Episode Details

“A government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, for the billionaire class.”

— Bernie Sanders

What does it mean when Apple CEO Tim Cook makes a personal donation of $1 million dollars to Donald Trump’s inauguration?

Or when Disney CEO Bob Iger comes out to virtue signal that the hypercapitalist entertainment corporation really isn’t “woke”?

What does it mean when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—still dressed like a section leader of the Branch Davidians—announces a humiliating reversal of Facebook’s moderation policies? Anti-vaxxers are back in; protections for trans people are out. (I’m guessing that billionaire MMA bout actually happened and Elon choked the little twerp out until he capitulated.)

What does it mean when a cartoon of Jeff Bezos “bending the knee” to a giant Trump is killed at the Washington Post? I think it means the Washington Post is wholly owned and controlled by Jeff Bezos.

And what does it mean when Elon Musk, having spent a measly $280 million dollars to buy an election, throws a fascist salute at his own inauguration while the tired old reality TV star currently employed as Elon’s sock puppet watches on from the sidelines?

Defenders claimed it was a Roman, not a fascist salute—seemingly unaware that Italian fascists adopted that exact salute from the brutal, slave-owning empire they (and Elon) apparently want to replace democracy with.

When the elderly caretaker of a crumbling democracy issues a grave warning on his last day as top broom, what does it mean? Does it mean, as those who know their history are wondering, that we’re now a Roman-style oligarchy?

Or something even worse?

The OG Oligarchs: Plato, Aristotle, and the Delusion of the “Wise”

Many of the more conspiratorial out there will be shouting: “What the hell… America has always been an oligarchy!”

To test that assertion, let’s check with the OG (Original Greek) of political philosophy—the first to give a systematic description of oligarchy.

In his Republic, Plato examined the histories of Athens, Sparta, and other Greek city-states, uncovering a repeating cycle of political history:

$$\text{Democracy} \longrightarrow \text{Tyranny} \longrightarrow \text{Aristocracy} \longrightarrow \text{Oligarchy}$$

(Stopping along the way at Timocracy… which I guess explains why Tim gave Donald that money?)

Plato’s cycle was later expanded by Polybius into an anacyclosis—a historical cycle that influenced political philosophers for millennia. Each part of society—the aristocracy, the demos, or the oligarchs—is always present, but takes power at different stages.

We always have oligarchs, but we aren’t alwa