We have a billionaire problem.
Back in 1995, when I published When Corporations Rule the World, there was an awakening to the dangers of transnational corporations. Right now, in 2025, there is an awakening to the dangers of oligarchy—when a few billionaires rule the world. In his farewell speech, outgoing President Biden left us with this warning:
Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead. We see the consequences all across America.
When my book warning of the corporate problem was released in 1995, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) had recently passed, followed by the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The world began to realize that for-profit corporations were surpassing democratic governments as society’s most powerful governing institutions. The book quickly became an international best seller.
The extraordinary information technology breakthroughs since 1995 produced the billionaires who currently control them. The world is now witnessing an alliance of tech and financial billionaires that has taken control of the administrative, judicial, and legislative branches of the world’s most powerful government.
Their clear intention is to use that control to defend and further advance their personal monetary interests in disregard of consequences for the wellbeing of Earth and society—and especially the interests of members of the struggling working class whose votes put the billionaires in power. We must use this latest awakening to create a deeply democratic future free of extremes of wealth and power.
Following World War II, the world arrived at a significant moment of opportunity when decolonization spawned a temporary global burst of democracy and a drive to create and share prosperity equitably on a global scale. The commitment to economic development sparked hope that assets and power would henceforth be democratically shared.
Aspiring autocrats rebelled. They turned to corporate charters, debt, and other financial instruments to reassert authoritarian control of assets that colonial rulers had been forced to relinquish.
Rather than seek the guidance of a true eco-nomics devoted to caring for Earth and one another, many among us succumbed to the false promises of neoliberal economists. Presented as values-free science, their theories touted the benefits of the “free market” in which we compete to exploit one another and Earth in a quest to maximize personal financial returns. We were assured that this would advance the wellbeing of all. The predictable outcome was to replace the oppression of traditional colonialism with the oppression of contemporary capitalism.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, corporations like Google, Microsoft, Space X, Tesla, Amazon, and Meta have amassed enormous financial power for their chief executives and primary owners. That financial power combines with their control of information and digital infrastructure to render democracy a meaningless façade and drive inequality to increasingly obscene extremes.
The financial predators refer to money—a mere number created from nothing—as wealth and make the growth of money our defining human priority. The business media they control refer to predatory financial speculators skilled at creating fictitious financial assets as investors. The rich get richer and more arrogant as their financial wealth and power grows increasingly obscene.
Oxfam reported the beginning of 2024, that just since 2020 the five richest men in the world more than doubled their combined fortunes from US$405 billion to $869 billion. They averaged $174 billion in financial assets each and their aggregate assets grew at a rate of $14 million per hour.
Note that $1 billion equals 1,000 million dollars. According to The Cap Times, a person with a job paying $75,000 a year would have to work more than 13,000 years to reach one billion dollars in total income.
Of the current world population of 8.2 billion people, the World Bank estimates that 44 percent (3.6 billion) live below the upper middle-income country standard for extreme poverty of $6.85 per day. That’s less than the cost of one McDonald’s cheeseburger with a cup of coffee. That may be adequate for one lunch for one person. But no breakfast. No dinner. No place to live. No family. No medical care. No education.
Those 3.6 billion people have a serious problem. We can say the same for anyone who needs $14 million per hour to have a fulfilling life.
Any society that fails to limit both obscene levels of poverty and obscene levels of wealth cannot presume to be civilized. While some inequality is inevitable, the current level of human inequality exceeds human comprehension. It has reduced a majority of the world’s people to a modern form of slavery, with billionaires serving as enthusiastic slave masters.
Private banks and other profit-maximizing corporations are a primary institutional weapon of the billionaires. The billionaires also use the power of their media corporations to mis-direct the resulting anger away from themselves and turn the dispossessed against one another.
We now face an incoming U.S. administration staffed by billionaires dedicated to using their control of government to further advance their personal financial interests.
After outgoing President Biden warned of oligarchy, Google searches on the word “oligarchy” immediately spiked. Just as back in 1995, when there was an awakening to the dangers of transnational corporations, there is now an awakening to the dangers of oligarchy—when a few of the world’s wealthiest billionaires rule the world.
The billionaires who have taken control of the U.S. government are alerting us to the self-evident truth that redistributing their financial wealth must become a defining priority of our time. How do we do that?
Here are four global priorities essential to a viable and inclusive human future.
- Advance aggressive global tax policies to capture and redistribute the wealth of the world’s billionaires to fund programs that bring up the bottom and heal the Earth. The goal is a global society in which everyone has a fulfilling means of living and no one is positioned to exploit others.
- Replace profit-maximizing corporations with institutions that share power among individuals committed to community wellbeing. A promising model is provided by the Mondragon workers cooperative in the Basque region of Spain. Each worker owns one share that can only be sold back to the corporation for sale to another worker.
- Shift to public or cooperative community ownership of for-profit banks and other financial institutions authorized to issue official currencies, cryptocurrencies, financial derivates and other artificial financial assets.
- Impose a financial transaction tax on all trading in financial instruments to discourage financial speculation.
There is no place in this world for billionaires or profit maximizing corporations devoted to the exploitation of Earth and its people to maximize profits for Earth’s already richest people. Though these essential reforms will not be easily achieved, the first step is to recognize that all four are possible and fulfill an essential public purpose. We are long overdue in getting them on the agenda for public review and debate.
We have arrived at a choice point that calls us to address our billionaire problem. Those who have chosen money as the defining purpose of their lives have taken control of our governing institutions.
We the people of the living Earth have the right, the means, and the power to reclaim control to secure the wellbeing of life. We must all speak truth to the rule-makers, advocate for the necessary changes, engage the conversation, and make personal choices that exemplify the changes we seek. The time is now. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
