Plutocracy 2025

When thinking about this current moment in time when major currents of political and economic power seem to flow into each other in exceptional and perhaps unparalleled ways, it might be useful to tease out in some more detail how exactly plutocracy 2025 differs from the entanglements of economic and business power that have come before. Here is one difference that seems particularly striking. Plutocracy in 2025, unlike its typical predecessors,  is not really engineered in discrete fashion behind the scenes by deep-rooted dynasties of political and economic life. It is not about dark and grey money flowing into the political systems to purchase stealth power beyond public scrutiny. It is not about the subtle cementing of specific cultural codes or careful planting of economic ideas that further specific interests in think tank land and academia without revealing the sponsors that benefit. Nor is it about the patient grooming and placement of political allies in key posts of the government apparatus.

Instead, it is a full-frontal brash attack right on the public stage. The emergent plutocracy is being broadcast (and narrowcast million times over). Every little move is boldly blared out into the public sphere with thunderous bluster – and at times ample bullshitting about how much more extreme it will get.  A one-million-dollar lottery a day to boost turnout for a specific presidential candidate? $100 million allegedly on offer for the UK far right? Crypto investors setting up a very public war fund to take down anti-crypto candidates for congress? All deliberate, highly visible attempts to stretch or break the rules, no pretence to respect norms of fairness or equality.

There is no public denial and playing down of disproportionate, potentially highly-corrupting influence – it is in open celebration. Working through stealthy meetings and backroom deals has been replaced by bragging about having an actual office in the White House. Massive conflicts of interest are reframed as both signalling competence and a legitimate mandate for taking control.

What are the implications for this qualitatively very different exercise of plutocratic power?

For a start, a large portion of the power in this power grab is the result of the very brash openness and public exaggeration that it is celebrated with. Only this generates the outsized shock and awe effect that has the outside world trembling and boosts the bargaining position of its progenitors. And only this on-stage display creates the norm-shattering ripples, and the permission structure for growing the coalition, giving it a movement flavour. It has encouraged some other tech and finance tycoons to join the party, and in the citizenry at large, a public assault on government as usual enables the public fandom and active cheering on by a growing number of people disenchanted with old-style government. Moreover, only a publicly celebrated norm deviance and open impunity signal the unique reach of this power, bordering onto the untouchable. But where power feeds on publicity this also creates potential vulnerabilities: when attention is withdrawn, or at least not every tweet and post is endlessly dissected by an outraged media machinery, this type of power gaming might actually deflate a bit and lose some of its outsized appearance.

Second, when openness becomes a sword, the world becomes confusing for good governance and transparency advocates. How to handle this moment in time when publicity is being weaponized rather than imposed on the reluctant as a vehicle for holding power to account? All of a sudden sunlight is no more the proverbial disinfectant but a captured spotlight to engineer the attention and fear that underpins this type of power. And the almost daily public escalation of ever more grave infractions of the norms of political integrity traps good government advocates in a breathless, reactive catch-up mode on how to keep on raising the alarms and which battles to pick. All of this may require some serious introspection on how to best do accountability work in this new context.

Finally, a plausible argument can be made that cronyism and shameless interference on the frontstage is more a complement to rather than a substitute for the conventional type of backroom dealing. There is no reason to believe that in a context of a highly transactional political culture and of softening legal interpretations of what constitutes corruption the pulling of strings in the back has just gone. In fact, grey and dark money flows into political campaigns have reached new record highs. And backroom influence might even flourish more since all attention has shifted to what is happening in the limelight, which drowns out more in-depth investigative scrutiny of the backstage. So when following this argument even one slightly positive spin on the situation is misguided: the idea that plutocracy 2025 at least lays bare the political and economic power entanglement and relieves us from a hypocritical simulation of democratic ideas that have maybe long been corroded by what is going on behind the scenes.

Quite plausibly it is a both / and. Backstage plutocracy is alive – comfortably  thriving in the shadow of and with even less scrutiny than before – while front-stage plutocracy thrives on its public notoriety. Sunlight as a useful infectant.