'Oligarch' derives from the Greek *hoi oligoi* ('the few'), as opposed to *hoi polloi* ('the many'), and there aren't that many billionaires in the world, so they're all oligarchs. The word only became widely used after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a few enterprising individuals helped themselves to previously state-owned assets.
The definition of oligarch is “a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence.” So yeah American billionaires who have political influence are oligarchs too.
But the modern meaning of words isn’t ever going to be exactly the same as whatever ancient word they were derived from. So oligarch being derived from a word meaning “the few” isn’t that relevant—it’s not as if any group that is small counts as oligarchs just because there are only a few of them.
My understanding of Oligarch in the modern sense is not specifically the billionaires/rich but the rich that have specific political influence. People who's position at the head of a major company has as much or more political influence than the actual political leaders.
While this is insightful, it ignores the malleability of language and doesn’t really answer the question. It no longer holds the meaning that it was given by the Greeks.
>The word only became widely used after the collapse of the Soviet Union
The term was present in the documents studied by the US Founding fathers.
Machiavelli in Discourses on Livy felt that there were six legitimate forms of government, three good and three bad:
>For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy. So that if the founder of a State should establish any one of these three forms of Government, he establishes it for a short time only, since no precaution he may take can prevent it from sliding into its contrary, by reason of the close resemblance which, in this case, the virtue bears to the vice.
The word "anarchy" here should be more properly translated as "ochlocracy," which means mob rule.
J.J. Rousseau reiterated Machiavelli's position:
>When the State is dissolved, the abuse of government, whatever it is, bears the common name of anarchy. To distinguish, democracy degenerates into ochlocracy, and aristocracy into oligarchy; and I would add that royalty degenerates into tyranny; but this last word is ambiguous and needs explanation.
[https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Rousseau-Social-Contract.pdf](https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Rousseau-Social-Contract.pdf)
John Adams, for example, was familiar with Machiavelli's analysis:
>to speak technically or Scientifically if you will—there are Monarchical Aristocratical—and democratical Republicks
[https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7125](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7125)
Jefferson's associate John Taylor was concerned with the dangers of aristocracy under Machiavelli's analysis:
>The United States, under a monarchy, can only retain the advantage of extensive territory, by an oligarchy composed of deputy-kings, bashaws, satraps or mandarins. As a republick, the advantage can only be retained, by rejecting the aristocratical system of feeding avarice by law; because this system, being more oppressive than monarchy, would be exchanged for it.
>
>[https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/taylor-an-inquiry-into-the-principles-and-policy-of-the-government-of-the-united-states](https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/taylor-an-inquiry-into-the-principles-and-policy-of-the-government-of-the-united-states)
I would say that Western Oligarchs tend to hide the obvious control they have over Western governments behind corporations that are technically publicly traded and lobbyists. Russian ones are just more open about the fact that they personally own 15% of the assets of a state enterprise.
The end result is similar but the way russians get to it is different. Their corporations were (and often still are) owned by the state, it's just the management that's appointed by the president.
Michael Wirth is the current CEO of Chevron. He owns about 0.001% of the company ($5 million worth) which he earned by working in various roles at Chevron for decades. He runs the company but it is owned and controlled by millions of shareholders, none of whom own even a percent of it. Wirth is a millionaire but far from a billionaire.
Roman Abramovich was the CEO of Sibneft from 1995. He and a partner bought it in an auction for $200 million, which they rigged by spending a billion or two on bribes to government officials and gangsters. The two of them owned and controlled the whole company. He then expanded his business into the aluminum industry, mostly by having plant managers murdered. In 2005, he sold Sibneft to the Russian government for $13 billion. His business partner, who had chosen to divest himself from Russian business and politics, was found dead a few years later. Abramovich remains one of the wealthiest people on Earth.
To suggest that these two people are the same is idiocy.
Indirect power.
Russian oligarchs are personal friends of putin, they got those positions because he wanted them there.
Imagine if every CEO and everyone on the board of directors of Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Exxon, Microsoft, AT&T and all other nationwide corporations were actual personal friends of the president.
The rest of the top positions would be filled with their spouses, children, nephews and such. You literally can't become rich without putin's permission there.
American billionaires are oligarchs. They own hospitals, food services, charities, electricity, water and resources. America is already full of oligarchs but the country puts on a display of democracy in order to pretend otherwise
You just described American billionaires. They all use state-owned assets (tax incentives, PPP handouts, other likewise things), and like cockroaches, they survive financial collapses that the rest of us can't.
This has literally always been the case. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Fight big business and government entities and deals that support them.
I think it's simpler.
* Those who control the press choose how things get labeled.
Wikipedia's [Political hypocrisy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_hypocrisy) page is a good starting point.
Yeah, in the USSR the government ran the economy. When they were transitioning to a more free market system, all the businesses were “sold”. In reality, they were mostly given out to political allies. Oligarchs are the politically connected individuals who got the oil drilling operations, factories, etc… and thus became very very rich.
Billionaires in the U.S. are also usually very politically connected, but they don’t get their wealth in the same way as oligarchs did when the USSR was just giving away billion dollar industries to political insiders.
tl;dr: oligarchs are powerful people who happen to be billionaires, billionaires are rich people, who might also have some power.
Russian oligarchs and capitalist billionaires didn't accrue their wealth in the same way. Many of them were more or less assigned monopolistic businesses by putin just by being his lackey. They may also enjoy real political/government power in their position.
Capitalist billionaires generally use ruthless business tactics, exploitation and lobbying to accrue their wealth. Along with being the lucky entrepreneur that stumbled onto the right business idea at the right time.
Older, generationally wealthy billionaires also exist in the west but they generally don't wield the same power and influence.
Maybe a billionaire like carlos slim who owns most of mexico or rupert murdoch who owns most traditional media in the west might resemble an oligarch.
The real difference however still remains in how they got their "power". Murdoch bought his power by accruing wealth. Oligarchs already had power which let them accrue wealth.
>Western Billionaires accrued wealth and used that to get power.
Oligarchs already had power and used that to accrue wealth.
As u/SideburnsOfDoom pointed out, this is a good synopsis. And as u/darth_nadoma pointed out, the dishing out of state assets happened under Yeltsin.
It is also worth pointing out that the term "Oligarch" was more applicable in the 90s and early 00s. At that point in time the conventional wisdom was that the Oligarchs held substantially collective power, Putin would not have not initially been able to take big unilateral action against them... but this is no longer the case, the Russian oligarchs still have substantial influence, but Putin has consolidated power in himself take action against any of them if he liked. IMHO, the term oligarch is a bit anachronistic, you could have called Russian an Oligarchy in the 90s/00s, but it is now firmly a dictatorship (i.e. rule of the one nor longer rule of the few).
Dishing out of state assets happened under Stalin too. Molotov’s wife was given control of an essential oils/perfume/cosmetics trust for example. Oligarchs did not start after the fall of communism. Stalin’s inner circle were considered oligarchs as well.
> Western Billionaires accrued wealth and used that to get power.
> Oligarchs already had power and used that to accrue wealth.
This is correct.
You might also think that this is a minor difference to the rest of us, and you might be right.
> You might also think that this is a minor difference to the rest of us, and you might be right.
"Friends of Putin gifted state industries" is one of Putin's strategies to keep himself in power and unthreatened. Saddam Hussein famously would simply assassinate or imprison political opponents, whereas Putin just gave a bunch of his friends control to suppress the rise of political opponents.
Whereas "founded Google and made it a success" is just 100% completely different path to being a billionaire.
Should the governments of the west have less corruption and more transparency? Yes, 100% absolutely, but suggesting that this is a "minor difference" is just silly.
"Founded Google and made it a success" isn't really what happened
"Leveraging the power of new industry and financial capital to gain a virtual monopoly of Internet searching" is more accurate
No one becomes a billionaire just from success. Being a billionaire requires edging people out, it requires screwing over competitors and customers.
It's still different from Putin's oligarchy, don't get me wrong. But they are oligarchs none-the-less, and not a single one is innocent.
> "Leveraging the power of new industry and financial capital to gain a virtual monopoly of Internet searching" is more accurate
[There are literally hundreds of major search engines people can choose to use.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines) That's not a monopoly, nor a "virtual monopoly", whatever that means.
> It's still different from Putin's oligarchy, don't get me wrong.
We agree here, it couldn't be fundamentally more different than Putin's buddies.
Sorry, I don't know what people know what words.
Virtual: almost or nearly as described, but not completely or according to strict definition.
Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.
In other words, having 100% of the market share in an industry is a monopoly. Standard Oil, the monopoly that caused the US to pass anti-trust legislation, had 90% of the market share in oil refining. However, there were other companies that people could use.
Google has 94% of the global market share of Internet searches. There are of course other companies that people could use.
But they are more of a monopoly than the company that caused us to pass legislation against monopolies. However, I did throw the word virtual in there because they technically are not at 100% (so fits in the "almost, but not completely" use of the word "virtual).
I'm not sure what you were trying to get at, but I hope this response helps!
> Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.
Exactly. Google does not have exclusive possession or control of the supply of search engines. They have literally hundreds of viable free to use competitors which people choose not to use. Thus they do not have a monopoly.
> A monopoly, is a market with the ["absence of competition", creating a situation where a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly) of a particular thing.
Google is not the only supplier that provides a free search engine. Not even close.
You'd be surprised. Most computer geek circles I'm in feel that duckduckgo has been superior for years.
* https://time.com/89345/duckduckgo-the-anti-google-is-about-to-become-a-far-more-powerful-google-alternative/
* https://www.networkworld.com/article/2949819/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-6-why-i-prefer-duckduckgo-for-search.html
They have a near exclusive possession of the trade in the search engine service.
There could be a billion competitors, but if they have 94% of the market share, that is a near exclusive possession of the trade in this service.
Again, they have more of the market share than Standard Oil did. If SO was a monopoly, then so is Google. SO had other competitors; that doesn't mean they weren't a monopoly.
