Chapter One: The Myth of the Benign Billionaire Right after he helped engineer the re-election of Donald Trump, Elon Musk tweeted: "No one provokes me and gets away with it." Musk attributed this statement to the Roman conqueror Sulla, though Sulla''s authorship is unclear, suggesting that the real author might be said to be Musk. Whoever actually held the pen, it''s telling that, all these centuries later, Musk placed the quote (in Latin) as his top "pinned" tweet, thereby highlighting for his 215 million followers the words of a Roman emperor notable in the annals of history only due to his reputation for vicious, unwarranted cruelty. It''s not as if the statement is particularly pithy or insightful. It resembles the trash talk of a schoolyard bully. But coming from the world''s richest man -- who has endless resources for harassing or punishing enemies -- it is menacing. And then, of course, there were Musk''s back-to-back Nazi salutes at a rally celebrating Trump''s second inauguration. Musk responded to the outrage with a ho-hum tweet: "The ''everyone is Hitler'' attack is sooo tired.

" The depth of Musk''s attraction to Nazism is unclear. Above all, he appeared to be trying to demonstrate the sheer magnitude of his personal power, signalling to the world that he is free to say or do whatever the hell he wants. With about $414 billion at his disposal, Musk has a lot of armour around him. Clearly, Musk would be ostracized for his Hitler devotion and kicked to the margins of society were it not for his gargantuan wealth. Instead, his wealth has enabled him to have an extraordinary political impact, essentially buying Donald Trump''s return to the White House. In addition to purchasing Twitter and allowing it to become a gutter of false, pro-Trump information, Musk directed some $270 million towards Trump''s re-election campaign, paying an army of recruits to knock on eleven million doors in swing states just before the election. Confused, and distrustful of mainstream news organizations, millions of Americans voted for Trump, thinking he would deliver them cheaper eggs. Awed by Musk''s billions, the re-elected Trump then allowed Musk to gleefully take a chainsaw to government programs, dismembering key parts of the apparatus of the federal government, hacking into the personal information of Americans, and shredding the country''s flimsy social safety net.

Americans who thought they had voted for cheaper eggs were surprised to discover they''d actually voted for poverty in retirement. Musk is clearly an outlier. But he also represents the danger posed by billionaires generally in their desire to impose the policies they want, regardless of the damage those policies do to others. Three political scientists who studied one hundred U.S. billionaires over a ten-year period concluded that they were focused on shaping public policy, even though the policies they favoured were strongly opposed by most Americans: "Many or most billionaires have actively worked to enact policies opposed to the wishes of most Americans, while intentionally trying to conceal their thoughts and actions about these policies by staying silent about them," write Benjamin Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew Lacombe in Billionaires and Stealth Politics . Perhaps what makes Musk unusual is not so much his self-centred, antisocial overreach as his willingness to display it publicly in such buffoonish ways. It''s interesting to speculate whether having a gigantic amount of wealth and power might affect the synapses and neurotransmitters in the brain, giving billionaires such an elevated sense of self that they don''t feel obliged to take into account the needs or wishes of others.

In the world they inhabit -- full of servants attuned to their every fancy and retainers admiring their every thought -- billionaires are free from the day-to-day social interactions that teach the rest of us that we sometimes have to compromise or co-operate. Billionaires don''t need to submit to any such lesson. Their private jets wait on the tarmac not until the designated departure time but until they feel inclined to board. In a world where everything revolves around their whims and desires, other people perhaps seem to have little purpose other than to serve them. Indeed, billionaires apparently resent having to abide by the rules of a world run by those they perceive as lacking their talents and insights. Musk fantasizes about creating a colony on Mars, where he would be the guiding light. Then there''s Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire who financed the political career of U.S.

Vice-President J.D. Vance. Thiel complains that the world is stagnating as it submits to the dictatorial demands of those trying to head off environmental disaster. To Thiel, today''s Antichrist is Greta Thunberg, whom he regards as an aspiring totalitarian. Musk, Thiel, and other tech billionaires clearly see themselves as geniuses disrupting the sluggish, static ways of the human race. They regard actions taken by humans to save the planet as annoying constraints on their freedom. Of course, these tech billionaires may come across as a little nutty; we don''t typically hear such extremist rants from other billionaires.

But, again, that may be because other billionaires are more discreet, not because they don''t share the tech bros'' view that billionaires are far better equipped to run the world than the ordinary humans who make up the majority. Certainly, the actions of other billionaires -- in their quiet funding of right-wing causes and their rejection of regulatory restraints aimed at protecting the environment -- suggest they''re not concerned about the wishes or well-being of the broader public. The tech billionaires could perhaps be seen as shock troops for the rest of the billionaire class. While there are undoubtedly individual exceptions, billionaires, as a group, are out to advance their own interests with little concern for others or the damage they inflict on the planet. And their immense wealth confers on them immense power to achieve these self-serving, destructive ends. Sixteen years ago, in a book we wrote titled The Trouble with Billionaires , we argued that the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of individuals was unfair and unjust. We also maintained that it was detrimental to society, heightening social tensions and making billionaires too powerful. The massive disparities that existed back then seem small compared to the ones that exist today.

In the intervening decade and a half, the wealth at the top has grown vastly larger, greatly increasing the unfairness and bestowing on this tiny clique a truly staggering amount of power. That power is amplified by the potential of today''s technology to do more sweeping damage to the earth, its ecosystems, and its inhabitants than has ever been possible throughout human history. Indeed, the power of the world''s wealthiest people -- as showcased in caricature by the world''s wealthiest man -- has grown to an extent almost unimaginable even sixteen years ago. The power of the world''s billionaires has reached the point where they literally threaten the survival of the rest of us.