“. . . when the wealthy start to look like Russian oligarchs . . .”
California Assemblyman Mike Gatto, jousting with Ben Shapiro, states this more than once. Large concentrations of wealth are a problem for a democracy, or a republic, when some have so much. When they start to look like Russian oligarchs, things go awry.
But the point isn’t whether the rich look like oligarchs. Do they behave like oligarchs?
For those of us who concentrate on actions and results, rather than symbols and semblances, Gatto’s worry is irrelevant. Except insofar as similarity signals identity, or something else dastardly.
We must fight oligarchy. Sure. And the crooked politics of cronyism.
But concentrating on “concentrated wealth” as if it were ipso facto criminal elides the distinction between actions, consequences and semblances.
And the results of such elisions are not exactly the stuff of the Elysian Fields. They are the stuff of nightmares.
twv
Wirkman Comment 