A Conspiracy of Capital

How Political Favor Became a Deal Variable

Photo by Silas Lundquist on Unsplash

Yesterday I published an essay diagnosing Balaji Srinivasan’s Network State vision as spiritually empty dissolution of civilization—governance as consumer choice, democracy as thing you shop for, exit replacing democratic constraint.

This morning I listened to business reporter Rohan Goswami on the Prof G Markets podcast explain how Netflix might acquire Warner Bros Discovery. The segment’s framing was striking: the deal would close if Netflix could convince the Department of Justice and get the president behind it. That was described not as scandal but as straightforward M&A analysis—win over the right people in Washington, and the deal happens.

I had to stop the podcast. Rewind. Listen again.

This wasn’t investigative reporting exposing corruption. This was business analysis describing normal dealmaking. The casual treatment of regulatory approval as thing you purchase through political favor, stated as obvious fact about how media mergers work in 2025.

And suddenly the pattern I’d diagnosed theoretically yesterday was operating concretely in front of me this morning. Not in Singapore with Balaji’s bootcamps. Not in some hypothetical future. But in Manhattan boardrooms and Washington offices, right now, described by reporters as unremarkable business practice.

I’m writing this because the connections are clarifying as I watch them form. Because the dissolution isn’t coming—it’s here, operating in the discourse of how power talks about itself. Because the exit ideology I critiqued yesterday isn’t theoretical vision—it’s the language of dealmaking today. And because once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it.