A New Ruling Class
Power is increasingly concentrated among tech executives; platform owners; venture capital networks; data monopolies. Not elected, not accountable, extremely influential.
This is not traditional capitalism. It is technocratic oligarchy: rule by those who control digital infrastructure. Where twentieth-century elites controlled factories and banks, twenty-first-century elites control platforms and algorithms.
This shift is structural, not incidental. Whoever controls the infrastructure through which information flows, attention is allocated, and social life is organized holds power that rivals—and often exceeds—that of democratic states. These are not neutral technical services. They are governance systems that shape what is visible; what is viral; what is profitable; and therefore what is politically possible.
The new ruling class does not need to hold office. It operates through infrastructure that democratic institutions struggle to regulate and that citizens struggle to exit. You can avoid a particular product, but you cannot avoid the infrastructure through which all products flow.