{"id":2646,"date":"2026-06-20T21:40:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T21:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2646"},"modified":"2026-06-20T21:40:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T21:40:37","slug":"mukunda-trillionaires-and-republics-will-be-a-toxic-mix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2646","title":{"rendered":"Mukunda: Trillionaires and republics will be a toxic mix"},"content":{"rendered":"
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SpaceX\u2019s initial public offering made\u00a0Elon Musk\u00a0the world\u2019s first trillionaire. You might think there\u2019s not much you can buy with a hundred (or a thousand) billion dollars that you can\u2019t buy with one billion dollars. But there is: Absolute power.<\/p>\n

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The world\u2019s top 10 wealthiest individuals all have fortunes of around $150 billion or more, led by Musk at $1.11 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It takes at least $80 billion to get into the top 25.<\/p>\n

A mega-billionaire, and certainly a trillionaire, has resources that approach or exceed those of many nation-states. To be sure, gigantic fortunes aren\u2019t new. At his peak in 1913, John D. Rockefeller\u2019s wealth commanded a share of the American economy similar to Musk\u2019s today. What is new is the sheer number of people with effectively limitless resources and how easily they can convert their wealth into power.<\/p>\n

Mega-billionaires typically employ many people. Those people often reach out to me for advice. The conversation almost always goes like this: They\u2019ve thrived in the private sector or the military and now they\u2019re struggling, because nothing in their new job goes the way they expected and they don\u2019t understand what\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

I almost always say the same thing. You used to be a businessperson or a soldier but now you\u2019re a courtier. You work for a king. You used to be judged by your ability to make a profit or win a war. Now your real job is gaining the king\u2019s favor. It\u2019s often tough for them to hear but they usually say something along the lines of \u201cit all makes sense now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modern kings<\/h4>\n

And like the kings of old, our modern-day kings don\u2019t just have a court. Increasingly, they have a sword too. The political scientist\u00a0Jeffrey Winters\u00a0calls America a \u201ccivil oligarchy\u201d: Its rich disarmed long ago, hiring lawyers instead of soldiers, because the state defends their fortunes for them. That bargain is cracking.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the breach is direct. Via\u00a0SpaceX, Musk controls one of America\u2019s most important defense contractors. The Space Force keeps assigning launches to\u00a0SpaceX\u00a0that its only competitor cannot do. Musk even conducts his own foreign policy. In 2022, he personally declined to extend Starlink coverage over\u00a0Crimea, stalling a planned Ukrainian strike on the Russian fleet.<\/p>\n

In Political Science 101, a government is defined as the entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. That monopoly hasn\u2019t broken, but it\u2019s under more pressure than any time since\u00a0Henry Clay Frick\u00a0sent the Pinkertons against striking workers at Homestead in 1892.<\/p>\n

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Sometimes the breach is indirect. In 2024, six Americans each spent more than $100 million on the presidential election. Musk gave about $291 million, the most of anyone, to help boost\u00a0Republicans.\u00a0Timothy Mellon, heir to the Gilded\u00a0Age Mellon\u00a0fortune, gave more than $190 million. Casino magnate\u00a0Miriam Adelson, the hedge-fund billionaire\u00a0Ken Griffin, the options trader\u00a0Jeff Yass, and the shipping-supplies billionaires Richard and\u00a0Elizabeth Uihlein\u00a0each gave more than $100 million. Both sides play the game. In 2022 the largest donor in the country was\u00a0George Soros, who gave about $128 million to\u00a0Democrats.<\/p>\n

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These sums dwarf what candidates can raise themselves. In\u00a0Ohio, 2024\u2019s most expensive\u00a0Senate\u00a0race, the campaigns raised about $113 million. Musk alone spent more than the entire field, about as casually as you\u2019d buy a soda. His spending came to about 1% of the daily swings in his fortune. The exchange rate between wealth and power has never been so favorable. And the purchases are no longer defensive.<\/p>\n

This is an eternal problem for republics. Marcus Crassus was the richest man in ancient\u00a0Rome. So rich that, by Plutarch\u2019s account, he thought no man truly wealthy unless he could pay an army from his own purse. He spent that fortune bankrolling Julius Caesar and building the triumvirate that sidelined the\u00a0Senate\u00a0and, in fact if not in name, overthrew the republic.<\/p>\n

But one republic did win this fight. In\u00a0February 1902, after President Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s\u00a0Justice Department\u00a0moved to break up his railroad trust,\u00a0J.P. Morgan, the most powerful financier of the age, came to the\u00a0White House\u00a0with an offer. \u201cIf we have done anything wrong,\u201d he told the president, \u201csend your man to my man and they can fix it up.\u201d \u201cThat can\u2019t be done,\u201d Roosevelt replied. His attorney general, Philander Knox, finished the thought: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to fix it up, we want to stop it.\u201d Morgan, Roosevelt later said, \u201ccould not help regarding me as a big rival operator.\u201d Roosevelt showed that the president was not first among equals. He is simply first, because he is the only person the whole country elects to represent it.<\/p>\n

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Even that victory was a close call. Roosevelt won his legal case against Morgan by a single Supreme Court vote, and he later needed Morgan\u2019s help to end a coal strike that threatened to freeze the country through winter. Morgan remained powerful, but the government of\u00a0the United States\u00a0was supreme.<\/p>\n

State capture<\/h4>\n

Crassus would fit right into America today. Musk funded the campaign that got\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0elected as president a second time. He then worked inside the new administration, slashing agencies regulating his own companies. Economists studying the former Soviet bloc saw oligarchs graduate from bending the rules to buying them outright. They called it state capture. The American version is (mostly) legal.<\/p>\n

Last year, the kings collided. Trump threatened to cancel Musk\u2019s federal contracts. Musk threatened to ground the capsule NASA relies on to reach the space station. Within hours both stepped back. That\u2019s not the rule of law; it\u2019s two rival courts negotiating a cease-fire. No democratic government should fear the power of one of its own citizens.<\/p>\n

Roosevelt\u2019s refusal settled, for a century, that in America only the people are sovereign. But not forever. Musk\u2019s trillion is a landmark of wealth. It\u2019s also a sign that the old question has returned. In a republic, there is supposed to be exactly one thing money can\u2019t buy. We are about to find out whether that is still true.<\/p>\n

Gautam Mukunda writes about corporate management and innovation. He teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management and is the author of \u201cIndispensable: When Leaders Really Matter.\u201d \u00a92026 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.<\/em><\/p>\n

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When mega-billionaires convert limitless resources into political dominance, the rule of law faces a historic crisis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nMukunda: Trillionaires and republics will be a toxic mix - Next City Digest<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2646\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mukunda: Trillionaires and republics will be a toxic mix - Next City Digest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When mega-billionaires convert limitless resources into political dominance, the rule of law faces a historic crisis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=2646\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Next City Digest\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-20T21:40:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=2646#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=2646\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/13065d40d633843429ac57d4e5c06f9b\"},\"headline\":\"Mukunda: Trillionaires and republics will be a toxic mix\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-20T21:40:37+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=2646\"},\"wordCount\":1112,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=2646#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/c824af39cd2b3d80e3f0f49e3f004244.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Opinion\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=2646#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=2646\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextcitydigest.com\\\/?p=2646\",\"name\":\"Mukunda: Trillionaires and republics will be a toxic mix - 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