Billionaires Are Getting Angry! GOOD!
Matt Stoller recently wrote a good article. It's in his 'Monopoly Roundup' from about a month ago and is entitled: The Rage of the Billionaires Is Coming (Note, you don't have to be a subscriber to read the main article, just to read the roundup news after the article).

What I thought was good about the article wasn't that the billionaires' rage is coming, of course it is. I thought it was good because Stoller talked about what is making the billionaires angry, and... what is making everyone else angry at the billionaires. Stoller starts with AI and the rage against it:

The public is extremely angry, and they are centering their anger on AI. Seven out of ten Americans oppose data centers being built nearby. It’s not hard to see why.

AI and tech CEOs seem almost proudly villainous. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei routinely says that half of white collar jobs are going to disappear because of his technology. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, noted that “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” And Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, said during an earnings call that “This is a revolution. Some people can get their heads cut off.”

Voters are no longer brushing these comments off. They have experience with social media and enshittification, they don’t believe in the promise of the future. And even if they did, business leaders seem to luxuriate in explaining how terrible things will soon be for the little people. So they are starting to respond with frustration.

He moves on to talk about other ways the superrich do not understand how regular people think about or deal with the world, politics and so on. And he talks about why the superrich are becoming so angry with the regular people, and vice versa. I love his last few paragraphs:

One thing to understand is that the superrich are very good at selling their ideas. Most of them, after all, are salesmen. And they have all the money in the world to market. Since their vision isn’t appealing, they are going to do the next best thing, which is attack the people offering criticism, and argue that democracy itself is a fraud and can’t work. They will threaten to withdraw their wealth from different regions, they will call people stupid and ignorant, and they will use credible organs and validators on their payroll to do so.

If you’re not used to their level of anger, it can be surprising and scary. But over time, such threats diminish in power. Again saw this dynamic when Khan ran the FTC. The Wall Street Journal editorial page published an article criticizing her once every eleven days for her entire tenure. Policymakers generally get scared when a big newspaper attacks them, but it happened so often and in such constant bad faith that it became a joke and a point of pride. Other regulators began seeking to have the Wall Street Journal attack them.

And that’s how it’s going to happen as more populist political arguments emerge. It’s inevitable, Trump is wildly unpopular, and the superrich have tied themselves to him. As people start to fight about the post-Trump era, as Democrats organize some sort of governing agenda, with investigations and policies - even mild ones, they won’t even mean to antagonize the super rich. But just the idea that someone other than an oligarch gets to have a say in *anything* will prompt a level of backlash and rage that will seem scary, and then weird, and then just dumb.

Such is how an oligarchy ends, not with a bang, but with a bunch of whiny billionaires crying about taxes.

Something That's Good:
Recently activists on the left - and the right - managed to get 1,500 beagles freed from Ridglan Farms, in Wisconsin, which breeds the animals for 'scientific' experiments. The left, and the right, got together to free these poor dogs! That is awesome! Ridglan Farms is shutting down, now, with 500 more beagles to be rescued, and will be closed by 1 July 2026. YES!

This is a short film about the last rescue attempt, which was destroyed by local police, using tear gas, and more. Still, the attempt worked, as the end of the video shows. 1,500 beagles freed! Watching a couple of those precious dogs explore the world for the first time at the end of the film was so wonderful.

As an aside, I was so happy to read JtC's post about his health and recovery. So danged inspiring and so good to hear(read)!

Here's the open thread! What's up, whatcha doing? Reading? Thinking? Listening to? Got some good/bad/indifferent/funny/strange/cool news? Let's read/hear it! Remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!