Our American oligarchs are incompatible with democracy, just ask them.

The American oligarchs have lost faith in American democracy. When it worked in their favor they dug it, but now it’s just in their way so it’s got to go. Maybe saying lost faith is the wrong way to look at it, they probably never cared in the first place.

Marc Andreessen, the founder of Netscape, benefited greatly from the U.S. government opening up internet infrastructure financed by the American taxpayer. But today he’s angry because America broke its ‘deal’ with guys like him. As he has said in multiple interviews, this version from the podcast Uncommon Knowledge:

“The Deal was, you could be a high-tech entrepreneur, you can build all this amazing technology, you can build a successful company, you can create lots of jobs, the technology makes the world a better place, it’s great, you take the company public, you make a lot of money, at some point you take the money and you donate it to philanthropy. And that’s the full arc.”

But then, the government, especially Democrats wanted to regulate the tech industry so he and a bunch of his buddies decided it was time to vote for Trump. Because as Andreessen also said when asked on the podcast The Free Press whether we live in an oligarchy or a democracy, he quickly answered, ”An oligarchy. Every society in history has been an oligarchy.”

Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, who also greatly benefitted from taxpayer-funded internet infrastructure questions whether we need governments at all. And if we do have them we should at least make sure that they are run by men who are properly educated. As he said way back in 2009, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Of course, he’s a huge Libertarian which given his interpretation is just a fancy word for asshole.

Elon Musk, who also benefited from access to taxpayer-funded internet infrastructure just spent $250 million to elect Donald Trump, because as he said in a stunningly brilliant bit of irony, “we must elect Donald Trump to preserve American Democracy.” He’s also trained his disinformation tool, X, on upending democratic principles and is interfering in democracies in Europe.

Mark Zuckerberg has not only gotten rid of fact-checkers but people on Meta platforms are noting that that right-wing illiberal idealogy is much more prevalent in their feeds.

Sam Altman, I like his name because it’s like Alt Man, you know because he’s into AI replacing human consciousness. Anyway, Sam AltMan is saying that the U.S. government can’t be trusted to develop AI technology because it’s too slow and too stupid. The U.S. government of the past that developed nuclear weapons and went to the moon is now too inept to do the same with AI. So what’s best is that the U.S. government get out of the way and let them do what’s best for the world. Which is pretty much the opposite of what he said to Congress just two years ago.

And that’s full circle, we’re back to the deal, Democrats wanted to regulate AI, and guys like Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, et al., have decided that’s not what they want because that’s a dealbreaker. And so they found a guy, and that guy is Donald Trump, because with Donald Trump you can always make a deal, as long as he thinks he’s getting the upper hand and making a buck that is. But that’s pretty easy to do, just let him take credit and praise him in press conferences. Which is what they have all been doing.

So ten thousand years ago, oh wait, that was 3 days ago, it just felt like ten thousand years ago. Trump announced Project Stargate at a press conference where Sam AltMan and some other dolts praised Trump for being the person who would usher in a new era of innovation in America by fast-tracking data center construction for AI development. A little later, at Davos via video, Trump announced that he would be declaring an emergency declaration to bypass regulations and kickstart data center construction. He also said that it was his idea to let companies build power plants on-site at data centers so that they would be free from the volatility of the grid. He added that everyone thought he was a genius for coming up with the idea. See how easy that is? He then said that they could build any type of power plant that they needed, even coal, clean coal he called it. Texas Tea, lol, I don’t think he said Texas Tea, but he did say we have more coal than anyone and we can let tech companies build coal power plants all over the country to provide electricity to their data centers. Or we also have more oil and gas than anyone else, he went on to add.

Uhm, I don’t have to explain why we’ve been phasing out the use of coal, do I? How it causes childhood diseases, asthma, pollutes the bejeezus out of everything, and uhm what’s that other one? Oh, yeah, climate change, it’s the single largest contributor to climate change. Well, who cares, Trump likes coal, and the American oligarchs need to drastically increase their access to cheap electricity.

So, there we have it. Our tech oligarchs felt stifled by democracy, you know, with its rules about the environment, or labor protections, or consumer protections, or any protections apparently. So they went out and invested in a president and a party that they thought would get American democracy out of its way. Don’t get distracted by the infighting of the oligarchs, they’re all united on this front. Democracy was a hassle, it was getting in the way of innovation, especially with their latest siren, AI. Because to them AI will solve all of our problems, which of course is just code for, AI will make them a ton of money.

But in reality world, AI will not solve our biggest problem, and that’s greed.