By Joe Montero

It’s tempting to indulge in bashing Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and other talking heads in the Trump stable. They certainly invite it. But this indulgence can divert from the deeper reality of what is going on. We see this in the mainstream Democrat response in the United States, all too often copied internationally.

Plenty is going wrong in the self-proclaimed land of the free. Building economic and political crisis within the context of a climate crisis is the reality. Trump and company did not bring this about, even though there are clear signs that they are making it worse. Crisis is the result of the nature of and workings of American capitalism. The response in Wall Street and from Capitol Hill is government by that section of American society having the biggest share of control over the economy and political power. This is the dominant part of the one percent.

The regime around Donald Trump represents this tiny part of the American population, which makes a living out of speculation on asset prices and the creation of credit. Everything Trump and his people do is calculated to serve the interests of this group, even if there is the occasional spat between individuals.

At this point it is useful to mention an individual called Peter Thiel. He is a German born venture capitalist and political theorist who made it big in the United States by making a killing in the dot-com boom of the 1990s. He became an initial investor in Facebook, became a founder of PayPal, and SpaceX. He is also the founder of a series of venture capital firms, including Clarium Capital, Valar Ventures, and Mithril Capital. The latest, founded in 2003 is Palantir Technologies, which moved into data analysis and is now the principal backer of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) data collection operations and its own venture capital arm in-Q-tel. Palantir technologies is also a major backer of and integrated into the military.

Associates in these businesses include, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Mike Pompeo, Richard Myers, Jed Bush, James Loy, Lord Guthrie, Newt Gingrich, and Democrats Martin O’Mally, and Declan Ganley, to name a few.

Even more important than this network is Theil’s political role as mentor and thinker, and his role in funding a range of think tanks and political organisations to build a new political movement called MAGA. Theil is a member of the Steering Committee of the influential Bilderberg Group, a network of likeminded, business, and political leaders, and academics.

In an essay in 2019 he wrote that he believed that “freedom and democracy are compatible,” and that attention must be put in creating a new politics. Theil provides support for favoured political candidates with money and the use of his extensive network. Theil’s support propelled Trump, Musk, and KD Vance into the political arena. They are returning the favour by rolling out the shared political vison political vision that Peter Theil illustrated.

This is only a small part of Peter Theil’s role. It is less about the personality than it is about the existence of a network of extraordinarily rich and extremely powerful individuals sharing a common interest to propel the United States and the world in a direction that feeds their greed no matter what the cost on society.

Policies are directed at increasing rents from assets. This means returns from assets held that include shares, debentures, speculative activities in general, and most importantly from the creation of credit. A new source of profit is what is now being termed Cloud Capital, referring to creation of money through the rise of digital currencies, and the use of the cloud as a means to create money in other ways. This form of capital is the link between traditional venture capitalism and Silicon Valley. Traditional ventures charge rent on traditional assets. Silicon Valley charges rent for access to the Internet and apps.

These forms of money-making share in that they do nothing to build the economy through the creation of value. This is business devoted to the transfer of assets usually created by others. When dominating as it is today, rentier capitalism becomes a destructive force, pulling down productive capacity overall, distorting investment away from what is healthy for the economy.

For instance, Trump’s tariffs on foes and friends alike destroy the economy, jobs, and living standards. But it stands to provide wealth for the rentiers through as further expansion of credit and raising opportunities to grab new assets at bargain basement prices. Everyone else gets to pay the price for this. Trump and his crew will be among the beneficiaries.

There is much more to the story than this. What is argued here is not an economic treatise. Just a taste of the force behind what is going on.

The activities of rentier capitalism represented by Donald Trump and his team in Washington do not meet the needs of society. They are a destructive force destined to push us all over a precipice. Stopping it is important. To do so means understanding the class interests at play, who benefits and who loses. It means less focus on the personalities and a lot more on what they represent. Only then can society be armed with the means to oppose by building something different.