In 1914, before the First World War, there was this belief: “a European war would be economically disastrous, the moneyed classes won’t let it happen”. Europe went to war anyways, and the war was in fact an economic disaster as everyone knew it would be. Why were those people wrong? Because the rich were not in control: the Tsar and the Kaiser and the Emperor were in control.
I thought of this in 2022, in the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, whenever I would read someone argue: “Russia invading Ukraine would be economic suicide, the oligarchs won’t let Putin do it, they want to keep their yachts and villas”. Then Putin did it anyways, and the oligarchs had their assets in the West seized. Because the oligarchs are mis-named. They have no political power whatever and live and die by Putin, who appoints them to run stuff, and they get to live well, as long as they are loyal. They are the recipients of political patronage, not the source of it. When the wars start anyways, the same cynical people change their tune, suddenly it’s the armaments industry that’s behind it all, the war was profitable after all.
The default lens through which modern people look at the world is vulgar materialism: a stylized, populist version of historical materialism where everything is explained by money, states are weak, democracy is a fiction, corporations and the rich run the world, ideology and religion and nationalism and language have no explanatory power and are merely covers for secret, underlying material motives.
Second, we can ask: in the real world, does money give you influence over the state? To some extent, yes. Some lobbying efforts succeed. America is one of the few countries in the world where it’s legal to advertise prescription drugs to the public, for example. But corporations don’t have veto power over the state. If e.g. Pfizer spends billions on a clinical trial, and some guy at the FDA says no, and wipes that investment, who wins? The FDA wins. Pfizer can’t do shit.
There’s also an invisible graveyard problem, where the success of lobbying is very salient, because it’s often shockingly offensive. But there are many contrary cases that are less salient because, well, if you ban something, it doesn’t happen. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not approve a single nuclear reactor from its creation in 1975 until Vogtle 3+4. What has Westinghouse done about that? Nothing successful, apparently. It’s not like they’re getting paid to not build reactors.
Big Tech has a lot of smart people and a lot of money. Do tech billionaires run California like a private fiefdom? Reader, they don’t even run San Francisco. The best they can do is maybe help a slightly more moderate Democrat get elected as mayor.
From the article:
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