Oh yes, this is very much what the Maga elite are going with.

Their oligarchs see it as an ideal fit for grafting onto Trump populism. Deeply disturbing in its anti democratic core, the steps to corporate rule require an American autocracy. Yet the implementation they desire is  transnational, since oligarch money is very much tied to globalist economy now.

Keep your eye on the money behind this thinking. There has been deep pockets of very wealthy families funding the political means to graft on this thinking. Trump populism was the ideal fit. Deeply disturbing at its anti democratic core, the steps to corporate rule require an American autocracy.

But here we are, watching it being rolled out with Trump's 1st year policy. The marks of a once half baked ideology are splitting the seams to show through. I think much of this is new to many Americans for how it will be practiced upon them. Even though Trump has been parroting these positions ever more strongly since he lost the last election. How many, even in Magaland, took it as bluster and boast?

Don't get lost  in the gobbly-gook of techno-sociological babble. An autocracy has been a gleam in the eye of many "sovereign" financiers for quite a long time. Long before Musk had the means to grandstand.

How much do descriptions of Mercer in 2017 relate to what is happening today? He and his daughter went on to providing the money to create Vance after all.


Reclusive U.S. billionaire Robert Mercer helped Donald Trump win the presidency. But what is his ultimate goal?

“The ultra-wealthy of today differ from the ultra-wealthy in past eras in that they have, a lot of them, no stake in the infrastructure of society,” Magerman said. He’s seen that their wealth does not depend on the health and stability of the country. In fact, they get rich on volatility and instability.

Organizations that track who spends money in politics have noted the same thing. Sarah Bryner, research director at the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, said “hedge fund wealth is a sort of recent phenomenon, at least in the campaign finance world.”

“It’s not like you’re working for [big banks such as ] Chase or Wells Fargo, in a very well-regulated and huge industry” with obvious policy aims.

High net worth individuals aren’t like that at all, she said. “With Mercer, we don’t really know much about why he’s getting involved.”

...during the presidential election, Mercer “was effectively buying shares in the candidate” and “now owns a sizable share of the United States presidency” and that “Mercer has surrounded our president with his people, and his people have an outsized influence over the running of our country simply because Robert Mercer paid for their seats.”

Compare his actions to the long winded essayists in 2024, fully ignoring the reality of the ugly side of human nature that is already happening in real time.


Building My Case for Epistemic Liberalism — and Why The Sovereign Individual is Epistemically Authoritarian  - Mike Brock

Enter Silicon Valley’s Techno-Libertarianism and perhaps its most inspirational text: The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. I can’t tell you how many times people in the tech industry have asked me if I have read this book, and how much it influenced their belief in the role that technology would play in the ultimate dissolution of the state as we know it. But I’ve never understood why people saw what they said as prophetical.

The reverence with which many in the tech industry regard The Sovereign Individual is striking and speaks to the powerful hold that technological determinism and radical individualism have on the imaginations of many in Silicon Valley. The book’s central thesis — is that the rise of digital technologies will inevitably lead to the erosion of traditional forms of government and social organization, and the emergence of a new class of “sovereign individuals” who can operate outside the constraints of geography and nationality — has become a kind of article of faith among many techno-libertarians. Balaji Srinivasan’s concept of “the Network State” is essentially an attempt at trying to instantiate this concept. Like The Sovereign Individual, the Network State concept is premised on a highly deterministic view of technological change, assuming that the rise of digital technologies will inevitably lead to the erosion of traditional government and social organization forms. This view ignores the inherent complexity and contingency of social and technological change and forecloses the space for genuine public deliberation and democratic decision-making about the direction and impacts of these changes.

At its core, the sovereign individual thesis presents a highly atomized and voluntaristic view of social organization, one in which individuals are free to choose their affiliations and associations without regard for the broader social and political contexts in which they are embedded. While there is certainly value in exploring new forms of social and political organization that are more responsive to individual’s needs and aspirations, the radical individualism of the sovereign individual model risks undermining the foundations of a democratic society by suggesting that individuals can and should be able to opt out of traditional forms of political and social obligation in favor of self-selected digital communities, the sovereign individual thesis weakens the bonds of mutual responsibility and collective action essential for addressing complex global challenges. It assumes that the only viable response to the rise of digital technologies is a kind of market fundamentalism and technological solutionism, in which the pursuit of individual freedom and autonomy takes precedence over all other values and considerations.

This vision is epistemically authoritarian because it forecloses alternative possibilities and perspectives, and presents a single, monolithic view of the future as the only viable or desirable outcome...

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (Yesterday 01:38:07)