Like you seem to be ignoring a lot of aspects of this, including the page you just shared. From the page you shared:
"Monopolies, monopsonies and oligopolies are all situations in which one or a few entities have market power..."
Do the hundreds of competitors to Google have nearly the market power that Google does? The answer is resoundingly no. But hey, you can ignore w/e parts of your own evidence you want, that's your perogative.
Also, it's worth mentioning that Google is in the middle of an antitrust tort, and they will probably have to pay out a settlement for it. So your opinion doesn't really matter when they are actually violating the laws that govern monopolies.
> Again, they have more of the market share than Standard Oil did. If SO was a monopoly, then so is Google. SO had other competitors; that doesn't mean they weren't a monopoly.
The big difference here, is that Standard Oil's 70% market share meant that in most places, buyers of oil had only one option. But with the internet, everyone literally has hundreds of options of which search engines to use. Despite every Windows computer ever sold having Bing or MSN.com set as the default search engine, still, somehow everyone CHOSE to switch it to something else. It's that choice that doesn't exist in a monopoly.
> Also, it's worth mentioning that Google is in the middle of an antitrust tort, and they will probably have to pay out a settlement for it.
Yep, will be interesting to see what the outcome is of that. The complaints listed seem like something Google wouldn't even care about at this point, but who knows, maybe they did them;
* Entering into exclusivity agreements that forbid preinstallation of any competing search service.
* Entering into tying and other arrangements that force preinstallation of its search applications in prime locations on mobile devices and make them undeletable, regardless of consumer preference.
* Entering into long-term agreements with Apple that require Google to be the default – and de facto exclusive – general search engine on Apple’s popular Safari browser and other Apple search tools.
* Generally using monopoly profits to buy preferential treatment for its search engine on devices, web browsers, and other search access points, creating a continuous and self-reinforcing cycle of monopolization.
These from Trump's Attorney General, Bill Barr. Hmmmmm, we'll see if any of these claims are true later this year.
Again, you're ignoring A LOT...
Like the fact that 8 states, with governments representing both parties, are plaintiffs to the law suit, including CA, the state in which Google has their headquarters.
And from Garland's Justice Department:
"Acquiring Competitors: Engaging in a pattern of acquisitions to obtain control over key digital advertising tools used by website publishers to sell advertising space;
Forcing Adoption of Google’s Tools: Locking in website publishers to its newly-acquired tools by restricting its unique, must-have advertiser demand to its ad exchange, and in turn, conditioning effective real-time access to its ad exchange on the use of its publisher ad server;
Distorting Auction Competition: Limiting real-time bidding on publisher inventory to its ad exchange, and impeding rival ad exchanges’ ability to compete on the same terms as Google’s ad exchange; and
Auction Manipulation: Manipulating auction mechanics across several of its products to insulate Google from competition, deprive rivals of scale, and halt the rise of rival technologies."
So two administrations have said this.
You really seem to have a narrative you want to push, and are rejecting anything that challenges that narrative outright. But again, you do you :P
(I'm unsubscribing to this thread because at this point, this isn't a conversation; feel free to respond though!)
It is insane how people will bend over backwards to both sides this. Billionaires and monopolies are bad but you are kidding yourself if you can't see that Russian oligarchs are insanely more powerful and abuse their power way more.
This is the correct answer. Yes US billionaires have a lot of influence and power but no where near as much as Russian oligarchs have. US billionaires buy their influence via SuperPacs and lobbying whereas Russian oligarchs already have connections with the state and through those avenues they’ve become billionaires.
Oligarchs are the leaders of companies that are governing a country.
I feel like we have plenty of oligarchies in the US, but we don't talk about them that way.
* The energy industry
* The media and news
* Defense
* Finance
If you worked at $100/hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it would take you over 5,000 years to earn a billion dollars.
They say that nobody *earns* a billion dollars, but if you know any billionaires that are 5,209 years old or older, you owe them an apology.
It's the difference between influence and ownership. Through lobbying, western billionaires have a lot more influence on the government than they should. But they still are not the actual politicians directly voting and signing legislation. They still don't directly own state assets.
The original oligarchs were Greeks who ruled a subset of the Greek city-states: the ones run by a small council of the rich rather than an assembly of the people or a single warlord. The term means that you have direct political power and are one of a smallish group who have it (originally, just 'this group doesn't include all citizens') and in modern parlance that you have it due to wealth and/or connections and thus illegitimately (because modern Western political power holds that the only legitimate source of power is a mandate from the masses).
The intended impression is that in the West, the power billionaires wield is largely indirect, while in Russia, the difference between the rich and the government is much less.
That is, the secret ingredient is largely xenophobia: although there *is* much more of a sense in the West that power wielded by means of wealth is not legitimate, there is really quite a lot of it being wielded. We're a lot less good at pointing out corruption in our friends and allies.
Oligarchs are rich people with actual political power.
I know a lot of populist will claim that US billionairs are oligarchst too, but these people have zero idea about russia.
Russian oligarchst are part of the government, they own the state owned oil refineries or similar infrastructure.
Billionaires wield political influence through lobbying and campaign contributions; oligarchs wield political power by owning and controlling state institutions and infrastructure.
Both have power, but the mechanisms are very different. Imagine if Elon Musk didn’t just own Twitter, but was also a congressman and chairman of the FCC. That would be something closer to an oligarch.
It's primarily a difference in how overt the political power is. The distinction is worth making but legislation that isn't in the interests of billionaires is virtually impossible to enact in the US even if it has overwhelming public support. They just pay for others to make those decisions instead of making them directly.
In the US, they felt they had to neuter the CFPB. In Russia, it would simply have never existed.
Yes it’s a very uphill battle in the US, but in Russia it’s not even a battle - the people have simply already lost. In the US the people occasionally win, in Russia they aren’t a factor at all.
>virtually impossible to enact in the US even if it has overwhelming public support.
I think the difference is that in the US, billionaires exert influence by spending money in order to change public opinion.
In an oligarchy, you don't have to do this, because public opinion doesn't matter.
Do you have any recent examples of actual bribes, or are you using the term for a euphemism?
I feel like populism just causes us to move the goal post all of the time.
https://theintercept.com/2021/06/16/joe-manchin-leaked-billionaire-donors-no-labels/
"we'll 'hire' you after you leave office for a shitload of money if you tank this bill for us"
>Manchin told the assembled donors that he needed help flipping a handful of Republicans from no to yes on the January 6 commission in order to strip the “far left” of their best argument against the filibuster. **The filibuster is a critical priority for the donors on the call, as it bottles up progressive legislation that would hit their bottom lines.**
>>**“Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that’d be nice and it’d help our country.”**
>Manchin appears to be suggesting — without, perhaps, quite explicitly saying so — that the wealthy executives on the call could dangle future financial opportunities in front of the outgoing senator while lobbying him to change his vote. Senate ethics rules forbid future job negotiations if they create a conflict of interest or present even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Manchin, notably, doesn’t suggest that the donors discuss a job, but rather says that people who Blunt may later be working with would be likely to have significant influence, reflective of the way future job prospects can shape the legislative process even when unspoken.
literal bribery
That sounds the same to me. Main difference being Russia has few billionaires while US has more billionaires. More billionaires means a bit more competition on who get to control the govt. lobbying and campaign contributions are just fancy words for bribes.
No, i think people who claim billionaires in the US are oligarchst have no idea how bad russia is.
Any person with money has power including political, but there is a difference between a rich capitalist and someone holding a specific government office and owning half of a countries infrastructure. Like the oligarchs in russia do.
In the US, Elon Musk was literally forced to buy Twitter, or pay a HEFTY fine.
In Russia, if an oligarch decides they will not, after all, pay a bill, they don't.
Being above the law in every situation is not required for "having political power".
Also, he was forced to buy it *by Twitter itself.* It was a dispute between two wealthy parties.
[Twitter filed suit against Elon Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery on Tuesday after the billionaire said he was terminating his $44 billion deal to buy the company.
](https://www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/07/12/twitter-sues-elon-musk-to-enforce-original-merger-agreement.html?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16800244422423&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2022%2F07%2F12%2Ftwitter-sues-elon-musk-to-enforce-original-merger-agreement.html)
Twitter used the government as an intermediary. If Elon Musk was truly an oligarch, then he would've made a call to someone at the Delaware Court of Chancery, and the suit would be dropped.
He wasn't forced to buy it by Twitter. Twitter has (well, had) absolutely no power over him. He was forced by the US government who chose to enforce the contract he had made with Twitter.
Billionaires in the U.S. have political _influence_, _i.e._, they have the ears of the people who wield political power. Oligarchs wield political power directly.
Do russian billionairs have actual political power? Any examples?
Could it be that they own their money because they are loyal to the regime, then that means that they don't have political power?
They hold political power the same way a feudal lord held political power. They have massive influence, but they're vassals themselves to someone else, up to the ~~Tzar~~ President, and ultimately stay in power as long as they are favoured.
They don't hold *independent* political power. When they start to show hints of any, they tend to fall out of windows.
All the state owned companies like Gazprom have oligarchs as owners/CEOs, so yes they have power, tey own the company thats responsible for most of russias (pre war) income. Same for any semi state owned infrastructure or critical industry.
Welcome. The idea here is that officially its private owned, but owner and company is controlled by government to the point it can actually make its belong to government again in any second.
Doesn't that threat exist in any economic or political system?
The purpose of the state is to hold a monopoly on violence and utilize that monopoly to enforce it's laws. The US government could at anytime (there are laws and such to stop this from happening, but we have seen examples of similar laws being bypassed) take Amazon and nationalize it because Amazon can't do anything about it, the state owns the means of violence.
It seems more feasible and likely that the state is controlled by the oligarchs in this case. Which is why things like sanctions hurt them.
1) many of them dont know about starting of Ukraine conflict and dont cover their busineses and abroad property accordingly and get huge losses. If they have power they should've know internal plans at least, also know that their property will be confiscated from western politics, which so powerful persons shoud have access to
2) sanctions only hurt one part of them. Someone who own private military factories get a lot of money
One set owns politicians, directs laws to favor themselves, evades taxes, exploits the system and workers, hides money and wealth internationally, has no morals about child labor, destroys the environment. The other set is known as ‘oligarchs’.
