There are so few billionaires (crown billionaires in the Czech Republic, dollar billionaires in America) that they cannot form a separate social class with its own world view, values, lifestyle, habits, tastes, views on family life, etc.

The key question, then, is from whom they take their worldview. This determines whether their basic intuition will be pro-migration or anti-migration. Whether they are pro-two sexes or 56 sexes. How they will view Islam. Etc.

Until the 1980s, there were not very significant differences between the attitudes and lifestyles of social classes. In fact, they were so small that we stopped realizing that this was a historically unique situation. It is far more common that the worlds of the aristocracy and the poor do not meet, and that the class “somewhere in between” is innumerable. That post-war setup still works for me with, say, one owner of a huge factory near me. He drives a new Mercedes and I drive an old Renault, but our world view is very similar. Two members of the same nation with the same ideas. The difference in wealth does not create a social difference.

But that was the old world. In the 1980s, Western societies were again divided and prominent owners began to socially merge with top executives, politicians, intellectuals and media stars. This is the world of Bill Gates and the Czech Havlist billionaires. But this era is also coming to an end. Elon Musk and the billionaires around him (by which I definitely do not mean Bezof and Zuckenberg) are clearly adopting the habits of the alt-right, i.e. the culture of young men, mostly highly intelligent and quite masculine, associated with modern technology, who despise the whole poor new aristocracy and its values. Even the alt-right has its philosophers and thinkers, like the oft-mentioned Curtis Yarvin.

This is missing in the Czech environment. From the comments on twitter, I gather that some non-Havlist billionaires are trying to take inspiration from the “alternative”, including adopting incredibly stupid superstitions and conspiracy theories. I’m guessing it’s going to be very difficult to go in that direction. Others are close to groups still living the 90’s cultism, who offer as a cure a repeat of all the things that got us into the current mess (it doesn’t change the fact that some of them got their picture taken at Trump’s inauguration). But the overall result is more embarrassment than opinion formation.

This is where taking ideas from the Anglo-Saxon world would do us good.

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