The passions are devouring the interests
Get the Money out of Politics
There’s a really simple way of ensuring that politics belongs to the people, not to the ultra-rich.
Trapped inside the Blair Rich Project
The media coverage of Tony Blair's essay on what the UK government should do treats him as a statesman rather than the salesman he really is...
Epstein Family Values • EQUATOR
The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants
How Elon Musk and the Tech Billionaires Hijacked the State and Our Minds
Historian Quinn Slobodian tells Byline Times that Elon Musk's rise tells a deeper story—of fortunes built on state power, and a new politics where humans are treated less as citizens than as systems to be optimised
It’s Not Just Elon Musk — These Billionaires Are Also Neurodivergent
Some billionaires say their conditions helped them succeed in business.
Billionaire wealth jumps three times faster in 2025 to highest peak ever, sparking dangerous political inequality | Oxfam International
Billionaires 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people
Billionaires, Corporate Landlords, and AI Companies Are Seen As Among the Worst Actors in U.S. Society
Voters view billionaires, corporate landlords, payday loans, sports gambling, cryptocurrency, and AI companies as negatively impacting the U.S. economy and society.
The scent of Musk: Power, charisma and paranoia in Silicon Valley
Donald Trump: A Critical Theory-Perspective on Authoritarian Capitalism
This paper analyses economic power, state power and ideological power in the age of Donald Trump with the help of critical theory. It applies the critical theory approaches of thinkers such as Franz Neumann, Theodor W. Adorno and Erich Fromm. It analyses changes of US capitalism that have together with political anxiety and demagoguery brought about the rise of Donald Trump. This article draws attention to the importance of state theory for understanding Trump and the changes of politics that his rule may bring about. It is in this context important to see the complexity of the state, including the dynamic relationship between the state and the economy, the state and citizens, intra-state relations, inter-state relations, semiotic representations of and by the state, and ideology. Trumpism and its potential impacts are theorised along these dimensions. The ideology of Trump (Trumpology) has played an important role not just in his business and brand strategies, but also in his political rise. The (pseudo-)critical mainstream media have helped making Trump and Trumpology by providing platforms for populist spectacles that sell as news and attract audiences. By Trump making news in the media, the media make Trump. An empirical analysis of Trump’s rhetoric and the elimination discourses in his NBC show The Apprentice underpins the analysis of Trumpology. The combination of Trump’s actual power and Trump as spectacle, showman and brand makes his government’s concrete policies fairly unpredictable. An important question that arises is what social scientists’ role should be in the conjuncture that the world is experiencing.See also the related blog post "How The Frankfurt School Helps Us To Understand Donald Trump’s Twitter Populism"http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/christian-fuchs1/how-the-frankfurt-school-_b_14156190.html?utm_hp_ref=uk-donald-trumpThe German translation of this shorter piece was published in Der Falter 5/2017: 21-23.
Rutger Bregman - “Moral Ambition” | The Daily Show
The Politics of Humiliation
The politics of humiliation has moved to the center of the reactionary project under Trump II.
Could this be the beginning of the end for the billionaire-owned media propaganda blitz?
A campaign to free our national press from foreign billionaires like Rupert Murdoch is gaining momentum and attracting big-name support
Radical markets: uprooting capitalism and democracy for a just society
Many blame today's economic inequality, stagnation, and political instability on the free market. The solution is to rein in the market, right? Radical Markets turns this thinking on its head. With a new foreword by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier as well as a new afterword by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl, this provocative book reveals bold new ways to organize markets for the good of everyone. It shows how the emancipatory force of genuinely open, free, and competitive markets can reawaken the dormant nineteenth-century spirit of liberal reform and lead to greater equality, prosperity, and cooperation. Only by radically expanding the scope of markets can we reduce inequality, restore robust economic growth, and resolve political conflicts. But to do that, we must replace our most sacred institutions with truly free and open competition Radical Markets shows how
Erik Brynjolfsson on Twitter / X
The @nytimes piece today by @ByrneEdsal13590 highlights a concern I share: “If we stay on the current path, the risk of extreme concentration — both economic and political — is very real.”In work with @zhitzig, we ask why AI may shift the balance between dispersed knowledge… pic.twitter.com/10vOTRj4Dq— Erik Brynjolfsson (@erikbryn) March 17, 2026
the viability of many right-wing intellectuals and intellectual spaces is enormously dependent on the largesse of reactionary billionaires and foreign governments, who help them circumvent a marketplace of ideas where they would otherwise post extraordinarily poor sales
Don Moynihan
Its fair to ask if Orban's successful cultivation of the Western right wing intellectuals reflected that their networks were already dependent on patronage. Rod Dreher was funded by a weird billionaire, and when he stopped paying his salary, Orban did. Dreher already looking for a new gig.
