The ultra-rich attack democracy with their city-states

Politics is the fight for everyone's happiness. (P. Mujica)

Simply do whatever they want, outside and against the constraints of the States, without rules other than those established by the superpower deriving from the immense accumulated wealth: this is the new strategy of the multi-billionaires. A notable example is the “Prospera” project which, after the purchase of a vast territory on the island of Roatan in Honduras, has created a completely independent city-state, privately managed by the super-rich, governed by investors who write their own laws, have equipped themselves with a crypto currency and have their own police force.

The prospect is futuristic. Among other things: by paying 25 thousand dollars, you can get a gene treatment that delays aging. This is guaranteed by Minicircle, a biotech startup registered in Delaware, knowing that the treatment is illegal in the USA. The Honduran example is becoming contagious. The Freedom Cities Coalition is at work. Trey Goff, head of the Prospera project, met with the Trump administration and said that he is “interested in the project” . The goal is to obtain a law that authorizes tech city-states in the USA. 28% of the US territory is federal property, it is possible to build there. After all, Trump, during the electoral campaign, had referred to both federal lands and Freedom cities. He had said: “We could use protected federal lands to develop ten new urban metropolises, to reignite the American imagination and interpret the American dream”. He is echoed by billionaire Peter Thiel – founder of PayPal and advisor to Trump – who finances the project of Patri Friedman (nephew of Milton), aimed at building floating communities in the sea, micro countries without taxes, without democracy and without rules other than those dictated by the leaders.

With this we are well beyond the Isola delle Rose, a 400 square meter platform built by the Bolognese engineer Giorgio Rosa in international waters between Rimini and Yugoslavia, declared a sovereign state, with Esperanto as its language, a government, a currency and a postal issue. It was mined and destroyed by the Italian government in 1968. The plan of the super-rich is much less naive, it aims to create realities of authoritarian self-government, outside of democracy: indeed, against democracy. " Freedom and democracy are not compatible ", Peter Thiel had already ruled in 2009, in an article entitled The Education of a Libertarian, where the word "libertarian" is used in a distorted way, to define oneself as a subject free to do anything, without any constraints or limits. We are at the beginning of a new phase. The predatory capitalism of the 20th century, with its destructive-productive capacity, was induced and forced by workers' and trade union struggles to guarantee rights to workers and citizens.

At the beginning of the 21st century, wild neo-feudal liberalism stands as a dominator that believes itself – and wants itself – to be unchallengeable, while it dominates nature and people. Neo-feudal techno-liberalism , to affirm the power of its predominant wealth, needs to escape from any form of social and political aggregation, it needs to constitute itself as a power in and of itself. The process began to become evident in the years of the Covid pandemic, when the principle “ we cannot save ourselves all, but only some” was practiced: understood, the wealthy peoples. Vaccines were not distributed in the poor countries of the global south, which were even prevented from producing them, with the veto through the holding of patents. It was the imperial necropolitics of the rich against the dispossessed.

After that ordeal, the cynicism of the neo-feudal techno-oligarchy aims at the total emancipation of itself from the rest of society , aiming to consolidate a completely self-referential power, even crumbling the minimum that remains of liberal democracy. So much so that defending it today takes on a revolutionary connotation… Now: in the 1% society we have reached, where a handful of nabobs – many of whom nestled in the White House or in the immediate vicinity – control wealth and assets that exceed those of the 99% of humanity, the situation that is emerging, although aberrant and dangerous, is “logical”. In fact: what is more linear than the fact that the super-rich can do whatever they want? And not only do they do it, but they are keen to let it be known, they proclaim it to the four winds, as a challenge that, by exalting their power, strengthens it.

The time of the capitalist who tried to secretly carry out his embezzlement is definitely over. The super-billionaire, on the contrary, loves to show off. Just like the feudal lord in the Middle Ages, who boasted of owning the land, the animals, the women and the men. With his city-states, the multi-billionaire satrap aims to make utopia concrete, realizing it as “plutopia” (“ ploutos”: “wealth”, “abundance ” for the Greeks). The techno-billionaires succeed in their intentions thanks to the resignation of the people, persuaded by the mantra “ there is nothing to be done, the world goes like this ”. Instead: human destiny can change, if people decide to burst into the history of the world as protagonists. As Einstein said: “Humanity will have the fate it deserves”.

FROM

Mario Capanna