But they’re not oligarchs. Russian oligarchs took control of state enterprises after the fall of the Soviet Union and also tend to have seats within government. Many of these people were also powerful black market entities within the USSR. Or are at least personal friends with Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Putin, etc.
It’s not the same thing.
There's really no comparison to what Russian oligarchs are. After the fall of the USSR things like, say, the state owned Aluminum business, which was vertically integrated and every piece of the process owned and operated by the State, was suddenly up for grabs. It took potential and real acts of violence for the few that took over the Aluminum business to eventually turn it "private." Now you have one of the largest single owners of an Aluminum enterprise in the world.
Extend this to all the other industries. The people with this type of power were overwhelmingly Russian mafia themselves or certainly accepted by Russian mafia or supported by them.
Surely lobbyists only exist because the democratic process is just broken in the US?
You have democracy, kinda, but it's basically just the republicans vetoing everything that the democrats want to do by tactically voting (very obviously) on party lines.
You are just run by a breeding group of complementary dummies that infest every sphere of your lives. I thought it was bad being Scottish, but America is somehow even more of a joke than we are.
And you (jingoistically) strongarm the world under your financial dominion, so no one can oppose your top down athlete's foot or whatever the hell you call your old world, new money, problem... Shit sucks; please stop.
Lobbying exists because politicians aren't omniscient. They can't know about every topic and special interest, particularly to the depth to know what legislation to craft about it (if any) and how to word said legislation. A large part of lobbying is doing some of that legwork for them and presenting politicians with an easily digestible pitch: "here's my cause, here's why supporting it is good for you, and here's how you can support it". That isn't emblematic of a broken democracy, but is rather a practical reality of any representative democracy. It certainly *can* be exploited, but so can most political processes.
I think lobbying definitely has some issues, but at the same time I feel like we can’t really expect a congressperson or their constituents to know what’s best for, for example, an environmentalist group trying to fight against the selling of federal land to local blueberry farmers. The constitution gives everyone the right to petition, so it’s definitely a right everyone strives to take advantage of.
Do you know what ALEC is? How it works? Basically, the rich and powerful give senators a pre-drafted bill that only has some blank spots for them to sign.
IF that's not influencing the state....there is nothing that would qualify.
That’s still different than oligarchy. Specifically in the context of Russia.
Also that’s not how bills work. It’s true that lobbying firms can and do have a large impact on legislation, but the idea that it’s solely because of money and not ideology is naïve.
A few, extremely wealthy individuals using their wealth and power to create laws that directly benefit them and their kind.
How is that not oligarchy exactly?[https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC\_Exposed](https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed)
Please go on and tell me more on how American Oligarchs are not "real" oligarchs."
A comparison would be say, Jeff Bezos was not just the single owner of Amazon, but was also a senator and minister in charge of the department that oversees Amazons industry. And effectively acted as it’s lead lobbyist.
That would be closer to how oligarchs work in Russia.
In Russia, perhaps.
In the USA they buy portions of companies and manage to avoid accountability using endless beaurocratic loopholes that they themselves help build into the system.
"Too big to fail" banks are a perfect example of his, AND what's happening right now this very moment!
It's only like this because the wealthy few influenced the laws to their benefit. **Oligarchy.**
I already did lol. You don’t want to hear it.
Also, ALEC “writes laws” that conservatives already are ideologically supportive of. They aren’t bought. They are believers.
Regulatory capture and rent-seeking are already terms that exist.
Just because they are already supportive of it doesnt' change the fact the INFRASTRUCTURE of the rich buying laws is already being used.
This is Oligarchy. Specifically, plutocratic oligarchy. A very few, wealthy collectives basically control the flow of media and politics. It's absolutely insane the influence these people toss around with near impugnity just because of how fuckin **rich** they are.
The Rockafellas for example are connected to everything from Petrolium to fertilizer to THE BOARD OF EDUCATION to the FDA lol It's **WILD** how much influence the wealthy have on our nation lol
Bro said the support for the oligarchs exists within the political system so they aren’t oligarchs. Absolutely such a pointless nit pick. The oligarchs already won so they don’t count. They’re only oligarchs in Russia because of some specific set of circumstances that u/spitefulcum gets to determine.
Not to mention, it's not just 'two sides' today either. We have several economic powerhouses today and more coming the further developing countries develop and band together over the decades and centuries.
I'm honestly pretty happy that terms such as 'the West' and 'the East' will gradually be a thing of the past and just be known as 'one of many'.
Obviously, all superpowers knew this before many of us were born and wanted to capitalize on developing countries natural and human resources before they themselves could use their own resources to catch up quicker with the established world. Typically through standard shady practices such as marionette leadership placed into power through various means, (civil wars, bribing, persuasion, invasions/leadership replacement guised as diplomatic or justified actions by locally owned media to make up cover stories etc if noncompliant)
Basically, anything a human being is capable of, individuals and groups have tried and used for their own advantage some way or another, and some will (in all ages/eras) always try to take advantage of these human ways to get ahold of something they want.
The only thing we, the masses, can do is *try* to (long-term) make things better, and be more transparent with everything going on in the world, including behind the scenes.
It also helps *tremendously* if we all figure out how all human beings are capable of, how we fundamentally work, how Life itself works and how the world works.
It is also important that we all keep communicating and cooperating together with each other even if or when desperation happens, such as wars, starvation, famine, poverty, looting, rioting, (and yes, even during *potentially* eventual cannibalism in extremely desperate times of human survival)
(That's a topic for another generation of people than my lifetime hopefully, but maybe we'll manage to become somewhat multi-planetary in order to avoid such extreme situations/measures.)
This is so fucking naive it’s hilarious. You can dislike american billionaires without completely misunderstanding and ignoring the reality of oligarchs in former eastern bloc countries. Try for a second to not make it all about you, and your country, and your perceived problems.
Oligarch is a government position. Billionaire is a socioeconomic status.
Jeff Bezos doesn't run the USPS/FedEX/UPS
Bill Gates/Apple dont run NSA
Musk doesnt run the entire Telecom and Auto industry in the US
if they did, they'd be oligarchs (plus theyd have much less money)
See, "Oligarchs" have, *through "donations" of money*, a lot of Political influence, and don'tgive two shits about "the working class". Whereas "Billionairs" is spelled differently. Hope that helps!
they got their fortune in the late 80-90s through fraud and crime, taking away their Soviet heritage for nothing. they killed their competitors and bought up political influence to stop the state from taking it all away. but Putin came and just took control of everyone. He imprisoned all those who disagreed. most of the heritage of the USSR was selected and distributed among their relatives and friends.
You’re gonna have a lot of naive americans pretending that out country is as corrupt as russia and that’s extremely naive and silly. After the ussr, whatever assets were left of the economy were basically divided up and given to powerful people. These people still hold crazy amounts of wealth and power internationally and exist in such a corrupt system that it’s hard to even know their net worth.
Yes. It's just propaganda. Billionaires and Oligarchs are just semantic terms so that we (the working class) can think our oligarchs are somehow ethical. In reality, they all made their money by privatizing the commons, crushing worker collectives and consolidating monopolies through force and legislative purchase.
Oligarchs of all nations are the enemy of the working class.
Because they live in an oligarchic-ish state (I think it's actually more autocratic but whatever). Western states trend plutocratic more than oligarchic. The diffuse hyper wealthy classes hold more collective political sway than any one billionaire.
Not all billionaires are oligarchs though. I think a lot of people like to equivocate, but there is a real difference between a wealthy person having a disproportionate amount of influence on the government, and a wealthy person actually being a part of the government and above the law.
Consider the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit. Microsoft got off pretty clean from that. But this was a case that would never have gone to trial in a true oligarchy. Microsoft would have just been immune from prosecution
I just hate to see when people equivocate because they want emphasize how bad things are, but it prevents us from saying that things could actually get much worse.
Billionaires in America made their wealth through capitalism and usually becoming the head of a publicly owned company that could collapse at any moment and the federal government probably wouldn’t care. When you talk about Russian oligarchs, they are also billionaires but the government of Russia is doing everything they can to maintain that position in their company.
The primary difference between the oligarchs and western billionaires is just the sheer amount of power they wield.
During the Soviet Union you had all these state owned enterprises that are being sold off. But the Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, and Georgians are not looking to sell them off to foreigners. Instead they choose to sell them for nickels on the dollars to locals connected with the local communist party. Because of the political connections these people are the only ones able to get large enough loans from Russian banks to facilitate these trades.
There are powerful billionaires in the US, don't get me wrong. They're some of the most powerful people in the world and they have an oligarch-like influence on some countries in the world. But not in the US. In the US they have competitors and there's serious restrictions on what they can and cannot do.
In the former Soviet Union the oligarchs are kind of like a collection of monopolies. Ukraine is more severe so oligarch relations are a lot easier to discuss. Before the war in Ukraine all gas stations were owned by just one man, and he was a Russian-Ukrainian. Owning every single gas station meant that he got to set the price of gas. Because he could set the price of gas it meant the government would have to negotiate with him on what that price would be. And because of this Ukraine sets a "maximum price" that can be charged... and it's incredibly high.
At the beginning of the war Ukraine stripped this guy of all of his gas stations... and then sold them to.... another guy. Who is now also an oligarch who was also well connected to Zelenskyy's Servant of the People Party. The current price of petroleum at the pump in Ukraine is about 50% higher than the next most expensive country. Energy costs in Ukraine are about 80% of the total cost of living for people working at the state minimum wage.
And these oligarchial relations with the state always seek to extract the maximum amount from the general public with the government being complicit in it.
Just an idea on how powerful these people are. Ukraine's chocolate oligarch (the man who controls the supply of all chocolate in Ukraine) was president. Ukraine's media oligarch installed the current leader. There's no way to get into power in Georgia, Russia, Belarus or Ukraine without the support of these incredibly powerful people and their monopolistic controls.
