From Constitutional Democracy to "Commercialized Sovereignty"

Why do tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel want to lock us into a hideous, dystopian future?

Peter Thiel and Elon Musk’s family wealth, which gave them their start in business, was built off the backs of black mining workers in Africa, who often endured brutal conditions.

Today I will continue sharing some thoughts on Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and their fellow conspirators in the destruction of America’s Constitutional system. As I noted last time, I find it hard to understand why, considering the incredible wealth and privilege our society has showered upon these people — which included giving the Internet, built with public funds, to private tech corporations without any public input or oversight — they are working feverishly to destroy the very system of laws and protections that allowed them to prosper to such an extraordinary degree. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

This is total insanity — it doesn’t matter what convoluted ideology they’ve devised to back it up, although we will investigate all of that. I find a Shakespearian dimension: We are witnessing a King Lear-like tragedy play out that may consume the entire world in its dark madness. Alas, we would love to be sitting in the audience for this. Instead, we find ourselves on the stage along with everyone else.

I’ve critiqued different elements of tech broligarch ideology in my past essays. One problem is, I suppose, when you reach a stratospheric level of wealth, the people who cluster around you tend to reinforce your worst, most ego-centric and narcissistic traits. Your lackeys, lovers, and hangers-on will never offend or contradict you as long as they benefit from your bounty. Over time, it becomes increasingly difficult to not fall for your own self-serving bullshit.

Human nature being what it is, many tech tycoons stars to feel that any limit or restraint on their wealth and power is unbearable, contemptible, and even (because they are like Gods among men) morally wrong. I suppose, also, in a world full of so much unnecessary misery — undergoing, also, lest we forget, an ecological crisis of devastating proportions — only a certain mindset will continue to amass wealth past the satiation of any possible need or desire for themselves and their family. Most people would, instead, seek to redistribute at least a portion of their excess plunder for the benefit of society as a whole, as well as the Earth. (Of course, the “philanthropy-industrial complex” also has its inherent problems, as we find with someone like Bill Gates. Grants can function as a projection of ego, building more “soft power” and social control).

One thing we might find remarkable, considering the incredible wealth amassed by Musk and Thiel, is their total disinterest in altruistic initiatives, which even the great robber barons of the past pursued, hoping to leave a decent legacy. As far as I know, there are no Thiel / Musk hospitals, public schools, museum wings, or libraries. They have a Scrooge-like antipathy toward the public good.

Let’s compare the philanthropy of past industrialists like John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to today's tech billionaires, including Musk, Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and Marc Andreessen. The contrast is stark. Rockefeller and Carnegie gave away a large portion of their net worth, endowing public institutions such as libraries, hospitals, universities, and foundations for education, public health, social welfare, and so on. Carnegie donated around 90% of his wealth during his lifetime. The Rockefeller family built foundations and institutions that shaped American culture and society, both for good and ill.

In contrast, contemporary tech magnates, despite accumulating wealth on an absurd scale, donate minuscule portions of their vast fortunes to charitable causes. Elon Musk has donated less than 1% of his wealth, primarily through initiatives closely aligned with his technological ambitions. Jeff Bezos has pledged significant sums, such as his $10 billion Earth Fund, yet these efforts represent a tiny fraction of his $209 billion estimated net worth. Thiel and Marc Andreessen also support philanthropic projects, often focusing on niche, technology-driven ventures, but their contributions lack transparency and scale when compared to earlier eras of industrial philanthropy.

But of course, this absurd stinginess totally aligns with the freakishly self-serving ideology they have pieced together, culled from bits of Ayn Rand’s Libertarianism, ideas from The Sovereign Individual; Curtis Yarvin’s ruthless neocameralism. Another influence is effective altruism, a ridiculous thesis, concocted by Cambridge University “wonder boy” philosopher William McGaskill, which I wrote about here:

Before getting into all of that — and offering an alternative — let’s try to understand, empathically, what could be going on in the invisible psychological landscape of Thiel and Musk. It does seem that their childhood relationship to South African apartheid played a huge part in their self-construction. They developed the belief that white people — white culture — possesses some kind of inherent superiority. At the same time, this special superiority of the white race is under constant threat by vast swarms of people who are not as genetically gifted and who would take away all of the white’s power and privilege, if they could. This must be prevented at all cost.

Do they, perhaps, also suffer from a tremendous amount of suppressed guilt? Thiel's father, Klaus Thiel, was a chemical engineer who oversaw the development of a uranium mine near Swakopmund in what was then South West Africa (now Namibia). During this period, white managers like Klaus had access to amenities such as medical and dental centers and country club memberships, while Black laborers endured harsh conditions. Many Black workers were unaware of the radiation risks associated with uranium mining, leading to severe health issues and fatalities. Thiel’s family provided seed capital for his initial venture fund, which eventually brought him the massive wealth he enjoys today.

Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk, claims to have acquired a stake in Zambian emerald mines, which contributed to the family's wealth during Elon's youth. Apparently, Errol exchanged a plane for a portion of the emeralds produced at these mines. Mining operations in Africa during that era almost invariably involved brutal, exploitative labor practices, providing great bounty for the First World.

It seems an open question if sociopaths are born rather than made. Perhaps the effort to suppress a sense of guilt and secret foreboding exacerbates sociopathic tendencies. Studies have shown that, on some innate animal level, we all possess a precise ethical scale: We know “what goes around, comes around.” If your wealth and privilege was built on the death and suffering of others, this must create a subliminal, unconscious fear that you will face eventual reprisal or justice.

I am lingering on all of this because I have this sense that we are all caught up, now, in Thiel and Musk’s racially paranoid childhood nightmares, which made them deeply insecure people. This insecurity is shared by other tech magnates such as Mark Andreessen, creator of the Netscape browser and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, who is from Iowa originally. Andreesen recently hired Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who put Jordan Neely, a homeless black man, in a chokehold on the Subway and killed him, at his investment company, despite Penny’s lack of relevant experience.

Although Penny was acquitted of murder charges, the story remains a disturbing one.

While Neely was verbally threatening Subway riders, he had not caused physical harm to anyone when Penny jumped him. (New York Magazine published an excellent long feature on Jordan Neely’s life). For Andreessen to hire Penny sends a message of support for vigilante justice against homeless people who have been abandoned by the system — the very same system Musk and Thiel are now seeking to defund.

Marc Andreessen loves The Sovereign Individual, a 1997 book by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. He calls it “the most thought-provoking book on the unfolding nature of the 21st century that I've yet read.” He find the book “packed with ideas on every page, many that are now fast becoming conventional wisdom, and many that are still heretical.” Thiel also loves this book and wrote the introduction to the book when it was republished.

In The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg herald the collapse of centralized nation-states, gleefully predicting the rise of fragmented “minisovereignties” and the total privatization of governance, which they call “commercialized sovereignty.” They see taxation as inherently predatory and believe, in the Information Age, taxes can be evaded by wealthy elites who become consumers rather than citizens, contracting individually with private governments.

“Citizenship is obsolete,” they write. “To optimize your lifetime earnings… you will need to become a customer of a government or protection service.” This ideology portrays social solidarity and collective responsibility as irrational burdens, promoting a selfish, atomized vision of society. The authors write: “The increased capacity of individuals to protect their transactions and their assets from predatory taxation implies a decline in the redistribution of resources, along with less centralized social control, less regulation and regimentation, and, ultimately, devolution of territory.”

Please note that The Sovereign Individual has nothing to do with any concept of American greatness or nationalism. The tech elite’s Libertarian ideology goes completely against anything that could benefit ordinary Americans. This contradiction needs to be relentlessly exposed.

According to this dystopian fantasy, wealthy individuals can create new “micro-nations.” leaving behind old forms of nation-state governance marred by underfunded pensions, decaying public infrastructure, and failing social safety nets. Astonishingly, Silicon Valley’s “cognitive elite” are taking The Sovereign Individual’s speculative and dystopian vision and seeking to realize it, by dismantling the U.S. Federal Government. They want to reduce civic society to transactional relationships, where basic rights, security, health care, and dignity become commodities people have to buy from the private tech companies they own.

Truth and Reconciliation for the U.S.

Ironically, if we are ever going to stop this destructive descent into techno-Fascist paranoid insanity, we will need to set up a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (TRC) process here in the U.S., similar to what South Africa created. Established in 1995 and chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African TRC provides a model for confronting historical injustices without resorting to revenge or mass violence. TRC sought to address the societal wounds caused by apartheid, a system of racial oppression that lasted for half a century. Instead of pursuing punitive justice, the TRC gave perpetrators of human rights abuses — both from the apartheid government and opposition groups — the space to openly confess their past criminal acts in exchange for amnesty.

Victims and families were given the opportunity to testify publicly. This allowed the country to collectively witness, acknowledge, and process decades of pain and wrongdoing. TRC was imperfect — criticized for its limited reparations and controversial granting of amnesties — but the commission's transparent process helped heal deep wounds, laying a foundation upon which a post-apartheid democratic society could be built.

Implementing a TRC in the U.S. would mean facing very harsh realities — the legacy of slavery and segregation; the systematic targeting of indigenous people; massive financial, and political corruption; and fossil fuel corporations who knowingly endangered future generations for profit. A TRC approach would emphasize restorative justice over punishment, allowing for open acknowledgment of historical and ongoing abuses while creating dialogue, understanding, and ultimately, social repair.

The TRC process in South Africa shows us that it is possible to confront a society’s darkest truths openly and honestly. We must at least try to envision such a future path to rebuilding social trust and finding a path to reconciliation here in the U.S. Such a process could allow us to not just restore America to sanity, but, finally, fulfill our great, ever-postponed and reneged-upon, promise of equality, freedom, and justice for all.