Liberalism Is Not Oligarchy

Why Defending the Founders’ Republic Requires Taxing the Rich, Breaking Up Monopolies, and Calling the Bluff of Power

A friend read “Call The Wealthy’s Bluff” and told me: “It seems you’re becoming a socialist.”

I laughed. Then I realized they were serious.

So let me be clear: I’m not a socialist. I’m a classical liberal. An Americanist. I believe deeply in the constitutional framework the Founders designed—representative democracy constrained by law, protection of individual rights, free markets regulated to prevent monopoly and capture. I’ve written an entire essay about this called “My Ideology. No Bullshit.” Nothing in it has changed.

What I argued in “Call The Wealthy’s Bluff” isn’t socialism. It’s defense of liberalism against oligarchy. And if you can’t tell the difference, that reveals how successfully moneyed interests have convinced you that serving them is “moderate” while opposing their capture of democratic institutions is “radical.”

Let me explain what’s actually happening—and why defending classical liberalism requires calling out oligarchy, not accommodating it.

What I Actually Argued

In “Call The Wealthy’s Bluff,” I made several straightforward claims:

First, that wealth concentration has reached levels that threaten economic dynamism and democratic governance. When the top 10% of households account for 50% of consumer spending, the economy’s health depends on the choices of a tiny fraction of the population. This isn’t sustainable, and it’s not what market capitalism is supposed to produce—it’s what happens when markets get captured by rent-seekers who use political power to eliminate competition and extract value rather than create it.

Second, that we should tax extreme wealth and use those revenues to fund social programs that already exist and have overwhelming public support: Social Security, Medicare, education, infrastructure. Not new socialist schemes, but programs Americans already rely on and want preserved.

Third, that the crypto and Austrian economics fantasy of “hard money” solving inequality is a self-serving delusion that would lock in current wealth distributions and make them effectively permanent. Rejecting this isn’t leftism—it’s recognizing a con for what it is.

Fourth, that we should break up monopolies and enforce antitrust law. This is literally Teddy Roosevelt Republican policy, not socialism.

Fifth, that when billionaires threaten to leave if we raise their taxes, we should call their bluff. Because most won’t actually leave the world’s largest consumer market with the best infrastructure and legal protections over moderate tax increases.

None of this is socialist. It’s defending market capitalism from rent-seeking extractors. It’s defending democratic republicanism from oligarchic capture. It’s defending the classical liberal framework from people who want to use it to serve themselves while destroying the conditions that make it function.

What Americans Actually Want

Here’s what makes my friend’s comment so revealing: the positions I advocated aren’t just not-socialist, they’re not even controversial. They’re what most Americans already believe.

Look at the polling. According to Pew and Gallup:

A majority of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy. Not confiscatory rates, not wealth caps, just asking those with extreme wealth to pay proportionally more. This has been consistently true across decades of polling.

Overwhelming majorities support preserving and strengthening Social Security and Medicare. These aren’t fringe positions—they’re programs that most Americans depend on or expect to depend on.

Most Americans want affordable healthcare, though they disagree about the mechanism. But the idea that government should ensure access to healthcare isn’t socialist—it’s the position of every other developed democracy, many of which have more robust market economies than we do.

Most Americans support action on climate change, infrastructure investment, affordable education, and meaningful wage growth. The specifics of how to achieve these things are debatable, but the goals themselves have broad support.

And here’s the kicker: when the Republican Congress passed their recent tax and spending bill, two-thirds of Americans said they expected it to help the wealthy. Sixty percent said it would hurt low-income people. Half said it would harm the middle class. Even half of Republicans thought it would primarily benefit the wealthy.

The American people aren’t confused about whose interests are being served. They know. The massive tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting social programs aren’t popular. They never have been. Americans consistently oppose them when polled.

So why does Congress keep passing them?

The Capture

Because the political class doesn’t serve the American people. It serves moneyed interests. And it calls this arrangement “moderation.”

Consider what this looks like in practice. When Elon Musk’s effective tax rate is lower than a median household’s—when someone with a net worth in the hundreds of billions pays a smaller percentage of his income in taxes than a teacher or nurse—that’s not market capitalism rewarding innovation. That’s oligarchy rigging the rules.

When Congress passes tax legislation that two-thirds of Americans know will primarily benefit the wealthy, and passes it anyway, that’s not democracy. That’s capture.

This is what oligarchy looks like in a nominally democratic system. It’s not that elections don’t happen or that votes don’t get counted. It’s that the options presented to voters are constrained by what wealthy donors will accept. It’s that “serious” policy discussion happens within boundaries set by think tanks funded by billionaires. It’s that “responsible” governance means not threatening entrenched economic interests, regardless of what the public actually wants.