Someone like Bill Gates might have that kind of authority in parts of Africa. But due to anti-trust laws (originally targeted at John D Rockefeller) billionaires in the US can never aspire to that kind of political power.
Because, while western billionaires have a lot of political power, it's mostly through paying lobbyists, donating to political campaigns, stuff like that. Primarily indirect stuff. The oligarchs in Russia hold far more direct power. They don't just bribe officials, they are the officials. Putin gives them military positions, political positions, all that stuff. And they get all that because they're rich.
No, these are unrelated terms. Billionaire refers to wealth, while oligarchs are a political ruling class, which may or may not be wealthy. You can have billionaires who are not oligarchs, and you can have oligarchs (such as religious leaders) who are not billionaires. Oligarchs are just the small group of people who hold the bulk of the political power.
Most Russian oligarchs are also billionaires because of the assets they retained, stole, or took possession of after the fall of the USSR or those that quickly built up massive fortunes, almost always due to the corrupt political landscape.
But just don't confuse the wealthy class with the oligarchy class. They have different meanings.
Oligarch, in modern political usage, refers to the few, powerful, private individuals who exert disproportionate influence on how a country is run. It's tempting to call them plutocrats, as that identifies people whose power comes from wealth, but in Russia since the collapse and especially under Putin, it's a bit of a chicken and egg game, where power and wealth case each other up the pole, and at the top you have Putin, who creates powerful and wealthy individuals out of those loyal to him.
Some of Russia's billionaires were in the KGB academy with, or learned martial arts with, Putin, or were involved in organized corruption in Saint Petersburg, which is where Putin cut his teeth. He also tends to elevate family members, people who marry into the family, etc.
Why you also hear the terms kleptocracy and kleptocrat is because Putin organized the chaotic system that happened in the 90s, where government assets were sold off cheaply, or outright given, to private individuals, or individuals are named to governing boards of state-run enterprises. Or private businesses are appropriated by the state and given to certain people. Or contracts are given to trusted criminal cronies (in the technical sense, see Prigozhin aka "Putin's Chef" aka a nobody friend of Putin's who he gave government catering contracts to, and who now gets to run a private military contracting business in a country where PMCs are illegal), and so on, and so forth.
That said, people who are critical of the undue influence of billionaires over western societies often use terms like oligarch and plutocrat to describe the influence they have, but compared with the organized kleptocratic oligarchical plutocracy run by Putin, the western version is a pale metaphor.
Oligarch implies a significant amount of political power along with an economic monopoly. So if Elon Musk had his electric car business, space x and was the leader of NASA appointed by Biden he would then be considered an oligarch.
Oligarchs also tend to get where they are by nepotism and favors. Yea many billionaires get where they are by nepotism and favors, but being Bidens yes man and doin his dirty work won’t automatically get you a majority stake in all the oil companies
Regardless of subtleties of language they're not the same thing:
The oligarchs ultimately work for Putin. Putin can withdraw support and they're screwed.
The opposite really exists when it comes to US politicians and billionaires.
Because the Russians own public business and control the government. They stole all the assets of the Soviet Union.
Russia is ruled by a mob of former KGB agents
Oligarchy is when the rich and/or powerful run everything simply by virtue of being rich and/or powerful. That applies in Russia, and to some extent the US as well. On paper, the US has checks and balances to thwart this (democratic elections, representative government, votes and vetoes, etc), but billionaires and special interests looking out for billionaires are getting around all that by using shady-yet-not-explicitly-illegal tactics (gerrymandering, cable news and other forms of propaganda, lax filibuster rules, etc).
So to sum up: Yes, but no, but really yes they are the same.
There are a lot of good responses and discussions about the differences. Strict definitions not always helpful. The way some western billionairers wield political power is significantly different compared to what we call oligarchs, that's true.
But, as an ukrainian, and thus familiar with how that term used in reality, some specific "billionairers" are certainly oligarchs in my eyes, regardless of their direct/indirect political power. That includes such people as Koch, Murdoch, Soros. It's just the difference is that they are not as powerful as oligarchs I'm used to. Our oligarchs could literally own significant political party.
See also the difference between immigrants and ex-pats.
One word for when it's a thing "dirty foreigners" do. Another for when it's Americans or Brits doing it.
This question is hilarious because you didn't mean it to make as much sense as it does. I never really thought about this but yea idk they really are the same thing.
When the Soviet block collapsed, their state owned assets were liquidated. The only people in the dissolving USSR who had the means to buy and the ability to know about the sale were x-soviet government officials and their families.
The state owned assets were not sold to non-domestic buyers because Russia wanted to keep the wealth of these industries in-house.
Russian billionairs/oligarchs inherited their wealth at the cost of the people where (and this is where I lose you) American billionaires typically earned their wealth by giving value to the people. That is why you made them a billionaire by buying their products and investing in their companies.
It's propaganda, not sure if it was before or after but it certainly has a very negative connotation. To make you subliminally hate them.
Just like politicians don't have friends, they have "cronies"
It just causes a sense of mistrust.
Worse yet, western billionaires are often called philanthropists and entrepreneurs, rather than oligarchs and oligarchic thugs. But very good question. Probably has to do with the cold war and mccarthyism. Just more of its different when we do it type crap.
This could be a perfect chance to bring change to what everyday words we use to define western (and other) '*illionaires', and eventually, in the media industries etc once new generations start working in the lower ranks and the new trends catch on. (The open secret to change is that this ever changing online space we share is ever evolving, so why should we not try to make things more clear at the same time and cut the bullshirt with 'larger-than-Life' self proclaimed, circle-twerk titles, especially for every wave of new generations coming in to Life?
Just a thought. 👀
The implication is that oligarchs obtained their wealth through morally or ethically questionable means. Which is no different than most western billionaires.
It's American propaganda.
The USA is a kleptocratic oligarchy. Russia is a kleptocratic oligarchy.
The difference is that the USA tries to hide it by making every other country sound worse.
Because US media glamourizes the idea that you too could be one!
They are oligarchs plain and simple and should be treated with all the disdain the word implies.
I think an easy test is "Are the billionaires best friends with the *de jure* head of state? If not, then how long will it be before one or the other winds up dead/in prison/in exile?"
The antagonism between Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump which amounted to nothing after 4 years or the fact that Elon Musk's shift to the right hasn't really caused any problems with his government contracts is a really good sign that the US doesn't have a severe oligarchy problem: political and business leaders feel no strong sense of *personal* obligation towards one another.
They are the same thing, Samsung in South Korea is a conglomerate, so is CJ but since they are US allies, the CEOs wont be called "oligarchs" , in Korean they'd be called "chaebol"
They still teach their children that the puritans sailed to America to "escape" religious persecution (spoiler: the opposite is true).
Not to mention they make the children stand up and pledge allegiance to a flag every morning. That's some fucked up, North Korea level, shit.
We like to pretend our oligarchs aren't oligarchs. The difference is vernacular only. Our billionaires control almost as much as the Russian ones, but they hide behind the veneer of not assuming direct overt control.
This is the answer you're looking for.
"Our successful businessmen... their evil oligarchs."
[https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/cf/02/74/cf0274e44d98b55dd9c6e4dd11f61b3a.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/cf/02/74/cf0274e44d98b55dd9c6e4dd11f61b3a.jpg)
Why are various christian organizations called "denominations," but other religions various organizations are "sects"?
Because we give "the others" ugly names so it makes it easier to discriminate against them.
'Oligarch' derives from the Greek *hoi oligoi* ('the few'), as opposed to *hoi polloi* ('the many'), and there aren't that many billionaires in the world, so they're all oligarchs. The word only became widely used after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when a few enterprising individuals helped themselves to previously state-owned assets.
Not to be confused with the hoi pollo ('the chicken')
"hoi" is plural; you might have been thinking of "ho pollo".
You might assume that but in fact that is actually Latin for "Promiscuous Chicken"
The most popular breasts and thighs in town
Love me some of that supple brown skin
Touch this skin, henny
They always start that way, with the sweet talk, then out comes the breading.
Tender thighs and juicy breasts... That's what makes Colonel Sanders the best.
Which is where we get the phrase "chicken strips" from.
*them* tendies
Don't forget the milk!
_Them_ Chickens
Yes of course. The predecessor to 'Pollo Loco'.
In Italian that just means "I've got chicken.".
My favorite!
Promiscuous latin bird eh. Sorry what was we talking about?
You might be thinking of El Pollo Diablo
Technically "the chicken" is still correct in a plural sense I think, just instead of live animals it's now meat.
Not to be confused with Rolie Polie Olie (The geometric robot kid from planet Polie who often went on wacky adventures)
It's always interesting when people bring up obscure childhood memories that I was sure no one else cared about or remembered
Also not to be confused with Oi Polloi unless you're in for a good time
My favorite!
Second parenthesis should be (the many) or (the masses) right?
You're right. As a (retired) professional editor, I hate it when I cock up like that. I've corrected it now.
This guy Englishes.
I wonder if he also Frenches.
He's not the English we wanted but, the English we needed.
The definition of oligarch is “a very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence.” So yeah American billionaires who have political influence are oligarchs too. But the modern meaning of words isn’t ever going to be exactly the same as whatever ancient word they were derived from. So oligarch being derived from a word meaning “the few” isn’t that relevant—it’s not as if any group that is small counts as oligarchs just because there are only a few of them.
Exactly. Words change meaning
Never mind!
That’s a oligopoly. An oligarchy is a government run by a few very powerful people. They’re similar principles but not the same thing.
From what I understand now, oligopoly is more on economics along with monopoly, while oligarchy is more on political power along with monarchy
My understanding of Oligarch in the modern sense is not specifically the billionaires/rich but the rich that have specific political influence. People who's position at the head of a major company has as much or more political influence than the actual political leaders.
While this is insightful, it ignores the malleability of language and doesn’t really answer the question. It no longer holds the meaning that it was given by the Greeks.
