The Rich and the Powerful

My stepdaughter brought up an interesting conspiracy theory over lunch today. One of her friends was of the opinion that the richest people in the world are not the ones we think they are. They are not Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the like, but people completely anonymous to us.

To me, this is not really a conspiracy theory. It's a fact that requires little research to validate. I mention this in my book on economics. Once a person is officially without direct possession of anything, that person can hide in plain sight. No-one needs to know how much control remains with him.

This is how I've arranged things for myself. I've passed all my registered wealth onto my children. That was sufficient to reduce my tax burden to zero, and it happened without my children being much burdened with any additional taxation.

The trick is to separate ownership from control. Ownership is registered and taxed. Control can be secret or indirect. It can't be taxed in the way that ownership can be taxed. It allows for more freedom, partly due to the fact that the rich stay anonymous.

We may know that the guy in the big house up the road is rich. But we don't know how rich he is. Hence, we assume him to be wealthy but otherwise normal. He may in fact control vast amounts of wealth through foundations and proxies of various kinds, but we'll never know, and he can therefore go about his daily affairs without any bother from anyone.

True power and wealth is often hidden through the establishment of proxies, like foundations and common ownership arrangements. This remains obscure and overlooked as long as things are running smoothly for the Status Quo. However, when there's a hick-up, we get a glimpse into this obscurity. We get to see the power of the truly wealthy, and we may get a taste of this relatively soon, because there's a loose canon roaming around on deck.

Elon Musk is a bit of a clown. He's one of the establishment guys, afforded special privileges. He's role is to play the techno wizard in the charade that passes as free market. However, he's too full of himself for his own good. He thinks he can do as he pleases, so he says things that don't ring well with the established narrative. His latest stunt has been to buy Twitter, and a lot of people with power are worried that this will lead to too much free speech.

The big guys have to rain in Musk, or stop him from succeeding in taking control of Twitter. Suddenly, Musk is in the cross hairs for SEC violations. He's being dragged through the mud by media outlets. Most telling is the sudden plunge in the price of Tesla.

The value of Tesla is crucial for Musk's plan. His bid for Twitter is based on it, so if Tesla falls below a certain price, the deal falls apart. It's therefore likely that Tesla is falling in price precisely because Musk made a bid for Twitter.

The Status Quo is out in force, and may even engineer a stock market crash in order to stop Musk from taking control of Twitter.

My guess is that Twitter will either remain remarkably unchanged after a Musk takeover, or magically escape his bid due to a crash in Tesla, and possibly the entire stock market. However, if none of this happens, and Twitter becomes a beacon of free speech after a successful Musk takeover, it may be that he really is one of the richest people alive, and that the existence of a shadow government made up of anonymous super-rich people is nothing but a conspiracy theory after all.

Elon Musk

By Duncan.Hull - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link