The genius of modern oligarchy is that it doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t say “we’re ignoring what you want because rich people matter more.” It says “we’re being moderate and responsible, while those radicals want to destroy capitalism.”

Meanwhile, two-thirds of the country knows the tax bill serves the wealthy and opposes it, and Congress passes it anyway. Then they tell you that opposing this arrangement is “moving left” or “becoming socialist.”

This is gaslighting at a systemic level.

The Overton window hasn’t necessarily moved right—the American people still want what they’ve always wanted. What’s happened is that the political class has redefined “the center” to mean “what wealthy donors want” rather than “what most Americans want.” And anyone who points out this disconnect gets labeled an extremist.

Why Oligarchy Destroys Liberalism

Classical liberalism—the intellectual tradition that produced the American founding—is built on a specific set of premises. That legitimate government emerges from the consent of the governed. That power must be constrained by law rather than exercised through personal authority. That individuals have rights that precede government and cannot be arbitrarily violated. That free markets, properly regulated, produce better outcomes than either state control or monopolistic capture.

All of this requires that government actually respond to the people it governs. When government instead responds primarily to wealthy donors while maintaining the formal structures of democracy, the entire classical liberal framework collapses.

You can’t have government by consent when policy gets determined by money rather than votes. You can’t have rule of law when the wealthy can buy exceptions. You can’t have protected individual rights when extreme wealth concentration creates de facto power that operates outside democratic accountability. You can’t have free markets when monopolies and oligopolies use political influence to eliminate competition.

Oligarchy doesn’t just threaten democracy in some abstract sense. It destroys the specific conditions that make classical liberalism possible as a governing philosophy.

The Founders understood this. They were terrified of what they called “faction”—organized interests that could capture government for private benefit rather than public good. They designed the constitutional structure specifically to prevent this kind of capture. Separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, the whole elaborate architecture was meant to make it difficult for any single interest to dominate.

But they couldn’t have anticipated the scale of modern wealth concentration or the sophistication of modern lobbying and political influence operations. The structures they built are being systematically circumvented by people who have the resources to work around constitutional constraints.

This is why defending classical liberalism in our moment requires opposing oligarchy. Not because opposing oligarchy is left-wing, but because oligarchy is fundamentally incompatible with the liberal democratic framework the Founders designed.

This Isn’t Anti-Capitalist

Let me be extremely clear about something: opposing oligarchic capitalism isn’t the same as opposing capitalism itself.

Market economies, properly structured, are extraordinarily effective at generating prosperity, driving innovation, and coordinating economic activity. Private property rights, price signals, profit incentives, competition—all of this produces outcomes that centrally planned economies cannot match.

But market capitalism requires certain conditions to function well. It requires actual competition rather than monopoly. It requires price signals that reflect real supply and demand rather than market manipulation. It requires rule of law that applies equally rather than being captured by the wealthy. It requires some baseline of economic security so that people can take risks and make investments.

When wealth concentrates to the degree it has now, these conditions break down. Competition gets eliminated through acquisition or regulatory capture. Price signals get distorted by monopolistic pricing. Rule of law becomes negotiable for those with enough resources. Economic insecurity becomes so pervasive that risk-taking becomes impossible for most people.

What I’m advocating in “Call The Wealthy’s Bluff” isn’t the destruction of capitalism. It’s the preservation of the conditions that make capitalism actually function as a wealth-generating system rather than as an extraction mechanism for those who already have wealth.

Progressive taxation, public investment, antitrust enforcement, regulation to prevent rent-seeking—these aren’t socialist impositions on markets. They’re the necessary conditions for markets to work in the public interest rather than just transferring wealth upward.

I’m trying to save entrepreneurial capitalism from the capitalists who want to turn it into hereditary oligarchy. That’s not left-wing. That’s genuinely conservative in the sense of conserving the conditions that made broad prosperity possible.

The Classical Liberal Case

So let me make the classical liberal case for everything I argued in “Call The Wealthy’s Bluff.”

Tax extreme wealth? Classical liberals believe in merit-based rather than hereditary status. Extreme wealth concentration creates dynasties that operate outside market competition and democratic accountability. Taxing it prevents the formation of a permanent aristocracy.

Fund Social Security and Medicare? Classical liberals believe government exists to secure the conditions for human flourishing. Social insurance against the risks of old age and medical catastrophe doesn’t violate market principles—it creates the security that allows people to take the entrepreneurial risks that make markets dynamic.

