3 weeks ago

An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted

The concept of “elite overproduction” was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs. It’s a byproduct of inequality: a ton of poor people, sure, but also a superfluity of the wealthy, without enough positions to house them in the influence and status to which they think themselves entitled. In a modern context, that would mean senior positions in the government and civil service, along with the top tier of finance and law, but Turchin tested the hypothesis from ancient Rome to 19th-century Britain. The names and nature of the contested jobs and titles changed; the pattern remained. Turchin predicted in 2010 that by the 2020s it would be destabilising US politics.

In the UK in recent years the phrase has been repurposed in the wildest ways – to mean an excess of people at university creates unwanted activism (my précis); or, in the Economist (paraphrasing again), landslides create too many mediocre backbench MPs, who can’t hope for preferment so make trouble instead. And while the second proposition might be true, the first is basic anti-intellectualism. Turchin didn’t specify exactly how much wealth puts you in a situation with an overproduced elite, but he didn’t mean debt-laden students; he didn’t mean MPs; he meant, for brevity, billionaires or the top 1%. When a lot of your media are billionaire-owned, those media sources become endlessly inventive in taking the heat off billionaires, nipping criticism in the bud by pilfering its vocabulary and throwing it back at everyone.

But put a pin in that for a second, because elite overproduction in its true sense is hitting global politics square in the jaw. Elon Musk has inserted himself into the US election by means long term and short, above board and below it. His impact on X (formerly Twitter) since he bought it was mired for a while in comical cackhandedness, but over the past few months the real purpose has crystallised. Paid-for verification removed any faith in trusted sources that couldn’t be bought; Republican accounts flourish, Democratic ones languish. Musk himself has amplified lies and conspiracy theories. He has directly given $75m to his America PAC (political action committee), which has an X account and a yellow tick (whatever the hell that means) – it peddles xenophobic bilge. Musk opened a $1m Philadelphia voter giveaway that may be illegal earlier in the month.

Musk also spoke at the Madison Square Garden rally, but left the “ironic” fash posting (derogatory language about places and races) to others. He made one promise: “We’re going to get the government off your back.” He fleshed out what small government meant, in a telephone town hall (like a radio phone in, except the radio phones you, the constituents) over the weekend: ordinary Americans would face “temporary hardship” as welfare programmes are slashed in order to restructure the economy, but they should embrace the pain, as “it will ensure long-term prosperity”.

It’s not the worst thing to come out of Trump’s camp in these last, nail-biting few days, and it’s by no means the worst thing Musk has said, but it is the cleanest image yet of what elite overproduction looks like: Elon Musk could never have got himself elected into office in the US. But as the cost-cutting tsar, a made-up role Trump has promised him, he would exert extraordinary power to cause pain, with the only choice left to citizens being whether or not to hug it. Another billionaire donor, John Paulson, has been floated for the treasury secretary job, and Trump has a track record of rewarding big-ticket donors with a seat at the table – the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman boasted in print about his role in the new North America Free Trade Agreement negotiations in 2018, and as part of Trump’s “strategic and policy forum” during the 2017 administration.

Inconveniently, more billionaires (21) have donated to Kamala Harris’s campaign than to Trump’s (14); this is a problem for mature democracies everywhere. All political parties court high net worth individuals. It creates an atmosphere of equivalence – if a rich man buys your clothes, how is that different to his buying you a social media platform, except that you’re a cheaper date? If a rich man quashes an endorsement of your rival, but doesn’t endorse you, does that pass the sniff test? If a rich man creates a thinktank, which devises an ideological scheme that people are medium-sure that you, in government, will adopt wholesale, whose proposals are recruiting ideologically loyal civil servants, collecting data on abortions and limiting the use of abortion pills, is that any different to a money-bags with a pet peeve buying a tennis match with a political leader at a charity auction?

And what about the billionaires who keep a finger on both scales, donate to both candidates because why not, it suits them to stay friends and it’s chicken feed to them anyway? Is all this just the same game?

Qualitatively, yes: all billionaires are bad news in politics; all bought influence is undemocratic. But as billionaires line up behind a neofascist, you can see that this is a new phase in which they’re looking for more bang for their buck. They’re not trying to protect their commercial interests; they don’t need more money. They don’t even seek to shore up their own political influence – rather, to neuter any influence that may countervail it. Delinquent elites are in an open crusade against democracy, which, yes, does appear to be pretty destabilising.