The Rise of the American Oligarch Class

How private wealth is forming a new ruling class—one that governs through infrastructure, spectacle, and the displacement of public institutions.

No one elected them. They hold no public office, swear no constitutional oath, and face no term limits. Yet their decisions shape the air we breathe, the platforms we rely on, the schools our children attend, and the futures we’re allowed to imagine.

This isn’t just the rise of a few wealthy individuals. It’s the consolidation of a new ruling class—one that gains power not through law, but through infrastructure, access, and the quiet dismantling of what used to be public life.

Three names illustrate the shift: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. With net worths ranging between $165 billion and $360 billion[^

[1], these men collectively control over $700 billion in private capital. Musk alone holds more wealth than the entire government budget of Norway[2]. Bezos could outspend the governments of Sweden and Mexico combined[3]. Zuckerberg’s fortune exceeds the entire annual budget of Canada[4].

Their combined wealth surpasses the aggregate wealth of Russia’s top 25 billionaires[5], and each individually holds at least ten times the fortune of Russia’s richest oligarch[6].

This isn’t simply a story of income disparity. It marks the emergence of a new kind of class: a consolidated, networked stratum of ultra-wealthy individuals who no longer merely influence politics from the outside but increasingly operate as co-governors—without being elected, appointed, or held accountable.

And they are not alone. The United States is home to 902 billionaires, more than any other country on Earth[7]. At least 25 of them have fortunes exceeding $20 billion[8]. Together, they control an estimated $3.4 trillion—more than the entire annual budgets of Italy, Brazil, or Canada[9]. This isn’t a scatter of isolated fortunes. It is a tightly knit and increasingly coherent class, bound not just by economic might but by shared institutions, cultural capital, and an expanding infrastructure of influence: private foundations, elite universities, corporate boards, donor networks, media holdings, and think tanks.

These individuals sit on boards that advise governments, fund research that shapes regulation, and operate the platforms through which the rest of us work, communicate, and form opinions. Their summits, galas, and innovation forums function as rituals of elite consolidation—spaces where status is affirmed, worldviews reinforced, and legitimacy performed. Like kinship networks among ruling castes, these gatherings reproduce a shared identity and social logic.

This is how a class coheres: not through formal titles or law, but through repeated acts of mutual recognition, institutional overlap, and control of key social functions. These oligarchs don’t just own companies—they shape the conditions under which others live. Through command of logistics, communications, cloud infrastructure, and digital marketplaces, they exert what might be called infrastructural power: the ability to organize daily life by controlling the systems on which others depend. They are no longer simply market actors; they are architects of the environments in which both markets and governance operate.

Their dominance is reinforced not only through ownership but through spectacle. They perform problem-solving on global stages—Davos, TED, investor summits—portraying themselves as visionaries rescuing society from the dysfunction of government. Legitimacy is cultivated through charisma, futurism, and media choreography. Their ability to act where governments stall becomes a reason to trust them with more power, not less.

Philanthropy plays a central role in this performance. Far from serving as a check on power, it often acts as its moral shield. Private foundations are structured to resemble public goods while operating as instruments of private influence. They fund research, school reform, public health, and climate initiatives, not to redistribute power but to steer public functions in directions aligned with elite interests. What appears as generosity is often a substitute for taxation, a branding strategy, or a tool of ideological capture. It becomes a moral economy in which the appearance of care obscures the concentration of control.

The oligarch class thrives on this substitution: platforms for deliberation, publicity in place of participation, private direction where public process once held sway. In earlier eras, elites ruled through land, armies, or inherited status. Today’s oligarchs govern through data, logistics, and financial abstraction. They hold sway not by decree but by engineering dependence—and normalizing it.

This shift is not accidental. It is the result of decades of institutional erosion, economic deregulation, and the systematic elevation of private capital over public purpose. And it poses a basic political challenge: not merely how to regulate or tax the rich, but how to recover the space of democratic decision-making from a class that increasingly acts in its place.

What’s at stake is not just inequality, but sovereignty—who decides, who governs, and in whose name. The old mechanisms for restraining power—progressive taxation, public investment, labor protections—have been weakened or dismantled. What remains is a system that rewards private governance and outsources the future to those who can afford to shape it.

The American oligarchy is not coming. It is already here.

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Endnotes

1. Bloomberg Billionaires Index, accessed July 2025. https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/

2. CIA World Factbook, 2023 edition. Norway: revenues $185.3 billion, expenditures $210.5 billion. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/norway/

3. CIA World Factbook, 2023 edition. Sweden: expenditures $307.6 billion. Mexico: expenditures $297.6 billion. Combined: $605.2 billion. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/

4. CIA World Factbook, 2023 edition. Canada: expenditures $861.9 billion. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/canada

5. Forbes Russia, “The Richest People in Russia,” 2024. Aggregate wealth of the top 25 Russian billionaires estimated at ~$432 billion USD. https://www.forbes.ru/

6. Vladimir Lisin, Russia’s wealthiest individual in 2024, had a net worth between $25–30 billion USD. Source: Forbes Russia, 2024. Forbes World’s Billionaires List, 2024. Total U.S. billionaires: 902. https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/

7. Forbes, “Top 25 Richest Americans,” 2024. All had fortunes above $20 billion, with a combined net worth exceeding $2.7 trillion.

8. CIA World Factbook, 2023 edition. National budget comparisons: Italy: revenues $901.5 billion, expenditures $1.08 trillion, Brazil: revenues $424.2 billion, expenditures $617.3 billion,

9. Canada: revenues $686.7 billion, expenditures $861.9 billion Source: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook

Suggested Readings .

Bishop, Matthew, and Michael Green. Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Ferguson, James. The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.

Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Jasanoff, Sheila, ed. Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Sklair, Leslie. The Transnational Capitalist Class. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.

Srnicek, Nick. Platform Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017.

Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: PublicAffairs, 2019.