's cover graphic design, Evie has a clear underlying message: women are second-class citizens, and ought to be at home and dependent on their husbands. In between articles about sexy ways to dress for your man and the latest tips for silky skin (or something...🙄), they mislead readers to believe that birth control is unsafe and immoral, and women should defer their power to their husbands (voting included).
In reality, birth control offers women immense opportunity and financial independence. It has medical side effects that women should and do understand. Accepting the side effects of birth control is a trade-off millions of women decided was well worth the cost.
Birth control brought women all sorts of freedom and options outside of motherhood and dependency on a husband. Thiel (and his bedfellows) don't like this. Women's voting power and agency are getting in the way of their authoritarian agenda. Thus... the cultural push for voluntary forbearance.
Marc Andreessen
Lest we believe that Thiel or Musk are lone wolves, let's dive into the Techno-Optimist Manifesto from Marc Andreessen, another billionaire Silicon Valley techno-fascist who finds liberal democracy a thorn in his side.
"Markets prevent monopolies and cartels."
On its own, this is ostensibly false. We know so because history shows us. Government regulations were the only thing that broke up the monopolies, such as during the era of the Robber Barons in the oil and railroad industries.
Today, tech companies and large multinational corporations are consolidating power at an unprecedented rate, despite the presence of government regulation. Drug cartels thrive in countries with weaker government oversight. A free market doesn’t prevent monopolies or eliminate cartels.
"Take the boot off entirely, who knows how rich everyone can get."
By this, he means remove market regulations to maximize economic growth, allowing everyone to benefit. This is the core message of supply-side or “trickle-down” economics: the pie gets bigger and everyone gets a piece. It's garbage, and we know this from history. Even if the whole pie gets bigger, wealth is not accumulated fairly.
Most of the wealth accumulates at the top. We don't even need an economic model to understand this; it's common sense. When a few people at the top receive tax cuts and investment opportunities, and then decide how the wealth generated from those efforts is allocated, they will always keep at least a little bit extra for themselves relative to what they share with others.
Consider a CEO deciding how the company's profit will be shared among employees. The CEO will always, always, always1 take at least a slightly larger share of the profit for themselves and their fellow executives than what they pass along to everyone else. With history as evidence and the disparity between executive and employee pay growing exponentially in recent decades, we know more than "a little bit" extra is being withheld by the wealthy and not trickling down to everyone else.
Over time, a "little bit extra" at every turn becomes massively more wealth consolidated at the top, while relatively little wealth is accumulated at the bottom. At some point, the wealth disparities become so egregious that those at the top make life worse for those at the bottom than before all that wealth was created.
"We believe markets, to quote Nicholas Stern, are how we take care of people we don’t know."
Give me a break. Markets seek profit; they are not engines of morality. This idea that markets take care of people they don't know is ridiculous. Capitalism and markets are designed to generate wealth, and the government exists (at least in part) to rein in the predictable, exploitative interests of free markets.
Unfettered markets consolidate wealth and, consequently, power. We need only look around in our real lives to see that capitalist markets prioritize profit at the expense of people and their well-being.
Meta exploits humans, especially children, in search of profit and growth.
Walmart has such low wages that many of its workers rely on government assistance. Markets mean that the owners are among the wealthiest humans in the world, while the workers don’t even earn a living wage.
Big Oil covers up external costs like pollution and climate destruction that have significant and sometimes existential costs to billions of people in the pursuit of profit for a few.
Big Food invests in highly processed food products that are detrimental to human health, but worth the consequences because they're profitable.
Amazon builds algorithms that encourage mindless and wasteful consumption, doing far more harm than good for consumers.
Deregulated sports betting is a disaster that destroys families and life savings, and it's on the cusp of becoming a full-scale firestorm. If gambling isn’t an egregious example that markets don’t take care of people, I’m not sure what universe one is living in.
Shall I continue? The list can go on. Markets have no morals or ethics!
These Lord-of-the-rings-inspired world-class nerds (and I have nothing against nerds in general, I'm a card-carrying member) stand to benefit handsomely from a world where regulation and guardrails disappear. Their wealth and private islands insulate them (at least initially) from the ruinous consequences of collapse.
That same wealth also presents seismic opportunities for further consolidation of wealth and power when the economic markets crash, allowing them to buy up public and private assets at bargain basement prices. At the same time, the rest of society hangs on by a thread.
economic rollercoasters expedite their agenda
While I can’t say if the tariff rollercoasters were all part of The Plan (I doubt it), they're expediting the desired destruction that's good for the techno-fascists and bad for the rest of us. Daniel Pinchback explains this in his work at Liminal News. I've included some excerpts below, because he explains it better than I can.
"Trump’s tariffs create systemic uncertainty. They increase input costs, disrupt supply chains, and invite retaliation. They discourage long-term investment, freeze hiring, and destabilize forward planning.
