Oligarchy

When Michael Bloomberg was running for his third term as mayor of New York, he was compared unfairly in the media to the Roman oligarch Marcus Licinius Crassus, who had "deployed his wealth in the service of his political in the ambitions" (Hertzberg 2009, 27). Drawing on a fortune estimated in 2010 at $18 billion, Bloomberg had "spent more of his own money than any other. ursuit of public office." It is true individual in United States history in pursuit Individual that both men are oligarchs. However, the comparison is fails to misleading because recognize important changes in oligarchy over the centuries. When oligarchs like Crassus spent their resources to become consul, it was one of the s they could do politically to secure their core oligarchic most important things can t they interests. For modern American oligarchs like Bloomberg, buying public office with private funds is driven more by vanity than motives of oligarchic survival. Unlike in Rome, oligarchs in America enjoy strong property rights enforced by others, and thus do not need to rule to pursue their core interests. When they do hold office, it is neither as nor for oligarchs. It is unlikely that Bloomberg the billionaire would do anything differently as mayor had his political career been entirely funded by donations or public resources.

If direct rule is much less vital for American oligarchs than for their Roman counterparts, why even label someone like Bloomberg an oligarch? This book argues that the answer lies in the very different ways that oligarchs defend! their wealth in a civil oligarchy like the modern United States. A clearer insight into Bloomberg's oligarchic behavior was provided a year later in an exposé (Roston 2010) detailing how the Bloomberg Family Foundation had moved hundreds of millions of dollars into "various offshore destinations- some of them notorious tax-dodge hideouts.