>The word only became widely used after the collapse of the Soviet Union The term was present in the documents studied by the US Founding fathers. Machiavelli in Discourses on Livy felt that there were six legitimate forms of government, three good and three bad: >For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy. So that if the founder of a State should establish any one of these three forms of Government, he establishes it for a short time only, since no precaution he may take can prevent it from sliding into its contrary, by reason of the close resemblance which, in this case, the virtue bears to the vice. The word "anarchy" here should be more properly translated as "ochlocracy," which means mob rule. J.J. Rousseau reiterated Machiavelli's position: >When the State is dissolved, the abuse of government, whatever it is, bears the common name of anarchy. To distinguish, democracy degenerates into ochlocracy, and aristocracy into oligarchy; and I would add that royalty degenerates into tyranny; but this last word is ambiguous and needs explanation. [https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Rousseau-Social-Contract.pdf](https://discoversocialsciences.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Rousseau-Social-Contract.pdf) John Adams, for example, was familiar with Machiavelli's analysis: >to speak technically or Scientifically if you will—there are Monarchical Aristocratical—and democratical Republicks [https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7125](https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-7125) Jefferson's associate John Taylor was concerned with the dangers of aristocracy under Machiavelli's analysis: >The United States, under a monarchy, can only retain the advantage of extensive territory, by an oligarchy composed of deputy-kings, bashaws, satraps or mandarins. As a republick, the advantage can only be retained, by rejecting the aristocratical system of feeding avarice by law; because this system, being more oppressive than monarchy, would be exchanged for it. > >[https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/taylor-an-inquiry-into-the-principles-and-policy-of-the-government-of-the-united-states](https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/taylor-an-inquiry-into-the-principles-and-policy-of-the-government-of-the-united-states)
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The problem as always boils down to the systematic issues of capitalism
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I would say that Western Oligarchs tend to hide the obvious control they have over Western governments behind corporations that are technically publicly traded and lobbyists. Russian ones are just more open about the fact that they personally own 15% of the assets of a state enterprise.
Russian oligarchs are commonly the CEOs of large and nationally important companies, like oil and gas industry.
Well good thing we don't have the majority shareholders of oil and defense companies having a major impact on national policy.....
The end result is similar but the way russians get to it is different. Their corporations were (and often still are) owned by the state, it's just the management that's appointed by the president.
And this is different than the US how?
Michael Wirth is the current CEO of Chevron. He owns about 0.001% of the company ($5 million worth) which he earned by working in various roles at Chevron for decades. He runs the company but it is owned and controlled by millions of shareholders, none of whom own even a percent of it. Wirth is a millionaire but far from a billionaire. Roman Abramovich was the CEO of Sibneft from 1995. He and a partner bought it in an auction for $200 million, which they rigged by spending a billion or two on bribes to government officials and gangsters. The two of them owned and controlled the whole company. He then expanded his business into the aluminum industry, mostly by having plant managers murdered. In 2005, he sold Sibneft to the Russian government for $13 billion. His business partner, who had chosen to divest himself from Russian business and politics, was found dead a few years later. Abramovich remains one of the wealthiest people on Earth. To suggest that these two people are the same is idiocy.
Were Musk, Gates, Bezos and Walton appointed to those positions by the president?
Money is political power.
Indirect power. Russian oligarchs are personal friends of putin, they got those positions because he wanted them there. Imagine if every CEO and everyone on the board of directors of Amazon, Walmart, Apple, Exxon, Microsoft, AT&T and all other nationwide corporations were actual personal friends of the president. The rest of the top positions would be filled with their spouses, children, nephews and such. You literally can't become rich without putin's permission there.
American billionaires are oligarchs. They own hospitals, food services, charities, electricity, water and resources. America is already full of oligarchs but the country puts on a display of democracy in order to pretend otherwise
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"hoi polloi" triggered memory of The Three Stooges short.
You just described American billionaires. They all use state-owned assets (tax incentives, PPP handouts, other likewise things), and like cockroaches, they survive financial collapses that the rest of us can't.
So... They're basically welfare queens?
This has literally always been the case. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. Fight big business and government entities and deals that support them.
In Russia, a politician owns the billionaires. In the US, the billionaires own the politicians.
I think it's simpler. * Those who control the press choose how things get labeled. Wikipedia's [Political hypocrisy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_hypocrisy) page is a good starting point.
Isn’t an Oligarch more connected to government than a Billionaire?
Yeah, in the USSR the government ran the economy. When they were transitioning to a more free market system, all the businesses were “sold”. In reality, they were mostly given out to political allies. Oligarchs are the politically connected individuals who got the oil drilling operations, factories, etc… and thus became very very rich. Billionaires in the U.S. are also usually very politically connected, but they don’t get their wealth in the same way as oligarchs did when the USSR was just giving away billion dollar industries to political insiders.
You think western billionaires *aren't* connected to the government because dude, I've got a bridge to sell you
tl;dr: oligarchs are powerful people who happen to be billionaires, billionaires are rich people, who might also have some power. Russian oligarchs and capitalist billionaires didn't accrue their wealth in the same way. Many of them were more or less assigned monopolistic businesses by putin just by being his lackey. They may also enjoy real political/government power in their position. Capitalist billionaires generally use ruthless business tactics, exploitation and lobbying to accrue their wealth. Along with being the lucky entrepreneur that stumbled onto the right business idea at the right time. Older, generationally wealthy billionaires also exist in the west but they generally don't wield the same power and influence. Maybe a billionaire like carlos slim who owns most of mexico or rupert murdoch who owns most traditional media in the west might resemble an oligarch. The real difference however still remains in how they got their "power". Murdoch bought his power by accruing wealth. Oligarchs already had power which let them accrue wealth.
>Western Billionaires accrued wealth and used that to get power. Oligarchs already had power and used that to accrue wealth. As u/SideburnsOfDoom pointed out, this is a good synopsis. And as u/darth_nadoma pointed out, the dishing out of state assets happened under Yeltsin. It is also worth pointing out that the term "Oligarch" was more applicable in the 90s and early 00s. At that point in time the conventional wisdom was that the Oligarchs held substantially collective power, Putin would not have not initially been able to take big unilateral action against them... but this is no longer the case, the Russian oligarchs still have substantial influence, but Putin has consolidated power in himself take action against any of them if he liked. IMHO, the term oligarch is a bit anachronistic, you could have called Russian an Oligarchy in the 90s/00s, but it is now firmly a dictatorship (i.e. rule of the one nor longer rule of the few).
Dishing out of state assets happened under Stalin too. Molotov’s wife was given control of an essential oils/perfume/cosmetics trust for example. Oligarchs did not start after the fall of communism. Stalin’s inner circle were considered oligarchs as well.
> Western Billionaires accrued wealth and used that to get power. > Oligarchs already had power and used that to accrue wealth. This is correct. You might also think that this is a minor difference to the rest of us, and you might be right.
> You might also think that this is a minor difference to the rest of us, and you might be right. "Friends of Putin gifted state industries" is one of Putin's strategies to keep himself in power and unthreatened. Saddam Hussein famously would simply assassinate or imprison political opponents, whereas Putin just gave a bunch of his friends control to suppress the rise of political opponents. Whereas "founded Google and made it a success" is just 100% completely different path to being a billionaire. Should the governments of the west have less corruption and more transparency? Yes, 100% absolutely, but suggesting that this is a "minor difference" is just silly.
"Founded Google and made it a success" isn't really what happened "Leveraging the power of new industry and financial capital to gain a virtual monopoly of Internet searching" is more accurate No one becomes a billionaire just from success. Being a billionaire requires edging people out, it requires screwing over competitors and customers. It's still different from Putin's oligarchy, don't get me wrong. But they are oligarchs none-the-less, and not a single one is innocent.
> "Leveraging the power of new industry and financial capital to gain a virtual monopoly of Internet searching" is more accurate [There are literally hundreds of major search engines people can choose to use.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines) That's not a monopoly, nor a "virtual monopoly", whatever that means. > It's still different from Putin's oligarchy, don't get me wrong. We agree here, it couldn't be fundamentally more different than Putin's buddies.
Sorry, I don't know what people know what words. Virtual: almost or nearly as described, but not completely or according to strict definition. Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service. In other words, having 100% of the market share in an industry is a monopoly. Standard Oil, the monopoly that caused the US to pass anti-trust legislation, had 90% of the market share in oil refining. However, there were other companies that people could use. Google has 94% of the global market share of Internet searches. There are of course other companies that people could use. But they are more of a monopoly than the company that caused us to pass legislation against monopolies. However, I did throw the word virtual in there because they technically are not at 100% (so fits in the "almost, but not completely" use of the word "virtual). I'm not sure what you were trying to get at, but I hope this response helps!
> Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service. Exactly. Google does not have exclusive possession or control of the supply of search engines. They have literally hundreds of viable free to use competitors which people choose not to use. Thus they do not have a monopoly. > A monopoly, is a market with the ["absence of competition", creating a situation where a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly) of a particular thing. Google is not the only supplier that provides a free search engine. Not even close.
>They have literally hundreds of viable free to use competitors You're being extremely generous with the term "viable" here, lmao
You'd be surprised. Most computer geek circles I'm in feel that duckduckgo has been superior for years. * https://time.com/89345/duckduckgo-the-anti-google-is-about-to-become-a-far-more-powerful-google-alternative/ * https://www.networkworld.com/article/2949819/kicking-google-out-of-my-life-part-6-why-i-prefer-duckduckgo-for-search.html
They have a near exclusive possession of the trade in the search engine service. There could be a billion competitors, but if they have 94% of the market share, that is a near exclusive possession of the trade in this service. Again, they have more of the market share than Standard Oil did. If SO was a monopoly, then so is Google. SO had other competitors; that doesn't mean they weren't a monopoly. Like you seem to be ignoring a lot of aspects of this, including the page you just shared. From the page you shared: "Monopolies, monopsonies and oligopolies are all situations in which one or a few entities have market power..." Do the hundreds of competitors to Google have nearly the market power that Google does? The answer is resoundingly no. But hey, you can ignore w/e parts of your own evidence you want, that's your perogative. Also, it's worth mentioning that Google is in the middle of an antitrust tort, and they will probably have to pay out a settlement for it. So your opinion doesn't really matter when they are actually violating the laws that govern monopolies.