Break up monopolies? This is definitional classical liberalism. Free markets require actual competition. When firms get large enough to dictate terms to others, they stop being market participants and become private governments. Antitrust enforcement isn’t interference with markets—it’s preservation of the conditions that make markets function.

Reject crypto “hard money” schemes? Classical liberals believe in democratic governance, including democratic control over monetary policy. Handing that control to whoever holds the most cryptocurrency is the opposite of liberal democracy—it’s plutocracy with technological window dressing.

Call the bluff on capital flight? Classical liberals believe in the rule of law and democratic sovereignty. When wealthy individuals threaten to abandon democratic obligations, they’re revealing that they see themselves as above the social contract. Calling that bluff affirms that citizenship carries obligations, not just privileges.

Every single position I advocated can be defended on classical liberal grounds. The fact that they now sound “left-wing” to some people reveals how thoroughly oligarchic interests have captured the discourse.

What Americanism Actually Means

I call myself an Americanist because I believe in the American project as the Founders conceived it. Not as some perfect finished product, but as an ongoing attempt to create a political system where free people can govern themselves through constitutional democracy.

This project has always involved tension between different values and interests. Between individual liberty and collective responsibility. Between private property and public good. Between market efficiency and social stability. The genius of the American system is that it created institutions capable of managing these tensions through democratic deliberation rather than through authoritarian imposition.

But this only works if the institutions actually respond to the people they’re supposed to serve. When government becomes the instrument of oligarchic interests while maintaining democratic forms, the whole project collapses into what the Founders most feared: tyranny through faction rather than through formal dictatorship.

Defending the American project in our moment means recognizing that oligarchy is the threat. Not socialism, which has virtually no political power in the United States. Not leftist radicals, who can’t win elections and have no institutional influence. Oligarchy—the systematic capture of democratic institutions by moneyed interests who use them to serve themselves while calling this arrangement “moderate” or “centrist.”

The People have been duped. Not because they’re stupid or because they’ve been seduced by socialism. But because they’ve been told that the system is working for them when it demonstrably isn’t, and that anyone pointing this out must be a radical rather than someone defending the principles the system is supposed to embody.

Why This Matters

My friend thinks I’m becoming a socialist because I argued that we should tax billionaires, fund popular programs, break up monopolies, and reject crypto schemes that would lock in wealth inequality.

This confusion is diagnostic. It reveals that “capitalism” has been redefined in public discourse to mean “whatever serves the interests of the already-wealthy.” So defending actual market capitalism—where competition exists, where rent-seeking gets discouraged, where success comes from creating value rather than capturing existing wealth—now sounds like socialism.

Similarly, “moderation” has been redefined to mean “don’t threaten entrenched interests.” So representing the actual views of most Americans—who want the wealthy taxed more, who want social programs preserved, who oppose legislation that primarily serves billionaires—now sounds extreme.

And “classical liberalism” has been captured by people who use it to defend oligarchy while attacking anyone who points out the capture as somehow anti-liberal.

This is how oligarchy perpetuates itself in nominally democratic systems. Not through formal dictatorship, but through controlling the discourse so thoroughly that defending democracy against oligarchy sounds radical while serving oligarchy sounds moderate.

I’m not moving left. I’m standing exactly where I’ve always stood: as a classical liberal and Americanist who believes in constitutional democracy that responds to popular will within constraints designed to protect individual rights and prevent tyranny.

What’s changed is that this position now sounds radical because oligarchy has become normalized. Because the political class serves donors rather than voters and calls this “responsibility.” Because wealth concentration has reached levels incompatible with democratic governance and pointing this out gets labeled “socialist.”

You don’t have to be a socialist to oppose oligarchy. Oligarchy is incompatible with liberalism too. It destroys the conditions that make classical liberal democracy possible. It captures the institutions that are supposed to constrain power and uses them to concentrate it further. It turns citizenship into a commodity available to those with enough resources.

Defending the classical liberal framework requires recognizing oligarchy as the threat and opposing it through constitutional means: progressive taxation, antitrust enforcement, public investment, democratic accountability.

This isn’t socialism. It’s Americanism. It’s what the Founders would have recognized as defense of the republic against the very faction they most feared—concentrated wealth using government for private benefit rather than public good.

I haven’t moved. The question is: when did you start mistaking oligarchy for moderation?

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And classical liberalism requires that government serve the people rather than the oligarchs who’ve captured it.

No bullshit.

It’s time to reclaim the American center from those who sold it.