Can We Ever Bring An End to this Neo-Gilded Age?

In recent years, Elon Musk has become increasingly entangled in politics. He buddied up with Donald Trump and for a few months before their inevitable falling out the Tech Mogul was allowed to rampage through American bureaucracy with his ‘Department of Governmental Efficiency’. His DOGE then scythed through established programs on the pretext of cutting waste with scant regard for what was being done. Not that there was much of a plan beyond simple cutting, Musk seems to have simply seized the opportunity to indulge his libertarian instincts and set out to inflict as much damage on the machinery of government as he could before he was stopped.

He has also sought to boost extreme right-wing parties where possible, backing Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, the Trump-supporting Javier Milei in Argentina, illiberal Hungarian leader Viktor Orban as well as backing far-right elements in both Britain and Ireland and elsewhere. His control of X, formerly Twitter, has provided him a nearly unparalleled megaphone on which to spread his message and to legitimise discourse that until relatively recently was regarded as beyond the pale due to their racist, sexist or homophobic content but which Musk platforms as ‘free speech’.

In countries where those he supports are in power, efforts are made to weaken the institutions that could offer a check on him. In countries where those he supports aspire to power, he is turning his mighty influence to boost them and denigrate their opponents in the hopes that they will gain power. This to me is what Musk seeks rather than any firm attachment to far-right or libertarian politics, and I find his claims to be a free speech crusader risible. What motivates Musk is the what has always motivated men like Musk. Power and wealth and gaining more of both.

For we have seen this story before.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during what historians call the Gilded Age in the US, they were called the Robber Barons.

Men, and of course they were always men, such as JP Morgan, the financier immortalized in the eponymous bank. Men such as Andrew Carnegie, after whom the Carnegie Hall was named and who built a monopoly on America steel. Men such as John D. Rockefeller who managed at one point to control 90% of the United States oil industry. They, and other Robber Barons, helped defined the Industrial Revolution through their ruthless business practices. As the Wikipedia article on the term makes clear, they were all characterized by

“Practices (that) included unfettered consumption and destruction of natural resources, influencing high levels of government, wage slavery, squashing competition by acquiring their competitors, and to create monopolies and/or trusts that control the market. The term combines the sense of criminal (“robber”) and illegitimate aristocracy (“baron”) in a republic.”

Some such as Andrew Carneige embarked on a philanthropic career once he had amassed enough wealth, but to me such activities are a poor substitute to ethical business practices and treating your workers fairly, almost an attempt to buy absolution and thus prove that the camel can indeed pass through the eye of the needle.

Eventually, government and society caught up and the power of the Robber Barons was restrained, diminished and diluted by a combination of anti-trust laws, breaking up monopolies and stronger institutions to regulate industry which slowly sapped them of their once unchallengeable power to a degree that they were relatively manageable.

Unfortunately, in yet another example of how the phrase ‘those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it’ is less a warning and more a description for how Human civilization operates, as time passed the lived experience of why industry was regulated was forgotten and the regulations themselves were decried as job-killing or overly-bureaucratic and slowly, but surely, the guardrails were chipped away at.

Today, instead of Robber-Barons we have their modern-day equivalents, the Tech Barons. In place of Morgan, Carnegie and Rockefeller we now have Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk. Like their antecedents, the Tech Barons carved out immense economic empires within new frontiers of business, in this case the digital world, before society and government realised what these new technologies meant or how critical they would be for our lives and as a result they now wield enormous, almost unchecked influence. For all their bowing and scraping before Trump as he returned to the Presidency they’ll still be there in three years when Trump’s time is up, and likely long afterwards, ready to channel their huge wealth and power towards their goals of gaining ever more.

And if society hasn’t learned from history, they most certainly have. Hence why Musk seeks to empower those who will weaken the institutions that could otherwise learn to constrain him.

Case in point, we see a controversy erupting this weekend when it was revealed that Grok, Musk’s AI platform which at one point last year declared itself as ‘MechaHitler’ whilst spewing antisemitism, was allowing users to manipulate images of people to remove their clothes, primarily of women but also including children. The British government has threatened to effectively ban X if immediate steps are not taken to tackle this issue, decrying Musk’s immediate response of limiting the functionality to paid users only…

“With increasing numbers of MPs and organisations fleeing X, Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, promised on Friday that ministers were looking seriously at the possibility of access to X being barred in the UK.

Kendall said she expected Ofcom, which said this week that it was seeking urgent answers from the platform, to announce action within “days not weeks”.

“X needs to get a grip and get this material down,” she said. “And I would remind them that in the Online Safety Act, there are backstop powers to block access to services if they refuse to comply with the law for people in the UK. And if Ofcom decides to use those powers, they would have the full backing of the government.”

So, is this it? Will one of the hitherto untouchable Tech Barons finally be brought to heel by a government willing to use the legal tools and its disposal to force a change in behaviour?

Probably not, as he has characterized the threat as an ‘attempt to suppress free speech’. And whilst he may have fallen out with Trump, the world’s most powerful man is extremely sensitive to attempts by (primarily European) other countries to regulate social media platforms, characterising such attempts as assaults on American companies. The Telegraph says that Britain ‘faces sanctions’ if it bans X…

“Anna Paulina Luna, a US Republican congresswoman and ally of Donald Trump, warned she would bring forward legislation to “sanction not only Starmer, but Britain as a whole” if it moved to ban the social media platform…Ms Luna, who serves on the House foreign affairs committee, said legislation was “currently being drafted” to introduce potential sanctions on the UK. She said this would “mirror actions previously taken by the US in response to foreign governments restricting the platform”. This included sanctioning a Brazilian judge who briefly imposed a ban on X in 2024.”

Given that the massive UK-US trade deal announced last year is currently stalled due to disputes over its implementation, the pressure on Starmer to avoid upsetting the Americans means I would personally be very surprised if his government follows through with the threat. The UK just isn’t powerful enough to force this kind change by itself (an inevitable outworking of Brexit) though David Lammy was last night lobbying US Vice-President JD Vance on British concerns.

There’s a measure of realism in that approach. In truth, bringing the Tech Barons to heel means dealing with them in their home jurisdiction, the United States, and that requires the election of an American President determined to tackle the social consequences of the Information Age, much as the attempt to tackle the problems of the Gilded Age led to the Progressive Era in the US.

Someone willing to strengthen institutions rather than smash them.

Someone willing to accept that the Tech Barons desire for faster and faster progress (which they use to justify their behaviour) at the cost of the social cohesion in society is a fool’s bargain.

Someone willing to regulate rather than look the other way.

Someone who will promote the virtue of competition rather than being seduced by the power and influence of the monopolies.

Someone willing to finally bring an end to the great enshittification that unregulated tech has mired our society in.

Someone capable of being elected in spite of the inevitable fusillade that those monopolies will train on that individual as a threat to their pre-eminence. A modern Theodore Roosevelt (hopefully shorn of imperialist leanings though, we already have a fan of that in the White House).

But whether there is a man or woman in the US capable of rising to meet the moment is a question I don’t have an answer to. Hopefully one day I can answer yes to that. Until then, this Neo-Gilded Age will keep grinding onwards.