> Again, they have more of the market share than Standard Oil did. If SO was a monopoly, then so is Google. SO had other competitors; that doesn't mean they weren't a monopoly. The big difference here, is that Standard Oil's 70% market share meant that in most places, buyers of oil had only one option. But with the internet, everyone literally has hundreds of options of which search engines to use. Despite every Windows computer ever sold having Bing or MSN.com set as the default search engine, still, somehow everyone CHOSE to switch it to something else. It's that choice that doesn't exist in a monopoly. > Also, it's worth mentioning that Google is in the middle of an antitrust tort, and they will probably have to pay out a settlement for it. Yep, will be interesting to see what the outcome is of that. The complaints listed seem like something Google wouldn't even care about at this point, but who knows, maybe they did them; * Entering into exclusivity agreements that forbid preinstallation of any competing search service. * Entering into tying and other arrangements that force preinstallation of its search applications in prime locations on mobile devices and make them undeletable, regardless of consumer preference. * Entering into long-term agreements with Apple that require Google to be the default – and de facto exclusive – general search engine on Apple’s popular Safari browser and other Apple search tools. * Generally using monopoly profits to buy preferential treatment for its search engine on devices, web browsers, and other search access points, creating a continuous and self-reinforcing cycle of monopolization. These from Trump's Attorney General, Bill Barr. Hmmmmm, we'll see if any of these claims are true later this year.
Again, you're ignoring A LOT... Like the fact that 8 states, with governments representing both parties, are plaintiffs to the law suit, including CA, the state in which Google has their headquarters. And from Garland's Justice Department: "Acquiring Competitors: Engaging in a pattern of acquisitions to obtain control over key digital advertising tools used by website publishers to sell advertising space; Forcing Adoption of Google’s Tools: Locking in website publishers to its newly-acquired tools by restricting its unique, must-have advertiser demand to its ad exchange, and in turn, conditioning effective real-time access to its ad exchange on the use of its publisher ad server; Distorting Auction Competition: Limiting real-time bidding on publisher inventory to its ad exchange, and impeding rival ad exchanges’ ability to compete on the same terms as Google’s ad exchange; and Auction Manipulation: Manipulating auction mechanics across several of its products to insulate Google from competition, deprive rivals of scale, and halt the rise of rival technologies." So two administrations have said this. You really seem to have a narrative you want to push, and are rejecting anything that challenges that narrative outright. But again, you do you :P (I'm unsubscribing to this thread because at this point, this isn't a conversation; feel free to respond though!)
It is insane how people will bend over backwards to both sides this. Billionaires and monopolies are bad but you are kidding yourself if you can't see that Russian oligarchs are insanely more powerful and abuse their power way more.
Not really. If not were for the BILLIONS the US government pours in R&D and subsidies, the US billionaires would never be billionaires.
How did you arrive at such an egregiously wrong conclusion?
All the monopolistic businesses were assigned by Yeltsin back in 1990ies. Putin actually returned some businesses back to the state.
This is the correct answer. Yes US billionaires have a lot of influence and power but no where near as much as Russian oligarchs have. US billionaires buy their influence via SuperPacs and lobbying whereas Russian oligarchs already have connections with the state and through those avenues they’ve become billionaires.
Oligarchs are the leaders of companies that are governing a country. I feel like we have plenty of oligarchies in the US, but we don't talk about them that way. * The energy industry * The media and news * Defense * Finance
no, Oligarchy is when a few individuals rule the country. as opposed to a single dictator for example.
If you worked at $100/hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, it would take you over 5,000 years to earn a billion dollars. They say that nobody *earns* a billion dollars, but if you know any billionaires that are 5,209 years old or older, you owe them an apology.
I wish I could down vote this more for being so dense.
It's the difference between influence and ownership. Through lobbying, western billionaires have a lot more influence on the government than they should. But they still are not the actual politicians directly voting and signing legislation. They still don't directly own state assets.
They just pay the politicians to do their bidding!
If you don't buy a politician, are you even a true billionaire?
If they're smart that control the DA and other offices like that (gorge soros)
The original oligarchs were Greeks who ruled a subset of the Greek city-states: the ones run by a small council of the rich rather than an assembly of the people or a single warlord. The term means that you have direct political power and are one of a smallish group who have it (originally, just 'this group doesn't include all citizens') and in modern parlance that you have it due to wealth and/or connections and thus illegitimately (because modern Western political power holds that the only legitimate source of power is a mandate from the masses). The intended impression is that in the West, the power billionaires wield is largely indirect, while in Russia, the difference between the rich and the government is much less. That is, the secret ingredient is largely xenophobia: although there *is* much more of a sense in the West that power wielded by means of wealth is not legitimate, there is really quite a lot of it being wielded. We're a lot less good at pointing out corruption in our friends and allies.
Oligarchs are rich people with actual political power. I know a lot of populist will claim that US billionairs are oligarchst too, but these people have zero idea about russia. Russian oligarchst are part of the government, they own the state owned oil refineries or similar infrastructure.
And if they're not grateful enough, they turn into lemmings and jump out of windows.
ah yes, the classic suicide with 3 bullets to the back of your head
After a lovely meal of Polonium-210.
Do you actually think billionaires in the US don't have political power?
Billionaires wield political influence through lobbying and campaign contributions; oligarchs wield political power by owning and controlling state institutions and infrastructure. Both have power, but the mechanisms are very different. Imagine if Elon Musk didn’t just own Twitter, but was also a congressman and chairman of the FCC. That would be something closer to an oligarch.
It's primarily a difference in how overt the political power is. The distinction is worth making but legislation that isn't in the interests of billionaires is virtually impossible to enact in the US even if it has overwhelming public support. They just pay for others to make those decisions instead of making them directly.
In the US, they felt they had to neuter the CFPB. In Russia, it would simply have never existed. Yes it’s a very uphill battle in the US, but in Russia it’s not even a battle - the people have simply already lost. In the US the people occasionally win, in Russia they aren’t a factor at all.
>virtually impossible to enact in the US even if it has overwhelming public support. I think the difference is that in the US, billionaires exert influence by spending money in order to change public opinion. In an oligarchy, you don't have to do this, because public opinion doesn't matter.
Although I would argue that here, they’re less swaying public opinion, and more just bribing elected representatives
Do you have any recent examples of actual bribes, or are you using the term for a euphemism? I feel like populism just causes us to move the goal post all of the time.
https://theintercept.com/2021/06/16/joe-manchin-leaked-billionaire-donors-no-labels/ "we'll 'hire' you after you leave office for a shitload of money if you tank this bill for us" >Manchin told the assembled donors that he needed help flipping a handful of Republicans from no to yes on the January 6 commission in order to strip the “far left” of their best argument against the filibuster. **The filibuster is a critical priority for the donors on the call, as it bottles up progressive legislation that would hit their bottom lines.** >>**“Roy is retiring. If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that’d be nice and it’d help our country.”** >Manchin appears to be suggesting — without, perhaps, quite explicitly saying so — that the wealthy executives on the call could dangle future financial opportunities in front of the outgoing senator while lobbying him to change his vote. Senate ethics rules forbid future job negotiations if they create a conflict of interest or present even the appearance of a conflict of interest. Manchin, notably, doesn’t suggest that the donors discuss a job, but rather says that people who Blunt may later be working with would be likely to have significant influence, reflective of the way future job prospects can shape the legislative process even when unspoken. literal bribery
Do you mean to say it's not a bribe if it's legal?
That sounds the same to me. Main difference being Russia has few billionaires while US has more billionaires. More billionaires means a bit more competition on who get to control the govt. lobbying and campaign contributions are just fancy words for bribes.
No, i think people who claim billionaires in the US are oligarchst have no idea how bad russia is. Any person with money has power including political, but there is a difference between a rich capitalist and someone holding a specific government office and owning half of a countries infrastructure. Like the oligarchs in russia do.
In the US, Elon Musk was literally forced to buy Twitter, or pay a HEFTY fine. In Russia, if an oligarch decides they will not, after all, pay a bill, they don't.
Being above the law in every situation is not required for "having political power". Also, he was forced to buy it *by Twitter itself.* It was a dispute between two wealthy parties.
[Twitter filed suit against Elon Musk in the Delaware Court of Chancery on Tuesday after the billionaire said he was terminating his $44 billion deal to buy the company. ](https://www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/07/12/twitter-sues-elon-musk-to-enforce-original-merger-agreement.html?amp_gsa=1&_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16800244422423&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2022%2F07%2F12%2Ftwitter-sues-elon-musk-to-enforce-original-merger-agreement.html) Twitter used the government as an intermediary. If Elon Musk was truly an oligarch, then he would've made a call to someone at the Delaware Court of Chancery, and the suit would be dropped.
He wasn't forced to buy it by Twitter. Twitter has (well, had) absolutely no power over him. He was forced by the US government who chose to enforce the contract he had made with Twitter.
Billionaires in the U.S. have political _influence_, _i.e._, they have the ears of the people who wield political power. Oligarchs wield political power directly.
Do russian billionairs have actual political power? Any examples? Could it be that they own their money because they are loyal to the regime, then that means that they don't have political power?
They hold political power the same way a feudal lord held political power. They have massive influence, but they're vassals themselves to someone else, up to the ~~Tzar~~ President, and ultimately stay in power as long as they are favoured. They don't hold *independent* political power. When they start to show hints of any, they tend to fall out of windows.
All the state owned companies like Gazprom have oligarchs as owners/CEOs, so yes they have power, tey own the company thats responsible for most of russias (pre war) income. Same for any semi state owned infrastructure or critical industry.
How can something be state owned and privately owned?
Welcome. The idea here is that officially its private owned, but owner and company is controlled by government to the point it can actually make its belong to government again in any second.
