You can’t really be in favour of both democracy and billionaires, because democracy requires equal opportunity in order to participate, and extreme wealth gives its holders unfathomable advantages with little accountability.

Adams feared that the goods of fortune would determine who had power—not just in terms of the formal structures of law and government, but in terms of people’s ability to “stand out, to be recognized, and to evoke favorable public sentiments.”161 In such a society, wondered Adams, “what chance has humble, modest, obscure, and poor merit in such a s

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