But while this may seem disastrous from the perspective of small businesses or regional manufacturing firms, it’s far less damaging—and even beneficial—for massive, vertically integrated multinational corporations and billionaire “sovereign individuals” with a global reach.
Firms can absorb short-term shocks, relocate production, and pass costs onto consumers. Billionaires can buy off distressed assets and properties during a massive economic downturn or collapse. Both groups can thrive in volatile conditions by leveraging scale, lobbying influence, and capital reserves, while others suffer.
Peter Thiel’s investments, such as in Palantir, are exactly the kind of companies that benefit from such unstable environments. Palantir’s primary clients are intelligence and defense agencies—government contracts are immune to the traditional market pressures affecting the middle class. Similarly, Thiel invests in biotech, AI, and crypto. These industries are far removed from the tariff-exposed, labor-intensive sectors of the middle-class economy. In other words, Thiel’s empire is structurally insulated from the chaos Trump unleashes."
And then this is it - the hypothesis.
"According to my hypothesis, Thiel, Musk, and their ideological allies do not want to fix this crisis. They are making this crisis in order to profit from it. Their vision of the future is not shared prosperity or “America first,” but “commercialized sovereignty”: a world of technocratic enclaves, private jurisdictions, and algorithmic control, where the Right alone has freedom of speech and dissenters go to prison.
Thiel invests in projects like Próspera, a semi-autonomous charter city in Honduras with its own regulatory and legal framework. Despite libertarian rhetoric about freedom and innovation, these ventures are designed to remove democratic oversight and accountability.
Thiel and Musk don’t want governance to be a public good, but a private service. Protection is something to be bought by those who can afford to live in the new arcologies of sovereignty."
Alexander Karp
Alexander Karp is another technocrat aligned with the techno-fascist dreams of Thiel, Musk, and the like. Karp is co-founder of Palantir (with Peter Thiel), an AI software company creating tools to assist decision-making in government and commercial industries. In his recent book, The Technological Republic, he argues that the United States has lost its way, thanks largely to the pluralism priorities of the political Left.
Coddled by and taking for granted a culture of relative safety and security afforded us by our economic and military power, the current generation in Silicon Valley (and the Left more broadly) got lost in squabbles over petty matters.
Moreover, Karp says the Left’s “aspirational desire for tolerance of everything has descended into support of nothing.” An “unwillingness to pronounce, to have a view, and to venture toward the flame, not away from it, risks leaving us adrift.” It compromises our national identity, our collective sense of shared stories.
Threats of cancel culture exacerbate the social risks associated with taking a strong moral stance, arguing in favor of or against a controversial or consequential position. And so, he says, we have a weakening of emotional and mental resilience, coupled with a “hollowing out of the American mind,” as generations of society proceed through life without developing resilience to discuss, critique, or support a perspective on significant problems or issues of the modern world.
Karp and his brethren believe we need a seismic cultural shift in society to resurrect a collective identity. We need innovators willing to take big risks based on moral convictions to address the existential risks facing our nation and humanity. Decades of liberalism and pluralism have left most of us unprepared for the enormous tasks ahead.
And so, it is incumbent upon Karp, Thiel, Musk, and others who see themselves as the only ones with the necessary qualifications and convictions to design and execute the public-private partnership projects that will rebuild our nation-state for the future.
Karp says:
“Nothing much of substance, and certainly nothing lasting, will be created by committee. Our challenge, both in the United States and in the West more broadly, will be to harness and channel the creative energies of the new founding generation, these technical iconoclasts, into serving something more than their individual interests.”
There it is. Democracy doesn’t work; it’s too many cooks in the kitchen. Nothing of substance will be created by committee. And most of us have minds “too hallowed out” to participate in leadership with the “new founding generation.”
Instead, they are the chosen ones. Palantir and the “technical iconoclasts” gifted with superior vision and status shall save us from ourselves.
Democratic structures impede their “altruistic” pursuits to save humanity from the inevitable failure of democracy. Regulation is a barrier to progress. Liberalism is weak and without collective direction or purpose. It’s ok if you break a few things in the process or take a chainsaw to the government because, as Karp says, “nothing of consequence is built in a straight line.”
On some accounts, Karp is not wrong. These nuggets of truth are precisely why the whole idea catches fire and spreads.
You can have too many cooks in the kitchen.
A commitment to everything is really a commitment to nothing.
We prioritize individual comfort and consumption over the collective good.
And yet, it’s absurd to think that a handful of fairly homogenous men have all the answers. Surely, the answer isn’t that they should usurp power from the people and dismantle democracy.
