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The Tech Bros are Not Just Billionaires
If you check the X feed of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) it seems that every other post is complaining about billionaires. Then she complains about Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire:
Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire.
The typical American household would have to work more than 11 MILLION years to make Elon Musk’s level of wealth.
We need a wealth tax.
You can see the game she is playing. She is creating the notion that Elon’s fortune is similar to a Dickens villain, counting gold bars in his counting house.
Probably Sen. Warren wouldn’t have said that back in the day when Route 128 was Boston’s Tech Corridor, featuring hardware and minicomputer companies like Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Wang Laboratories, and Data General. That was then; this is now. You think any of the woke kids supporting Warren have even heard of DEC and Wang?
I’ve been pondering the tech bros in recent years, because more and more I think of the tech entrepreneurs as the decisive cultural and intellectual force in our era.
But first, Sen. Warren, please stop demonstrating how ignorant you are. Elon Musk’s wealth is not in gold bars or NGO contracts, but simply the present value of his remarkable business success. Elon Musk made the electric car into a consumer thing working night and day to get the manufacturing cost down. He made reusable rockets into a routine thing. Can you even begin to imagine the value of the business that made reusable rockets into a routine thing, Senator?
If Elon Musk weren’t a trillionaire, the typical American household would be paying a lot more for internet service and typical liberal households wouldn’t be able to virtue signal with their Save-the-Planet EVs.
And then Sen. Warren, if the US had a wealth tax we would be taking start-up capital away from entrepreneurs trying to deliver the Next Big Thing and giving it to corrupt NGOs. I realize that you really don’t have a clue about stuff like that. All you care about is getting the vote of college educated women with useless degrees and big student loans.
Now, I want you to think about something really carefully, senator, although I fear that what I am about to say is just not comprehensible to a senator from Massachusetts and her ignorant aides and staffers. It has to do with what the burghers of medieval cities were up to at the end of the Middle Ages.
Basically, the “medieval burghers (town merchants and artisans) secured their liberty by paying rents or taxes directly to their feudal lords or sovereign in exchange for autonomy.” The feudal lords were dumb enough not to care about what the burghers were up to as long as they paid their annual toll in gold and silver.
But in fact the burghers were changing the world, creating a global market economy while the noble lords weren’t looking. And in the end the middle-class revolution kicked the feudal lords out of power. Oh dear.
I have the idea that the tech lords are changing the world in a similar way right now. They have been bowing and scraping to the lords of the neo-feudal welfare state — people like you, Sen. Warren — while behind the curtain they are backing a thousand tech startups that may well make the welfare state and the educated class and their NGO supporters as surplus as the burghers made the feudal lords and their feudal retainers.
Over the last century politicians like you, senator, have tried to marginalize successful businessmen by calling them names: robber barons, economic royalists, oligarchs. But in fact they do not have the power of feudal barons; they do not have the power of absolute monarchs. And as for oligarchs: ever looked in the mirror, Sen. Warren?
And I suppose that the snobbery had a point when a store clerk created the world’s first big oil company, and a telegraph messenger created the world’s biggest steel company. And a simple mechanic put together the Ford Model T. Or a couple of nerds built the first powered airplane. Or the son of a coastguard mechanic put together the world’s first smartphone. Not really out of the top drawer. And now:
“SpaceX’s IPO created 4,400 millionaires, according to the New York Times. Critics like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Elizabeth Warren have created one each — themselves.”
Dirty grubby millionaires. Eeuw!
Over the last few years I have noticed that our current tech lords are actually pretty fancy, intellectually. I’ve seen Marc Andreessen mention Nietzsche. Peter Thiel is a fan of René Girard and his Mimetic Theory. There’s Rod D. Martin, who was one of the PayPal mafia and is now a venture capitalist and Christian thinker.
I just have this feeling, Sen. Warren, that you and your political pals really don’t measure up against the tech lords.
I would recommend that you join their team. Because otherwise I suspect that they will humiliate you and put you in the back of the bus. Where you belong.
| Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:13:08 GMT |
A Philosophical Review of "Republicans Pounce"
Well, that didn’t take too long.
ABC’s Mary Bruce frets on Wednesday’s ‘World News Tonight’ that “Republican Senator Susan Collins [is] pouncing” on the series of scandals against “oyster farmer” Democrat Graham Platner[.]
