In a struggle between wealth
and ethics, practically speaking the former tends overwhelmingly to win hands
down, even if the form of government is at least nominally a representative
democracy, but in fact an oligarchy or plutocracy. The influence of the moneyed
interest both in the E.U. and U.S. is likely much stronger than most of the
respective citizenries know. When the poorest of the poor are to be made worse
off financially by cuts in certain government programs while defense contractor
companies stand to get more, which tends to mean higher bonuses for executives
(and campaign contributions for elected representatives), the skew toward the
gilded and away from the most vulnerable economically can be viewed as an x-ray
of sorts indicative of rule by wealth rather than by the People. U.S. President
Trump’s fiscal budget enacted in 2025 is a case in point by which the questionable
morality of the plutocracy or oligopoly form of government can be gleaned.
Plato laid out the following
as alternative forms of government, from the best to the worst:
1. The
Ideal State (kallipolis): everyone is doing their respective jobs well;
philosophers with knowledge of the good are in charge of making decisions
pertaining to public policy.
2. Timocracy:
(e.g., Sparta): people who love honor, social status, and competition are in
control. In other words, a military.
3. Oligarchy:
producers (or suppliers) of goods and services (i.e., business executives and
or companies) are in control. That is business runs the government.
4. Democracy:
the “mob” is in control. Direct democracy. Such “mob rule” is volatile, with enacted
policies swinging back and forth. This does not include representative
democracy, which is better, but not as good as having a philosopher king rule
because reason should control the passions in a mind and a city.
5. Tyranny:
a tyrant is in control. This is the worst form of government, for obvious
reasons, as an autocrat faces no worldly constraint in unleashing suffering and
death on a population. In 2023 through at least 2025, the Israeli government was
a tyranny in Gaza.
The three highest Hindu castes
fit the three highest Platonic forms of government, with Brahmins, who are
ideally priests (or philosophers), soldiers/generals, and merchants in descending
order in Hindu society. The “mob” in Plato’s scheme corresponds to the laborers
in the caste system. That business managers (including CEOs) running (and thus
controlling) government are higher than direct democracy may sound strange to
modern ears in the West, even in the E.U., in which Greece is a state unless
the difference between well-paid modern elected representatives and a mob of
mostly uneducated (i.e., unprofessional) laborers in ancient Athens is grasped.
Even in modern representative democracies, complete with terms of office to
buffer the momentary passions of the people—passions that can contradict a
people’s long-term best interests (i.e., the public good)—corporate interests likely
view themselves as superior and thus legitimately at the helm in what is known
as a plutocracy, or rule by wealth. The moneyed interests could cite Plato’s
hierarchy of government-types without bothering to point out that Plato had mob-rule
rather than the U.S. Senate in mind as democracy. We need not pit the
reasoning, albeit skewed by self-interest, of CEOs on public policy against
what a disorganized mob might come up with as the public good (over partial
interests), but we might want to consider whether corporations and individual
CEOs should have so much monetary sway with elected representatives and
their appointees that a representative democracy is de facto a
plutocracy serving the relatively narrow interests of capital. The pecuniary
interests of American defense-contractor companies in manufacturing and selling
weapons, planes, and tanks to the U.S. Government for use in Israel as it
pummeled 2 million residents of Gaza in 2024 and 2025 were not necessarily in the
best interests of the United States, which might have been more accurately represented
and instituted by the American electorates than business political-action-committees
helping representatives get re-elected. Not that any member of Congress cares
about that, of course.
Or take the “Big Beautiful
Bill” passed by the Republican lawmakers in both chambers of Congress and
signed by President Trump in 2025. The projected economic impacts on the
different economic tiers of Americans supports Adam Smith’s fear that company
managements and government officials would work together at the expense of
workers and even competitive markets themselves. On August 11, 2025, the
Congressional Budget Office made public its estimates “that the 10% poorest
Americans will lose roughly $1,200 a year as they experience restrictions on
government programs like Medicaid and food assistance, while the richest 10% of
Americans will see their income increase by $13, 600 from tax cuts. Overall , American
households will see more income from the tax cuts in the legislation, including
middle income households, but the largest benefit will go to the top 10% of
earners.”[1]
Such a distributional impact could be expected in a plutocracy, even in the
form of a hijacked representative democracy. Very poor disabled Americans
living on Social Security (SSI) of less than $1,000 a month already faced reductions
if they negotiate a good deal on rent, or a friend or relative helps out with
utilities or rent. That the U.S. Defense Department budget was increased, with
corporate defense contractors set to reap additional profits as a result, illustrates
the questionable ethics in taking from the poorest of the poor, who cannot
work, and giving more to wealthy corporations (with higher bonuses, everything
else equal, going to executives). Additionally, just for added fun, roughly “2.4
million people won’t be eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program [i.e., food stamps] under new work requirements” for poor Americans who
have not been declared disabled by the Social Security Administration.[2]
Food has thusly been declared not to be an unconditional human right.
As the work requirement applied to Medicaid, the government program that funds
healthcare for the very poor, access to medical services—and thus good health—was
also declared to not qualify as an unconditional human right.
In short, the American social
contract between the federal government and its people was changed in ways that
stood to make many of the poorest Americans poorer while defense contractors could
make even more money from that government. The new social contract reflected a
plutocracy or oligarchy in the guise of a representative democracy. Although
arguably superior to mob rule, such a trajectory for representative democracy may
trouble a good many people, financially or otherwise perhaps in conscience. A
person need only read John Rawl’s Theory of Justice to realize that a
plutocracy gearing public policy to the narrow interests of a part rather than
the whole of a society is diametrically opposed, or antipodal, to a system of
government and economy in which the poorest of the poor are looked to first
such that they can survive and lead decent, albeit not wealthy, lives before
other, increasingly better off tiers are taken into account. In a school yard,
only a bully goes after the kids with the least to eat for lunch so to enrich himself
and his buddies.