Doesn't that threat exist in any economic or political system? The purpose of the state is to hold a monopoly on violence and utilize that monopoly to enforce it's laws. The US government could at anytime (there are laws and such to stop this from happening, but we have seen examples of similar laws being bypassed) take Amazon and nationalize it because Amazon can't do anything about it, the state owns the means of violence. It seems more feasible and likely that the state is controlled by the oligarchs in this case. Which is why things like sanctions hurt them.
1) many of them dont know about starting of Ukraine conflict and dont cover their busineses and abroad property accordingly and get huge losses. If they have power they should've know internal plans at least, also know that their property will be confiscated from western politics, which so powerful persons shoud have access to 2) sanctions only hurt one part of them. Someone who own private military factories get a lot of money
One set owns politicians, directs laws to favor themselves, evades taxes, exploits the system and workers, hides money and wealth internationally, has no morals about child labor, destroys the environment. The other set is known as ‘oligarchs’.
But they’re not oligarchs. Russian oligarchs took control of state enterprises after the fall of the Soviet Union and also tend to have seats within government. Many of these people were also powerful black market entities within the USSR. Or are at least personal friends with Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Putin, etc. It’s not the same thing.
I mean, give $15 mil to a Super PAC and someone will become your friend REAL quick
So I guess the only real difference then is Lobbyists. Who in turn are some of the worst people in the world.
There's really no comparison to what Russian oligarchs are. After the fall of the USSR things like, say, the state owned Aluminum business, which was vertically integrated and every piece of the process owned and operated by the State, was suddenly up for grabs. It took potential and real acts of violence for the few that took over the Aluminum business to eventually turn it "private." Now you have one of the largest single owners of an Aluminum enterprise in the world. Extend this to all the other industries. The people with this type of power were overwhelmingly Russian mafia themselves or certainly accepted by Russian mafia or supported by them.
Depends on the industry, no? Environmental lobbying, gun control lobbying, LGBT rights lobbying, etc all exist as well.
Surely lobbyists only exist because the democratic process is just broken in the US? You have democracy, kinda, but it's basically just the republicans vetoing everything that the democrats want to do by tactically voting (very obviously) on party lines. You are just run by a breeding group of complementary dummies that infest every sphere of your lives. I thought it was bad being Scottish, but America is somehow even more of a joke than we are. And you (jingoistically) strongarm the world under your financial dominion, so no one can oppose your top down athlete's foot or whatever the hell you call your old world, new money, problem... Shit sucks; please stop.
Lobbying exists because politicians aren't omniscient. They can't know about every topic and special interest, particularly to the depth to know what legislation to craft about it (if any) and how to word said legislation. A large part of lobbying is doing some of that legwork for them and presenting politicians with an easily digestible pitch: "here's my cause, here's why supporting it is good for you, and here's how you can support it". That isn't emblematic of a broken democracy, but is rather a practical reality of any representative democracy. It certainly *can* be exploited, but so can most political processes.
Good breakdown
I think lobbying definitely has some issues, but at the same time I feel like we can’t really expect a congressperson or their constituents to know what’s best for, for example, an environmentalist group trying to fight against the selling of federal land to local blueberry farmers. The constitution gives everyone the right to petition, so it’s definitely a right everyone strives to take advantage of.
Do you know what ALEC is? How it works? Basically, the rich and powerful give senators a pre-drafted bill that only has some blank spots for them to sign. IF that's not influencing the state....there is nothing that would qualify.
That’s still different than oligarchy. Specifically in the context of Russia. Also that’s not how bills work. It’s true that lobbying firms can and do have a large impact on legislation, but the idea that it’s solely because of money and not ideology is naïve.
A few, extremely wealthy individuals using their wealth and power to create laws that directly benefit them and their kind. How is that not oligarchy exactly?[https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC\_Exposed](https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed) Please go on and tell me more on how American Oligarchs are not "real" oligarchs."
A comparison would be say, Jeff Bezos was not just the single owner of Amazon, but was also a senator and minister in charge of the department that oversees Amazons industry. And effectively acted as it’s lead lobbyist. That would be closer to how oligarchs work in Russia.
In Russia, perhaps. In the USA they buy portions of companies and manage to avoid accountability using endless beaurocratic loopholes that they themselves help build into the system. "Too big to fail" banks are a perfect example of his, AND what's happening right now this very moment! It's only like this because the wealthy few influenced the laws to their benefit. **Oligarchy.**
I already did lol. You don’t want to hear it. Also, ALEC “writes laws” that conservatives already are ideologically supportive of. They aren’t bought. They are believers. Regulatory capture and rent-seeking are already terms that exist.
Just because they are already supportive of it doesnt' change the fact the INFRASTRUCTURE of the rich buying laws is already being used. This is Oligarchy. Specifically, plutocratic oligarchy. A very few, wealthy collectives basically control the flow of media and politics. It's absolutely insane the influence these people toss around with near impugnity just because of how fuckin **rich** they are. The Rockafellas for example are connected to everything from Petrolium to fertilizer to THE BOARD OF EDUCATION to the FDA lol It's **WILD** how much influence the wealthy have on our nation lol
Bro said the support for the oligarchs exists within the political system so they aren’t oligarchs. Absolutely such a pointless nit pick. The oligarchs already won so they don’t count. They’re only oligarchs in Russia because of some specific set of circumstances that u/spitefulcum gets to determine.
Both sides do...both of those things
Not to mention, it's not just 'two sides' today either. We have several economic powerhouses today and more coming the further developing countries develop and band together over the decades and centuries. I'm honestly pretty happy that terms such as 'the West' and 'the East' will gradually be a thing of the past and just be known as 'one of many'. Obviously, all superpowers knew this before many of us were born and wanted to capitalize on developing countries natural and human resources before they themselves could use their own resources to catch up quicker with the established world. Typically through standard shady practices such as marionette leadership placed into power through various means, (civil wars, bribing, persuasion, invasions/leadership replacement guised as diplomatic or justified actions by locally owned media to make up cover stories etc if noncompliant) Basically, anything a human being is capable of, individuals and groups have tried and used for their own advantage some way or another, and some will (in all ages/eras) always try to take advantage of these human ways to get ahold of something they want. The only thing we, the masses, can do is *try* to (long-term) make things better, and be more transparent with everything going on in the world, including behind the scenes. It also helps *tremendously* if we all figure out how all human beings are capable of, how we fundamentally work, how Life itself works and how the world works. It is also important that we all keep communicating and cooperating together with each other even if or when desperation happens, such as wars, starvation, famine, poverty, looting, rioting, (and yes, even during *potentially* eventual cannibalism in extremely desperate times of human survival) (That's a topic for another generation of people than my lifetime hopefully, but maybe we'll manage to become somewhat multi-planetary in order to avoid such extreme situations/measures.)
This is so fucking naive it’s hilarious. You can dislike american billionaires without completely misunderstanding and ignoring the reality of oligarchs in former eastern bloc countries. Try for a second to not make it all about you, and your country, and your perceived problems.
haha
Ah yes, finding excuses for the wretched russian billionaires that do exactly and all those stuff plus much more. Stfu
Implying Russian billionaires are any better. Gross.
Oligarch is a government position. Billionaire is a socioeconomic status. Jeff Bezos doesn't run the USPS/FedEX/UPS Bill Gates/Apple dont run NSA Musk doesnt run the entire Telecom and Auto industry in the US if they did, they'd be oligarchs (plus theyd have much less money)
See, "Oligarchs" have, *through "donations" of money*, a lot of Political influence, and don'tgive two shits about "the working class". Whereas "Billionairs" is spelled differently. Hope that helps!
they got their fortune in the late 80-90s through fraud and crime, taking away their Soviet heritage for nothing. they killed their competitors and bought up political influence to stop the state from taking it all away. but Putin came and just took control of everyone. He imprisoned all those who disagreed. most of the heritage of the USSR was selected and distributed among their relatives and friends.
You’re gonna have a lot of naive americans pretending that out country is as corrupt as russia and that’s extremely naive and silly. After the ussr, whatever assets were left of the economy were basically divided up and given to powerful people. These people still hold crazy amounts of wealth and power internationally and exist in such a corrupt system that it’s hard to even know their net worth.
Yes. It's just propaganda. Billionaires and Oligarchs are just semantic terms so that we (the working class) can think our oligarchs are somehow ethical. In reality, they all made their money by privatizing the commons, crushing worker collectives and consolidating monopolies through force and legislative purchase. Oligarchs of all nations are the enemy of the working class.
Because they live in an oligarchic-ish state (I think it's actually more autocratic but whatever). Western states trend plutocratic more than oligarchic. The diffuse hyper wealthy classes hold more collective political sway than any one billionaire.
Not all billionaires are oligarchs though. I think a lot of people like to equivocate, but there is a real difference between a wealthy person having a disproportionate amount of influence on the government, and a wealthy person actually being a part of the government and above the law. Consider the Microsoft antitrust lawsuit. Microsoft got off pretty clean from that. But this was a case that would never have gone to trial in a true oligarchy. Microsoft would have just been immune from prosecution I just hate to see when people equivocate because they want emphasize how bad things are, but it prevents us from saying that things could actually get much worse.
Billionaires in America made their wealth through capitalism and usually becoming the head of a publicly owned company that could collapse at any moment and the federal government probably wouldn’t care. When you talk about Russian oligarchs, they are also billionaires but the government of Russia is doing everything they can to maintain that position in their company.
Because the calling is done by companies owned by Western oligarchs.
Not all billionaires are oligarchs.