Google AI says (when I asked from my phone for “the meaning of “Republicans pounce”):
“Republicans pounce" is a media trope and conservative critique used to describe news headlines that frame Republicans (or conservatives) as opportunistic attackers whenever a political controversy occurs.
But from my Chromebook Google AI says:
“Republicans pounce” (or similar phrasing like “conservatives seize”) is a media trope frequently used in political journalism. It describes situations where news outlets report on a controversy by focusing on the Republican Party’s reaction to a story rather than the underlying issue itself.
Wikipedia says that Republicans do the “pounce” thing as much as Democrats. But Grok says
It refers to headlines or stories that frame Republican criticism or reactions to a Democratic scandal, gaffe, policy failure, or controversy as aggressive, opportunistic, or overly partisan “pouncing” — rather than focusing on the substance of the underlying issue itself.
“Republicans pounce” is a well-known political phrase and media criticism meme, primarily used by conservatives in the U.S. to highlight perceived bias in mainstream media coverage.
Grok says that “Conservatives argue this reveals a double standard:”
When Republicans mess up → Media headlines focus directly on the scandal (”GOP in disarray,” etc.).
When Democrats mess up → Media often leads with how Republicans are reacting (”Republicans pounce on [issue]”).
One thing that isn’t coming out is that Republican commentators typically report on “Republicans pounce” articles as a rather comical examples of Democrats living in their lefty-liberal bubble. They seem to be shocked by any Republican criticism of Democrats, yet are utterly clueless about the incessant drumbeat of Democrat railings about Republicans as racist-sexist-homophobes. But then, why would they? The whole point of Democratic politics is that Republicans are not just the enemy, but the evil enemy.
Actually, when you think about it, “Republicans pounce” is a rerun of Ronald Reagan’s “there they go again” line first expressed in an October 1980 presidential debate against Jimmy Carter who accused Reagan of wanting to cut Medicare. It was a way of brushing off a nuclear attack often used by Democrats who want to tell the voters that, given half a chance, Republicans will abolish Social Security and Medicare. The line worked so well for Reagan that other politicians, including Bill Clinton, have used it.
But the real way to understand this is to understand that, for Republicans, politics is always a rather shabby affair. Democrats still seem to think that, with the right politics, they can save the world. For Republicans cheap political shots from the Democrats are par for the course. For Democrats, Republican criticism is evidence that Republicans aren’t serious people.
I wonder who is right?
Still I wonder whether ABC’s Mary Bruce understands that a reference of “Republicans pounce” in a news broadcast is merely communicating to Republicans that you are a partisan Democrat and not a real reporter. Probably not.
| Thu, 11 Jun 2026 23:09:04 GMT |
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Christopher Chantrill
He runs usgovernmentspending.com, the go-to resource for government finance data, and is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker. He lives in Seattle, Washington. Click for more.
“I love this guy.” — Steve Ballmer
A Commoner Manifesto
Commoners have nothing to lose but their shame
In socialism, everybody takes as much as they can. In capitalism, everybody contributes as much as they can.
The more politics, the more enemies.
The simplest way to understand human society is as Three Layers such as Nobles, Yeomen, and Serfs.
My take on Three Layers is my Three Peoples Theory of Creatives, Responsibles, and Subordinates.
I believe that we moderns live in Three Worlds: the War World of politics, the Market World of the economy, and the Life World of family and neighborhood.
And the trouble with politics is that it reduces human society to a war against the enemy, as determined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt.
The world that we all live in today is the one created by the German Turn in philosophy, psychology, science, and meaning.
But our modern elite, the educated elite, has taken, I believe, a Wrong Turn and has imposed a cultural Great Reaction on the world, a lurch back to the primitive. This manifests in the elite’s conceited Activism Culture and its patronage of Subordinate people as its Little Darlings.
The principal reason for the elite’s Wrong Turn has been that it does not understand and does not want to understand how the Three Peoples’ Religions are necessarily different.
The root of the educated elite’s Wrong Turn is its conceit that it knows what the world needs. I think there is a better way; I call it “A Good Life Better than the Left”.
ABC of Politics – Activism Culture – “Anatomy of Revolution” – Allyism – Critical Theory – Downstream-ism – Dutch Finance – German Turn – Good Life – Great Reaction – Little Darlings – Perfect Plan – Women in the Public Square – Ruling Class – Three Layers – Three Peoples – Three Peoples Religion – Tribalism – Two Cultures – Wrong Turn
Today’s topic: Charles Murray and his books
