{"id":30793,"date":"2025-01-18T07:18:18","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T07:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/18\/the-tech-bros-have-front-row-seats-at-trumps-inauguration-but-what-they-want-goes-way-beyond-that-quinn-slobodian\/"},"modified":"2025-01-18T07:18:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T07:18:18","slug":"the-tech-bros-have-front-row-seats-at-trumps-inauguration-but-what-they-want-goes-way-beyond-that-quinn-slobodian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/18\/the-tech-bros-have-front-row-seats-at-trumps-inauguration-but-what-they-want-goes-way-beyond-that-quinn-slobodian\/","title":{"rendered":"The tech bros have front-row seats at Trump\u2019s inauguration, but what they want goes way beyond that | Quinn Slobodian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The convergence of money and politics isn\u2019t new. What\u2019s different is the Silicon Valley right\u2019s hostility<strong> <\/strong>to the nation state<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Quinn Slobodian is author of Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In the last speech of his presidency, Joe Biden described the United States the way he usually only describes the nation\u2019s adversaries: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/jan\/15\/joe-biden-farewell-address-trump-oligarchy-america\">as an oligarchy<\/a>. His fears about \u201cthe dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people\u201d came after weeks of discussion of the influence of the mega-rich on the incoming Trump administration. At least 13 billionaires are set to have government posts under the new president, with his expected cabinet worth at least $7bn, double that of his own first term and an astonishing <a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/US\/trump-tapped-unprecedented-13-billionaires-top-administration-roles\/story?id=116872968\">60 times more<\/a> than the net worth of the current one. Tallying in Trump\u2019s close adviser, Elon Musk, bloats the figure to over a half trillion. Wealth and power have long had a happy marriage in America. What\u2019s different now? It can be captured in three terms: scale, sector and strategy.<\/p>\n<p>One thing about billionaires in the US is they keep making more of them. In 1990, there were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/220093\/number-of-billionaires-in-the-united-states\/\">about 60<\/a>. Ten years later, there were 298. Today there are almost 750, enough to fill a pair of jumbo jets (assuming some could be persuaded to travel in economy). Billionaire status is no longer enough to make you a household name. Those with the Scrooge McDuck or John D Rockefeller status of people \u201cso rich they are famous for being rich\u201d are more properly identified as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2024\/apr\/06\/centibillionaire-wealthy-family-richest-fintech\">centibillionaires<\/a>: people worth more than $100bn.<\/p>\n<p>Quinn Slobodian is the author of Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/jan\/18\/tech-bros-trump-inauguration-silicon-valley-nation-state\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The convergence of money and politics isn\u2019t new. What\u2019s different is the Silicon Valley right\u2019s hostility to the nation state Quinn Slobodian is author of Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy In the last speech of his presidency, Joe Biden described the United States the way he usually only &#8230; <a title=\"The tech bros have front-row seats at Trump\u2019s inauguration, but what they want goes way beyond that | Quinn Slobodian\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/18\/the-tech-bros-have-front-row-seats-at-trumps-inauguration-but-what-they-want-goes-way-beyond-that-quinn-slobodian\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about The tech bros have front-row seats at Trump\u2019s inauguration, but what they want goes way beyond that | Quinn Slobodian\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}