Oligarchy in America

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There is little chance that the Biden-Harris administration will launch a second Sherman Antitrust Act at the tech companies. There is a good chance that the administration will collude with Big Tech to censor and demonize the opposition. There is an even greater chance that the Biden/Harris administration will use the crisis of the Covid recovery as an opportunity to hasten the advent of green corporatism. The outcome would be what Tocqueville called a ‘static state’, slowly growing and slowly declining.

Under the static state, the winners will get richer and the middle class will shrink faster. The losers will be more numerous and estranged, and their backlash against diversity policies will intensify. The oligarchy will harden its defenses and increase its demonetization of dissent. The Democrats already have a domestic terrorism law on their to-do list, and it looks like we’ll need it. Political instability and mob violence will lead to further trades of liberty for security.

A republic, Plato noted, decays from within, not from invasion. Build the American Athens and, sooner or later, you will find yourself living in the American Rome. That was the consummation that the Founders wished devoutly to defer. They succeeded, until they didn’t. The Roman republic stood for about three centuries too, but the last of them was no picnic. America’s decline and fall could be considerably shorter — and sharper.