Even if Karp is right about our collective weaknesses, why can’t the answer be to rebuild resilience, morality, and critical thinking instead of handing over power to the few people they view as still holding strong convictions on issues of consequence?
here we are
In short, Thiel and Co.'s agenda, which they spent a decade (or more) working to execute, is finally coming into place. JD Vance, with help from Musk, is the man behind the curtain making the magic happen while Trump distracts the public from the real project. They’re making progress toward:
Defunding and destroying government agencies by starving them of financial and human capital to consolidate power with the President and a handful of oligarchs. Their vision is of a strong, efficient, and focused nation-state, supported by deep public-private partnerships, and controlled primarily by AI. Code name: DOGE. Alias: Project 2025.
Economic destruction from rollercoaster tariffs undermining liberal governments and presenting arbitrage opportunities for billionaires to profit from volatility and acquire failing entities, ultimately taking private control of public programs and public land for profit.2 Surprise but welcomed accomplice to DOGE that expedites privatization among the “enlightened.”
Creating zones (and ultimately an entire country) free from liberal, democratic government oversight, intervention, and taxation, where the rich can control everything with limited government oversight or accountability and leave the rest of us to rot at their discretion. This is where the real work of “progress” takes place, partnering with the government as needed and deemed appropriate by the oligarchs. DOGE 2.0?
Tradwife culture that he's funding on social media and in channels like Evie magazine, coupled with the SAVE Act, is working together to disenfranchise women and marginalized voters, who Thiel views as "too liberal" or unqualified to participate in government decisions that serve his vision of civilization. Disenfranchisement brings them one step closer to a non-violent, democratically elected oligarchy when the dissidents are silent.
It’s all an effort to steal power from the everyday citizens, whom they see as unfit and unwilling to do the hard work of rebuilding a cohesive national character in their vision. Whether or not they genuinely believe in this project, I can’t say. But they purport to be saving humanity from an inevitable future that conveniently serves them quite well at the expense of the rest of us.
If we weren’t sure of the intentions before, the news that the government has hired Palantir to create what appears to be a comprehensive database of Americans' personal information should help clarify our understanding. Now they don’t even need a cover to gain access to government systems and manipulate them to their desires.
What’s the point? They’re bringing their billions to the table to burn down democracy and usurp control for themselves.
If you want a deeper, more technical dive into the metamorphosis of this work,
, writer of Notes from the Circus, offers an analysis of the dark descent of Silicon Valley into democratic catastrophizing and their belief in an oligarchic solution driven by artificial intelligence. Here are two just pieces to contemplate.
So what do we do about it?
For those who understand AI, I hope they can begin building systems that help us utilize AI effectively and safely. A dozen or so Palantir employees left the company. Presumably, they possess the skills (though perhaps not the funding) to develop AI in ways they believe will benefit humanity without consolidating power in undemocratic ways (if that's even possible with AI).
For the rest of us, I’m not sure. Paying attention is a good place to start.
We are more than capable of advocating for and building cultural resilience, philosophical grit, and greater acceptance of diversity of thought. Fostering a culture of critical thinking and deep reflection on the significant challenges facing humanity, with tolerance for unconventional ideas and mistakes, could be a starting point.
No matter what the rest of us do, hubris will likely drive them toward their oligarchic goals anyway (unless someone intervenes). Being a billionaire comes with a moat against criticism. No one in their circles tells them they're wrong.
Their wealth disconnects them from any semblance of real life. Their belief that they are uniquely qualified to "save humanity from itself" is unlikely to change soon, even if we invest in building a more reflective, intellectually mature, and diverse culture.
The uber-wealthy amassed their billions and the power associated with that wealth on our watch. Rigged tax codes, political cowardice, greed, declining moral values, and corruption (among other factors) ushered in an era of consolidation of wealth and power, with which we must reckon. I’m not sure how to solve it, but I’m open to hearing your ideas about where to start.
Some CEO somewhere will defy this. It’s a wild exception to the obvious rule.
The jokes about Trump being the TACO President because “Trump always chickens out” are a perfect example of this. TACO trades are a feature of Wall Street lately as traders make bank banking on Trump to backtrack on his bad decisions that hurt the market.
Well done, nice collation of the worldview of the tech bros. I suggest an additional commentary regarding the libertarian supporters of the folks you discuss, their "base." These people have the misapprehension that if the (democratically elected) government isn't there to control them, NO ONE will control them, and they will be "free" in their imaginary libertarian utopia. This is sadly quite mistaken, as they simply will be controlled by those more powerful---the Thiels, Musks and the lesser sharks who will quickly emerge to dominate the populace. This is not wild theorization. Throughout recorded history, which consists almost entirely of non-democratic states, powerful individuals dominate society unchecked---except by OTHER powerful individuals, with whom they engage in endless conflict and wars (with the rest of us as cannon fodder). You might notice that libertarian philosophy was conspicuous by its absence in the general public in such states as it was patently obvious to all that the only solution was for people to band together against the powerful. Hence democracy.