It's becoming clear to me that the American slip into authoritarianism is following the modern Russian/Chinese models fairly well:
The Russians and Chinese figured out that rather than having the government control the means of production (energy production aside), it's better to have an oligarchy control the means of production and then …
It's becoming clear to me that the American slip into authoritarianism is following the modern Russian/Chinese models fairly well:
The Russians and Chinese figured out that rather than having the government control the means of production (energy production aside), it's better to have an oligarchy control the means of production and then the central party need only focus on the workings of government while the oligarchs do the work of the party for them in the economy. If any oligarch gets out of line with the central party they either fall out of a window in Russia or get disappeared for awhile in China.
Trump uses the raw power of the state sure, but he's also coopted the oligarchy and keeps them in line with implied threats to their companies via punitive regulatory measures or tariffs. For the oligarchs who do his bidding, they get selective deregulation and tariff exemptions. Very similar to how Russia and China do their government-planned-economies, but the threats don't need to go as far as disappearances or deniable murders with American oligarchs. For American oligarchs, the mere thought of losing a fraction of their profits is enough to keep them licking authoritarian boots. American oligarchs have a fiduciary responsibility to keep the authoritarian happy with their company, and that's what drives their buy-in to American authoritarianism. It's capitalism supporting authoritarianism via fiduciary duties to shareholders.
Capitalistic greed and authoritarianism make a great pairing in that both seek monopoly and unchecked power. Authoritarianism is merely the monopolization of politics isn't it?
Who has coopted who? I think it's the oligarchs who have found their guy. The tech bros do not want to be regulated and they do not like competition. The president, a real estate developer for a short time and general business owner already has negative feelings about regulation, so he's happy to acquiesce in letting the world's richest man run things for him. And he gets his revenge on Facebook by having the head of Meta cozy up to him in search of manly energy or whatever.
Who has the leverage? Trump or the oligarchs? From where I sit, Trump has much more leverage over the oligarchs than the oligarchs have over him. Trump can fuck with their companies in a whole slew of forms, commands a death cult who will conduct political violence on his behalf and have been pardoned for said political violence in the past, and just now CEOs are being killed by angry citizens on the streets of American cities. I'd say the oligarchs have a lot more to fear from Trump than Trump has to fear of them. Fear controls the arrangement, not profits. If you act the way Trump wants you to act you get the gift of profits, deregulation, and tariff exemptions, but more importantly you don't have to worry about the fears of political violence or policy vengeance from the WH.
His targets are the government that persecuted him. He will always sympathize with the folks with money because he's one of them or at least he badly wants to be. It's all about him and his interests and whims.
I've seen Trump apologists defend the Russian and Chinese models on cultural grounds, claiming that they bring "stability" and "unity," and provide everyone with a worldview so that individuals aren't left adrift to invent one for themselves.
This thinking comes from people who have also decried "censorship" and "stifling conformism," and have alleged that "liberalism has become despotic," and have insisted that the state should not be usurping the role of parents in the moral formation of their children. Turns out that some of them actually wanted a state controlled by their ideological allies to be enforcing the correct groupthink and not allow parents who disagree with them to corrupt their own children with wrongthink.
It's not that MAGA hates authoritarianism. It's just that it hates *leftist* cultural dominance and policy control. MAGA likes rightwing authoritarianism just fine.
Trumpy thought-leaders are all for cultural authoritarianism, combined with laissez-faire economics. Average MAGAs probably think they're all for "freedom" and just don't want "communists" to be bossing them around.
Tariffs are *not* laissez-faire economics. Tariffs are government-planned-economy tools. It turns out that the GOP is just as flexible/selective on free market economics as they are on opposing authoritarianism. They want *their* government-planned-economy and authoritarianism, but not the left's. It always comes back to that quote about "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect," just apply that concept to political theory in addition rule of law.
Travis, do you really think that the prototypical MAGA voter in this country actually thinks for themselves about these things rather than just regurgitating the groupthink they absorb from their acquaintances and their favorite political entertainment sources?
The prototypical MAGA voter doesn't think for themselves. It's group think dialed to the "cult" setting. That said, that's the *prototypical* MAGA voter--the dedicated convert. MAGA has a coalition just like the anti-Trumpers do. Not everyone who votes for Trump is a "prototypical MAGA voter," many are just politically-disengaged voters with low information literacy who just vote on vibes and the vibes swung for Trump in '24. Those people are the movables, not the cult dedicated members.