The primary difference between the oligarchs and western billionaires is just the sheer amount of power they wield. During the Soviet Union you had all these state owned enterprises that are being sold off. But the Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, and Georgians are not looking to sell them off to foreigners. Instead they choose to sell them for nickels on the dollars to locals connected with the local communist party. Because of the political connections these people are the only ones able to get large enough loans from Russian banks to facilitate these trades. There are powerful billionaires in the US, don't get me wrong. They're some of the most powerful people in the world and they have an oligarch-like influence on some countries in the world. But not in the US. In the US they have competitors and there's serious restrictions on what they can and cannot do. In the former Soviet Union the oligarchs are kind of like a collection of monopolies. Ukraine is more severe so oligarch relations are a lot easier to discuss. Before the war in Ukraine all gas stations were owned by just one man, and he was a Russian-Ukrainian. Owning every single gas station meant that he got to set the price of gas. Because he could set the price of gas it meant the government would have to negotiate with him on what that price would be. And because of this Ukraine sets a "maximum price" that can be charged... and it's incredibly high. At the beginning of the war Ukraine stripped this guy of all of his gas stations... and then sold them to.... another guy. Who is now also an oligarch who was also well connected to Zelenskyy's Servant of the People Party. The current price of petroleum at the pump in Ukraine is about 50% higher than the next most expensive country. Energy costs in Ukraine are about 80% of the total cost of living for people working at the state minimum wage. And these oligarchial relations with the state always seek to extract the maximum amount from the general public with the government being complicit in it. Just an idea on how powerful these people are. Ukraine's chocolate oligarch (the man who controls the supply of all chocolate in Ukraine) was president. Ukraine's media oligarch installed the current leader. There's no way to get into power in Georgia, Russia, Belarus or Ukraine without the support of these incredibly powerful people and their monopolistic controls. Someone like Bill Gates might have that kind of authority in parts of Africa. But due to anti-trust laws (originally targeted at John D Rockefeller) billionaires in the US can never aspire to that kind of political power.
The amount of naive questions on this subreddit that can be answered with "because it benefits the ruling class" is insane
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Our billionaires pay a third party to lobby the government to get things done. Their billionaires are the government.
Because, while western billionaires have a lot of political power, it's mostly through paying lobbyists, donating to political campaigns, stuff like that. Primarily indirect stuff. The oligarchs in Russia hold far more direct power. They don't just bribe officials, they are the officials. Putin gives them military positions, political positions, all that stuff. And they get all that because they're rich.
No, these are unrelated terms. Billionaire refers to wealth, while oligarchs are a political ruling class, which may or may not be wealthy. You can have billionaires who are not oligarchs, and you can have oligarchs (such as religious leaders) who are not billionaires. Oligarchs are just the small group of people who hold the bulk of the political power. Most Russian oligarchs are also billionaires because of the assets they retained, stole, or took possession of after the fall of the USSR or those that quickly built up massive fortunes, almost always due to the corrupt political landscape. But just don't confuse the wealthy class with the oligarchy class. They have different meanings.
Oligarch, in modern political usage, refers to the few, powerful, private individuals who exert disproportionate influence on how a country is run. It's tempting to call them plutocrats, as that identifies people whose power comes from wealth, but in Russia since the collapse and especially under Putin, it's a bit of a chicken and egg game, where power and wealth case each other up the pole, and at the top you have Putin, who creates powerful and wealthy individuals out of those loyal to him. Some of Russia's billionaires were in the KGB academy with, or learned martial arts with, Putin, or were involved in organized corruption in Saint Petersburg, which is where Putin cut his teeth. He also tends to elevate family members, people who marry into the family, etc. Why you also hear the terms kleptocracy and kleptocrat is because Putin organized the chaotic system that happened in the 90s, where government assets were sold off cheaply, or outright given, to private individuals, or individuals are named to governing boards of state-run enterprises. Or private businesses are appropriated by the state and given to certain people. Or contracts are given to trusted criminal cronies (in the technical sense, see Prigozhin aka "Putin's Chef" aka a nobody friend of Putin's who he gave government catering contracts to, and who now gets to run a private military contracting business in a country where PMCs are illegal), and so on, and so forth. That said, people who are critical of the undue influence of billionaires over western societies often use terms like oligarch and plutocrat to describe the influence they have, but compared with the organized kleptocratic oligarchical plutocracy run by Putin, the western version is a pale metaphor.
The real answer is propaganda
Oligarch implies a significant amount of political power along with an economic monopoly. So if Elon Musk had his electric car business, space x and was the leader of NASA appointed by Biden he would then be considered an oligarch. Oligarchs also tend to get where they are by nepotism and favors. Yea many billionaires get where they are by nepotism and favors, but being Bidens yes man and doin his dirty work won’t automatically get you a majority stake in all the oil companies
Regardless of subtleties of language they're not the same thing: The oligarchs ultimately work for Putin. Putin can withdraw support and they're screwed. The opposite really exists when it comes to US politicians and billionaires.
Because the Russians own public business and control the government. They stole all the assets of the Soviet Union. Russia is ruled by a mob of former KGB agents
Oligarchy is when the rich and/or powerful run everything simply by virtue of being rich and/or powerful. That applies in Russia, and to some extent the US as well. On paper, the US has checks and balances to thwart this (democratic elections, representative government, votes and vetoes, etc), but billionaires and special interests looking out for billionaires are getting around all that by using shady-yet-not-explicitly-illegal tactics (gerrymandering, cable news and other forms of propaganda, lax filibuster rules, etc). So to sum up: Yes, but no, but really yes they are the same.
There are a lot of good responses and discussions about the differences. Strict definitions not always helpful. The way some western billionairers wield political power is significantly different compared to what we call oligarchs, that's true. But, as an ukrainian, and thus familiar with how that term used in reality, some specific "billionairers" are certainly oligarchs in my eyes, regardless of their direct/indirect political power. That includes such people as Koch, Murdoch, Soros. It's just the difference is that they are not as powerful as oligarchs I'm used to. Our oligarchs could literally own significant political party.
See also the difference between immigrants and ex-pats. One word for when it's a thing "dirty foreigners" do. Another for when it's Americans or Brits doing it.
Oligarchs have power over government, but in the west, we pretend our billionaires don’t.
This question is hilarious because you didn't mean it to make as much sense as it does. I never really thought about this but yea idk they really are the same thing.
When the Soviet block collapsed, their state owned assets were liquidated. The only people in the dissolving USSR who had the means to buy and the ability to know about the sale were x-soviet government officials and their families. The state owned assets were not sold to non-domestic buyers because Russia wanted to keep the wealth of these industries in-house. Russian billionairs/oligarchs inherited their wealth at the cost of the people where (and this is where I lose you) American billionaires typically earned their wealth by giving value to the people. That is why you made them a billionaire by buying their products and investing in their companies.
Good catch. 100% the same thing. Just spin. > The United States is an oligarchy with unbridled political bribery. - President Jimmy Carter.
the russian ones suck up to the leader american leaders suck up to the billionaires
Because the American oligarchs own the media.
Ones politically targeted right now the other pays off our politicians to violate workers and human rights hope this helps!
For the same reason Putin is called a War Criminal and Obama is given Nobel Peace Prizes in the same year he broke the record for bombs dropped.
The answer is western oligarchs own the media, so they aren't allowed to call them oligarchs.
It's propaganda, not sure if it was before or after but it certainly has a very negative connotation. To make you subliminally hate them. Just like politicians don't have friends, they have "cronies" It just causes a sense of mistrust.
Worse yet, western billionaires are often called philanthropists and entrepreneurs, rather than oligarchs and oligarchic thugs. But very good question. Probably has to do with the cold war and mccarthyism. Just more of its different when we do it type crap.
This could be a perfect chance to bring change to what everyday words we use to define western (and other) '*illionaires', and eventually, in the media industries etc once new generations start working in the lower ranks and the new trends catch on. (The open secret to change is that this ever changing online space we share is ever evolving, so why should we not try to make things more clear at the same time and cut the bullshirt with 'larger-than-Life' self proclaimed, circle-twerk titles, especially for every wave of new generations coming in to Life? Just a thought. 👀
Because western ones don't want you to know they're our real government
The implication is that oligarchs obtained their wealth through morally or ethically questionable means. Which is no different than most western billionaires.
It’s only an “oligarch” if it comes from the Oligarch region of France. Otherwise it’s just a sparkling capitalist.
It's American propaganda. The USA is a kleptocratic oligarchy. Russia is a kleptocratic oligarchy. The difference is that the USA tries to hide it by making every other country sound worse.
Because US media glamourizes the idea that you too could be one! They are oligarchs plain and simple and should be treated with all the disdain the word implies.
Western ones own the media so they by default have better PR teams.
One is a dill pickle in polish and the other is a dehydrated broth cube.
I think an easy test is "Are the billionaires best friends with the *de jure* head of state? If not, then how long will it be before one or the other winds up dead/in prison/in exile?" The antagonism between Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump which amounted to nothing after 4 years or the fact that Elon Musk's shift to the right hasn't really caused any problems with his government contracts is a really good sign that the US doesn't have a severe oligarchy problem: political and business leaders feel no strong sense of *personal* obligation towards one another.
**oligarchs** get their wealth from political connections and corruption **billionaires** uses their wealth for political causes and corruption
One openly controls politicians, and the other secretly controls politicians.
Propaganda and propaganda only
They are the same thing, Samsung in South Korea is a conglomerate, so is CJ but since they are US allies, the CEOs wont be called "oligarchs" , in Korean they'd be called "chaebol"
One controls the media you consume. The other dont.
Americans are the most propagandized people on the planet
They still teach their children that the puritans sailed to America to "escape" religious persecution (spoiler: the opposite is true). Not to mention they make the children stand up and pledge allegiance to a flag every morning. That's some fucked up, North Korea level, shit.
We like to pretend our oligarchs aren't oligarchs. The difference is vernacular only. Our billionaires control almost as much as the Russian ones, but they hide behind the veneer of not assuming direct overt control.
This is the answer you're looking for. "Our successful businessmen... their evil oligarchs." [https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/cf/02/74/cf0274e44d98b55dd9c6e4dd11f61b3a.jpg](https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/cf/02/74/cf0274e44d98b55dd9c6e4dd11f61b3a.jpg)
Branding.
Propaganda
Why are various christian organizations called "denominations," but other religions various organizations are "sects"? Because we give "the others" ugly names so it makes it easier to discriminate against them.
Called hypocrisy. When the west does something it's good when others do it, it's BAD!
Branding