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Comment by b1c1jones | Hacker News Reader

Just call them oligarchs and have done with the whole argument.

Wait, what happened to the robber barons? I guess they didn't have PACs.

The administrative state as we now know it didn't exist yet so there was nothing for the robber barons to capture to cement their place.

Oligarchs depend on the administrative state for their security.

The oligarch pays (bribes, political donations, what have you) the state $5 so that the state will spend $10 screwing the competition and then the oligarch's business will make $10. Of course I made these numbers up but the system by which these people hold power doesn't work if there isn't an administrative state with the power to fairly capriciously regulate the oligarch's business. The whole game is predicated on being able to buy unfair access state muscle. If the state is sitting on its ass there's no advantage to buying favor.

The term "robber baron" sounds so impossibly dated it's hard to take it seriously, and "oligarch" seems to be the favored term for when people have corrupt business relations in enemy states, so perhaps using "oligarch" is more illuminating for a modern audience.

It can be argued that the United States government is at war with its citizens...

Oh, come on, you know what I mean. Russia or other places with unfavorable relationships with the West we hear about “oligarchs” regularly.

Of course, because you're listening to American media owned by American oligarchs

You have Andrew Carnegie to thank for expensive marketing campaigns that retired that term in popular usage and rebranding robber barony under the philanthropist label. Now we have robber barons that look like they're trying to be nice.

“Captains of industry” also sounds faintly ridiculous for what it’s worth.

It seems hard to call big us ceos oligarchs, I would find it hard to believe for example Sundar pichai interacts even say weekly with Joe Biden, if for no other reason that there are so many potentially "influential" CEOs in the US and (at least there is a perception) they generally have better things to do than try to influence the president.

not sundar pichai, but someone like Larry fink is certainly an oligarch. He's also had access to the inner core of the establishment.

Oligarch implies the government grants and helps enforce a monopoly to a single individual. There are few, if any, individuals in America that this can apply to. There’s definitely regulatory capture in the US, but oligarch is hyperbole and/or a lack of perspective. It tends to be people equating US billionaires with Russian ones who definitely do fit this definition.

The specifics may differ but I do not agree that leaders of big business have "better things to do" than try to influence the President; a lot of time and money is spent on government influence operations.

> a lot of time and money is spent

I guess on reflection my parent description is not quite right, but your comment brings up maybe the real distinction: if you were a true oligarch, you wouldn't have do that, you would just have government influence, or, at least have it 'quite easily' for some definition of easily.

If Jamie Dimon gives the President (or one of his aides or some other well-placed official) a call, is he going to be completely unable to find an audience who will at least hear what he has to say? Probably not.

It would completely disingenuous to say that there's no difference between the US and Russia but I think there's more in common than we'd like to admit.

Spending lots of money counts as easy if you're ridiculously wealthy

It's not actually easy though. If someone airdropped you 100M and told you to spend it on some policy initiative, you, UtopiaPunk, would probably not be able to figure out how to move that money to a successful political end in DC.

He also probably doesn't employ a bunch of people specifically for this purpose so it seems like an irrelevant scenario

There are many synonyms for blasé corruption.

Oligarchs usually have deep ties to top people in Government and they do each other favors. Some aspect of that probably happens at some level with some SV (and elsewhere) big-wigs and Government but not to the extent it becomes too shady. Of course there are whispers it does happen especially as it concerns family members of high gov officials seeming to have beneficial relationships and businesses getting a friendly ear. Or executives having a direct lines to gov officials.

I wouldn't be mad at Bernie if he called executives out for behaving like Oligarchs.

Sorry? you think "tammany hall" didn't exist?

Tammany Hall had plenty of crooks, and no doubt was happy to make terms with robber barons. But it was far from consisting of classic "robber barons".

Tammany Hall was part of a world which started with the Robber Barons and ended with the Bosses distributing the funds to the ward heelers. Jay Gould funded Tammany Hall. Sure, it was also self-perpetuating corruption, but it had linkage.

It didn't consist "of" robber barons. It was a tool they used when it suited them. I call that cronyism.

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