Don't make the mistake of looking at the MAGA coalition as a uniform monolith. Trump's campaign understood that the anti-Trump coalition wasn't a uniform monolith and that's why they were able to move small shares of traditionally-dem votes into their column (black men, young white men, latino men, and white women). Gen Z men voted for Trump in higher numbers than Boomer men did. Gen Z is now the Boomerest generation since Boomers.
In the US today money is the goal. So many people who aren't wealthy seem to revere those who are as being the smartest, wealthiest people and cede power to them.
That depends on what you mean by “smart” . A person can be “smart” at making money but be emotionally utterly clueless. The Zuck comes to mind. And the fElon. And tRump. Ok - there are a lot of them that are emotionally clueless.
I blame reality TV yet again. You’re probably familiar with studies that reveal an income level cutoff for correlation between income and life satisfaction. When I first heard about it, the figure was $75,000. I bet it’s twice that now, but the point was, beyond that amount there’s no discernible increase in life happiness. I wonder if there’s a tipping point where life becomes more stressful again as money accrues. There is no shortage of dramatic stories when lottery winners’ lives unwind in spectacular fashion.
Hmm the dollar amount is interesting. These days the middle class and the lower income class needs to have two working adults to reach the life satisfaction level. But having to maintain two jobs reduces the life satisfaction for a lot of people and stresses the family that is just on the edge of that figure. so I think the life satisfaction level requires a higher income than it used to and will continue to demand a higher income.
And this is my #1 reason for wanting to cap personal wealth at $100M. You don't need more than $100M to live ridiculously rich, but you need more than $100M if you seek to leverage wealth as a launchpad to power and control via corruption. Extreme privately-held wealth is a necessary precursor to public corruption.
The Eisenhower era, as far as taxation rates, pretty much endorsed that idea. Coming out of WW2, the country seemed to have a much longer vision than we are capable of now. The interstate highway system, the GI Bill; all had longer range benefits. Now it’s 2 year campaign cycles.
I can't really speak to Russia, but the idea that the central government of China doesn't exercise day-to-day control of the Chinese economy is a pretty big misunderstanding. China did pretty much exactly the opposite of what you're describing; they started with totalitarian control and a command economy, and ratcheted their way back. The government stopped telling people what to make, and got rid of a bunch of safety nets, but they always controlled how, when, and why it could be done. They maintain that control via a massive bureaucracy, which is pretty much a necessity if you want to run an economy more advanced than a petrostate. Meanwhile, Trump is gutting the bureaucracy he'd need to exercise that level of control, with seemingly no plans to replace it. There are analogues for what Trump is doing, but China isn't one of them.
"....but the idea that the central government of China doesn't exercise day-to-day control of the Chinese economy is a pretty big misunderstanding."
This is not what I said at all. The CCCP absolutely controls the economy, but it controls it through an intermediary rather than directly now. That's the difference between Mao's Great Leap Forward and Jinping's disappearing of Jack Ma. Make no mistake, if you do business with Chinese companies you are doing business with the CCCP, but it's a Chinese oligarch you're negotiating with if you're an American businessman over there, not a CCCP committee member.
For the Chinese and Russians, the move from direct government control over the economy to proxy control through an oligarchy was a step back, but in our case it's our first step forward toward authoritarianism. In the same way that the Chinese have stolen American tech IP and copied the wheel rather than reinvent it, MAGA is copying their *current* (emphasis on current) model of authoritarianism rather than reinventing our own.
"Make no mistake, if you do business with Chinese companies you are doing business with the CCCP, but it's a Chinese oligarch you're negotiating with if you're an American businessman over there, not a CCCP committee member."
Who is immediately and consistently answerable to the Party, as are the people below him. Every company of sufficient size has a committee of Party members who function as a direct link to the government, whose local government are constantly watching and influencing the business of the company. At that point, you can't reasonably call it proxy control.
“American oligarchs have a fiduciary responsibility to keep the authoritarian happy”
Perfect inversion of a concept.
I read a columnist recently who promoted the word “patrimony” as being closer to where we are. And I keep thinking it’s a plutocracy. We should have a jousting contest over which word to use to describe our decay. Right now oligarchy seems to be winning.
It's becoming clear to me that the American slip into authoritarianism is following the modern Russian/Chinese models fairly well:
The Russians and Chinese figured out that rather than having the government control the means of production (energy production aside), it's better to have an oligarchy control the means of production and then the central party need only focus on the workings of government while the oligarchs do the work of the party for them in the economy. If any oligarch gets out of line with the central party they either fall out of a window in Russia or get disappeared for awhile in China.
