Before I started writing this post I saw this article from The Washington Post on the rise of billionaires in American politics. Given Bezos's affiliation and recent changes to his editorial policy, I'm a little surprised they published this. The key points are not particularly surprising. But what brings them together is the enormous rise in billionaire giving in the first quarter of this century, a rapid trend away from a relatively even partisan split toward overwhelming giving to Republicans. This is among other things the story of how billionaires became increasingly class consciousness. It has always been true that money buys influence in American politics. In some ways, in the past it was even more extensive and brazen, since there was not even a hint of restrictions on the provision or disclosure of information.
But the role of billionaires owning the political process has not only grown rapidly in recent years. Public recognition of this fact also served, perhaps paradoxically, or perhaps not, to stimulate the desire for even tighter ownership. It is no exaggeration to say that the class of decamillionaires or even centi-billionaires – not counting those who might own just a few billion dollars – now operates as a kind of postmodern nobility, a class that does not rule exclusively but interacts with politics in a fundamentally different way than the rest of society.
