The Post-State Sovereign is Real and We Should Be Terrified

Billionaires have become post-state sovereigns: zero checks, full control. It’s not innovation. It’s empire. And history says it ends badly.

PART I of Who Knows How Many

Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Page aren’t just tech moguls or business leaders. These are men who have transcended national regulatory frameworks. They play geopolitical chess with nation-states like they’re meddling in a Sims game. No borders, no taxes (see: the ProPublica exposé on billionaire taxes), no electoral consequences, and zero institutional oversight. In return? They exert actual control over critical infrastructure: communications, logistics, space, AI, biotechnology, and even governance experiments.

And here's the crux: when the richest people on Earth begin to behave like governments without any of the constitutional or democratic constraints governments are supposed to answer to, we’re in deep fascist water.

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Historical Parallels: These Men Aren’t New — But They’re Worse

1. The Robber Barons (late 19th – early 20th century)

Carnegie, Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt.
These men amassed colossal wealth in the industrial age and wielded it to crush labor, manipulate governments, and monopolize sectors. But here’s the difference:

• They were rooted in physical industry. Railroads, oil, steel. Vulnerable to nationalization, strikes, and sabotage.

• They had physical limitations. Their reach was powerful but largely regional or national.

• Eventually, the state pushed back. The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890), the breakup of Standard Oil (1911), and the rise of labor unions created friction, if not true accountability.

2. The East India Company (1600–1874)

An imperial megacorp that had its own military, collected taxes, and governed India with brutality on behalf of the British Crown — until it didn’t. Why?

• It collapsed under the weight of rebellion (1857), corruption, and administrative incompetence.

• But not before inventing the template: corporate empire as sovereign power.

Thiel and Musk, with their space ambitions and disdain for democracy, would’ve fit in perfectly — except they’d be harder to depose.

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So What Makes Today’s Sovereigns Unique?

1. Global Infrastructure Control

   • Musk owns Starlink, which is used in Ukraine and considered critical for military communications. That’s an actual diplomatic power function held by a single man.

   • Bezos controls AWS, a cloud service used by governments. If you take it offline, you're bricking half the intelligence infrastructure.

2. Information & Narrative Dominance

   • Zuckerberg’s Meta is the most powerful opinion-shaping tool in human history, with billions of users and algorithmic control over truth.

   • Google (Page/Brin) controls the informational priors of the modern world: epistemological sovereignty.

3. Geopolitical Leverage

   • Musk flirted with peace plans for Ukraine. Thiel funds ideological extremism. These are not business moves — they’re statecraft.

   • All of them are in bed with or manipulating national governments — not lobbying them, commanding them.

4. Post-National Identity

   • These men think citizenship is quaint. Their loyalties are to capital, code, and ideology. See Thiel’s seasteading nonsense and New Zealand citizenship acquisition for climate apocalypse bunkers.

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But Let’s Poke Holes — This is a Dialectic, Not a Monologue

1. The State Still Has the Gun

You can be as rich as Croesus, but try to ignore an actual state’s military might and see what happens. Think of:

• Jack Ma vs. China. He poked too hard — vanished.

• Russia vs. Tech — Putin has zero qualms about disappearing oligarchs.

Counterpoint: U.S. and EU states are captured, not weak. Their military power is real, but they won’t use it against billionaires because they’ve bought the state.

2. Public Backlash is Growing

• Antitrust actions are coming — even if slowly.

• Youth movements and decentralized digital resistance (think: Mastodon, Fediverse, DSA-style organizing) are nibbling at the empire’s feet.

Counterpoint: Tech bros have co-opted the language of revolution. They pretend to be the underdog while building literal AI gods to rule us.

3. There’s Precedent for Elite Collapse

Historically, every era of hyper-concentrated wealth ends in:

• Revolution (France, 1789)

• Reform (New Deal, post-WWII social democracy)

• Or ruin (Rome, anyone?)

But in the meantime? Generations suffer.

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DATA POINTS AND RECEIPTS

• Top 1% wealth share in the U.S. (2023): Over 31% of total wealth. The bottom 50% hold 2.5%.

• Musk’s wealth (2024): $217 billion. Ukraine’s GDP: $200 billion. Let that sink in.

• Facebook’s user base: ~3 billion — more than any country on Earth.

• Amazon’s U.S. logistics infrastructure: Controls over 70% of U.S. e-commerce logistics.

• Starlink satellites: Over 5,000 in orbit — dwarfing most nations’ capabilities.

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CONCLUSION: These Men Are Sovereigns. And Sovereigns Without Checks Become Tyrants.

No elections. No parliaments. No constitutions. Just one guy with enough money to call a president, launch a satellite, or shut off the flow of information. And unlike past emperors, these men don’t need soldiers; they’ve got shareholders, data, and code.

They are building futures we never voted for, policies we never debated, and infrastructures we cannot escape. That’s not innovation; it’s authoritarianism with better PR.

Head to: The Post-State Billionaire, Part 2: Is the Cause Already Lost?