Trump uses the raw power of the state sure, but he's also coopted the oligarchy and keeps them in line with implied threats to their companies via punitive regulatory measures or tariffs. For the oligarchs who do his bidding, they get selective deregulation and tariff exemptions. Very similar to how Russia and China do their government-planned-economies, but the threats don't need to go as far as disappearances or deniable murders with American oligarchs. For American oligarchs, the mere thought of losing a fraction of their profits is enough to keep them licking authoritarian boots. American oligarchs have a fiduciary responsibility to keep the authoritarian happy with their company, and that's what drives their buy-in to American authoritarianism. It's capitalism supporting authoritarianism via fiduciary duties to shareholders.
Capitalistic greed and authoritarianism make a great pairing in that both seek monopoly and unchecked power. Authoritarianism is merely the monopolization of politics isn't it?
Who has coopted who? I think it's the oligarchs who have found their guy. The tech bros do not want to be regulated and they do not like competition. The president, a real estate developer for a short time and general business owner already has negative feelings about regulation, so he's happy to acquiesce in letting the world's richest man run things for him. And he gets his revenge on Facebook by having the head of Meta cozy up to him in search of manly energy or whatever.
Who has the leverage? Trump or the oligarchs? From where I sit, Trump has much more leverage over the oligarchs than the oligarchs have over him. Trump can fuck with their companies in a whole slew of forms, commands a death cult who will conduct political violence on his behalf and have been pardoned for said political violence in the past, and just now CEOs are being killed by angry citizens on the streets of American cities. I'd say the oligarchs have a lot more to fear from Trump than Trump has to fear of them. Fear controls the arrangement, not profits. If you act the way Trump wants you to act you get the gift of profits, deregulation, and tariff exemptions, but more importantly you don't have to worry about the fears of political violence or policy vengeance from the WH.
His targets are the government that persecuted him. He will always sympathize with the folks with money because he's one of them or at least he badly wants to be. It's all about him and his interests and whims.
I've seen Trump apologists defend the Russian and Chinese models on cultural grounds, claiming that they bring "stability" and "unity," and provide everyone with a worldview so that individuals aren't left adrift to invent one for themselves.
This thinking comes from people who have also decried "censorship" and "stifling conformism," and have alleged that "liberalism has become despotic," and have insisted that the state should not be usurping the role of parents in the moral formation of their children. Turns out that some of them actually wanted a state controlled by their ideological allies to be enforcing the correct groupthink and not allow parents who disagree with them to corrupt their own children with wrongthink.
It's not that MAGA hates authoritarianism. It's just that it hates *leftist* cultural dominance and policy control. MAGA likes rightwing authoritarianism just fine.
Trumpy thought-leaders are all for cultural authoritarianism, combined with laissez-faire economics. Average MAGAs probably think they're all for "freedom" and just don't want "communists" to be bossing them around.
Tariffs are *not* laissez-faire economics. Tariffs are government-planned-economy tools. It turns out that the GOP is just as flexible/selective on free market economics as they are on opposing authoritarianism. They want *their* government-planned-economy and authoritarianism, but not the left's. It always comes back to that quote about "in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect," just apply that concept to political theory in addition rule of law.
Tariffs might hurt disfavored businesses, while those that get on board with the Trump agenda can operate with minimal regulation.
Travis, do you really think that the prototypical MAGA voter in this country actually thinks for themselves about these things rather than just regurgitating the groupthink they absorb from their acquaintances and their favorite political entertainment sources?
The prototypical MAGA voter doesn't think for themselves. It's group think dialed to the "cult" setting. That said, that's the *prototypical* MAGA voter--the dedicated convert. MAGA has a coalition just like the anti-Trumpers do. Not everyone who votes for Trump is a "prototypical MAGA voter," many are just politically-disengaged voters with low information literacy who just vote on vibes and the vibes swung for Trump in '24. Those people are the movables, not the cult dedicated members.
Don't make the mistake of looking at the MAGA coalition as a uniform monolith. Trump's campaign understood that the anti-Trump coalition wasn't a uniform monolith and that's why they were able to move small shares of traditionally-dem votes into their column (black men, young white men, latino men, and white women). Gen Z men voted for Trump in higher numbers than Boomer men did. Gen Z is now the Boomerest generation since Boomers.
