The Overmighty Subject

Musk and Bezos are not the first "Malefactors of great Wealth."

It has never gone well with a nation plagued by the "overmighty subject," an individual with more wealth and power than the state itself.

"The nuisance of the overmighty subject was in fact a feature of the rule of weaklings and vanished with the accession of those who had the personal authority to deal with it…To Edward III, Henry V, and Henry VIII the problem did not exist; to Edward II, Richard II, and Henry VI, it was insoluble.”

- McFarlane, K.B., THE NOBILITY OF LATER MEDIEVAL ENGLAND, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1973, p.283.

Consider the barons that overthrew and later murdered the hapless Richard II, led by Henry Bolingbroke, the eventual Henry IV, and then the pious and ineffectual Henry VI, who was opposed, then supported, then abandoned by Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, later known as the "Kingmaker." And, it must be said, the king breaker as well.

The fractiousness of the period between Richard II and Henry VII, a bloody and destructive civil war known as the Wars of the Roses than almost destroyed England as a nation (1455 to 1487) was largely caused by the fact that the state was simply too weak and too financially poor to curb the ambitions of wealthy and powerful men (and a few women) to do as pleased them at the expense of the nation as a whole. Only when the nation was utterly exhausted was Henry Tudor (Henry VII) able to invade and eventually impose order with a topaz fist (topaz is harder than iron. Check your Mohs scale.)

It does not go well with societies that allow individuals to wax stronger and wealthier than the civil state.

In case you missed the point, there should be no billionaires. No kingmakers or kingbreakers. It has never gone well with a nation that allowed the hoarding of absurd amounts of wealth and power by a private individual. Much of the sorrow we are enduring now is caused by the fact that we failed to use the power of the civil state to restrain what Teddy Roosevelt called "Malefactors of Great Wealth."

"There is a world-wide financial disturbance…. Most of it I believe to be due to matters not peculiar to the United States, and most of the remainder to matters wholly unconnected with any governmental action; but it may well be that the determination of the Government (in which, gentlemen, it will not waver), to punish certain malefactors of great wealth, has been responsible for something of the trouble; at least to the extent of having caused these men to combine to bring about as much financial stress as possible, in order to discredit the policy of the Government and thereby secure a reversal of that policy, so that they may enjoy unmolested the fruits of their own evil-doing."

- President Teddy Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt (1907): Address of President Roosevelt on the occasion of the laying of the corner stone of the Pilgrim memorial monument.

Money is a social contract. It is not property We, as a society, create money, protect it from fraud and theft, enforce contracts, and financially uphold it. It is meaningless and worthless without a civil society and a government to back it. Therefore, we have no obligation to allow an individual or corporation to use their money to wield undue power over the state, or society as a whole.

We have other arrangements to check and balance the use of governmental power. Where is the check or the balance on the power of hoarded wealth? How is political power gained from the ballot box dangerous and must be restrained, but power gained from wealth is to be at total liberty, regardless of the demonstrable harm this has done to the lives of working people?

Abolish billionaires. Curb the overmighty malefactors. Or lose your liberty and live at their sufferance. There is no third option.