“For American oligarchs, the mere thought of losing a fraction of their profits is enough to keep them licking authoritarian boots.”
It doesn’t say much for American oligarchs, does it?
Profit has to be a place holder for power. Nobody needs that much money except for buying power.
In the US today money is the goal. So many people who aren't wealthy seem to revere those who are as being the smartest, wealthiest people and cede power to them.
That depends on what you mean by “smart” . A person can be “smart” at making money but be emotionally utterly clueless. The Zuck comes to mind. And the fElon. And tRump. Ok - there are a lot of them that are emotionally clueless.
Most people don't make that distinction because they are focused on the money.
I blame reality TV yet again. You’re probably familiar with studies that reveal an income level cutoff for correlation between income and life satisfaction. When I first heard about it, the figure was $75,000. I bet it’s twice that now, but the point was, beyond that amount there’s no discernible increase in life happiness. I wonder if there’s a tipping point where life becomes more stressful again as money accrues. There is no shortage of dramatic stories when lottery winners’ lives unwind in spectacular fashion.
Hmm the dollar amount is interesting. These days the middle class and the lower income class needs to have two working adults to reach the life satisfaction level. But having to maintain two jobs reduces the life satisfaction for a lot of people and stresses the family that is just on the edge of that figure. so I think the life satisfaction level requires a higher income than it used to and will continue to demand a higher income.
And this is my #1 reason for wanting to cap personal wealth at $100M. You don't need more than $100M to live ridiculously rich, but you need more than $100M if you seek to leverage wealth as a launchpad to power and control via corruption. Extreme privately-held wealth is a necessary precursor to public corruption.
The Eisenhower era, as far as taxation rates, pretty much endorsed that idea. Coming out of WW2, the country seemed to have a much longer vision than we are capable of now. The interstate highway system, the GI Bill; all had longer range benefits. Now it’s 2 year campaign cycles.
It says we're cheap whores. At least you have to kidnap or kill the Chinese/Russian oligarchs to get the message across.
I can't really speak to Russia, but the idea that the central government of China doesn't exercise day-to-day control of the Chinese economy is a pretty big misunderstanding. China did pretty much exactly the opposite of what you're describing; they started with totalitarian control and a command economy, and ratcheted their way back. The government stopped telling people what to make, and got rid of a bunch of safety nets, but they always controlled how, when, and why it could be done. They maintain that control via a massive bureaucracy, which is pretty much a necessity if you want to run an economy more advanced than a petrostate. Meanwhile, Trump is gutting the bureaucracy he'd need to exercise that level of control, with seemingly no plans to replace it. There are analogues for what Trump is doing, but China isn't one of them.
"....but the idea that the central government of China doesn't exercise day-to-day control of the Chinese economy is a pretty big misunderstanding."
This is not what I said at all. The CCCP absolutely controls the economy, but it controls it through an intermediary rather than directly now. That's the difference between Mao's Great Leap Forward and Jinping's disappearing of Jack Ma. Make no mistake, if you do business with Chinese companies you are doing business with the CCCP, but it's a Chinese oligarch you're negotiating with if you're an American businessman over there, not a CCCP committee member.
For the Chinese and Russians, the move from direct government control over the economy to proxy control through an oligarchy was a step back, but in our case it's our first step forward toward authoritarianism. In the same way that the Chinese have stolen American tech IP and copied the wheel rather than reinvent it, MAGA is copying their *current* (emphasis on current) model of authoritarianism rather than reinventing our own.
"Make no mistake, if you do business with Chinese companies you are doing business with the CCCP, but it's a Chinese oligarch you're negotiating with if you're an American businessman over there, not a CCCP committee member."
Who is immediately and consistently answerable to the Party, as are the people below him. Every company of sufficient size has a committee of Party members who function as a direct link to the government, whose local government are constantly watching and influencing the business of the company. At that point, you can't reasonably call it proxy control.
Ding-ding-ding-ding!!!! “We have a Winnaaah!” You nailed it, Travis.
“American oligarchs have a fiduciary responsibility to keep the authoritarian happy”
Perfect inversion of a concept.
I read a columnist recently who promoted the word “patrimony” as being closer to where we are. And I keep thinking it’s a plutocracy. We should have a jousting contest over which word to use to describe our decay. Right now oligarchy seems to be winning.
How about "patrigarchy?" Redundant but in Trump's case, appropriate.
It has a nice, guttural sound to it. I don’t know the German language, but apparently they have some very long words to combine concepts.