Formalizing the Shadow Government: What If Mega-Donors Ruled Openly?

A Thought Experiment

In Moldbug’s formalist manifesto, he argues that our society’s leadership should be restructured based on who actually owns the US government. For Moldbug, there is a fundamental disconnect between formal, explicit, and legal control over the US government and actual control over the government. Who is legally in charge of the executive branch and who is actually in charge are not the same, and this is also true for the rest of the federal government. We are told “the people” or “our elected representatives” control the government, but Moldbug instead claims real power belongs to The New York Times (he also claims it belongs to the media and universities more broadly in a different essay) yet their ownership does not translate into formal, explicit, and legal control. Therefore, Moldbug recommends that we formally put the New York Times (and presumably the media and universities in general) in charge of the government.

In general, the dissident right will disagree with this view because the fact that the New York Times controls the US government (even if they do) does not mean they would be good and ethical rulers. However, Moldbug’s formalism can be charitably reinterpreted as a thought experiment rather than a prescriptive ideology. In my essay Who Are the Elites I gave my own answer to the question of who actually rules over us. I share Moldbugs intuition that “our elected representatives” do not actually run the government, but I think the people actually in control of our government are mega donors. If we look at how many times “states of exception” are made, we can see that they are made in the name of certain ideologies and on behalf of certain people, and who is giving money to both American political parties is correlated with these states of exception. There are three factions which collectively control the US government: the woke left, Zionists/neo-cons, and a third group which I call the techno-globalists. In this essay, I extend Moldbug’s theory of formalism and integrate it with my earlier argument that governance is dominated by megadonors. I want to put forward a thought experiment, and ask how our government would look if power were formalized according to my view of who controls things. What would happen if mega donors were explicitly given legal control over the US government?

That is the question we shall answer.

Who Is to Be at the Top?

In Who Are the Elites, I broke down the elite class into woke, Zionist, and techno-globalist factions but I explained that each has more or less equal power. I also said that there is no single leader for each faction, let alone a single leader of the whole elite class. This means that deciding upon the leader of this new formalist government will be tricky. However, I have selected one Reid Hoffman to be its leader. Hoffman is part of what I call the woke faction of the elite. He gives money to Democrats and basically believes more or less the same things you would expect from “woke” people (except he supports Israel and capitalism). However, the fact that he is not only woke but also a Zionist and a big player in the tech world makes him the perfect pick to unify all three factions into a single coalition. Hoffman is now dictator of this new government. All hail King Reid I.

Other Democratic Donors

Now that we have picked who will be the head of this new formalist government, we must take the other mega donors and give them spots in Hoffman’s cabinet. While Hoffman is its leader, in order for this new government to be formalized, we have to impose a rule (for the sake of this experiment) that Hoffman can only pick members of his cabinet that have real power over the current government. He cannot pick open political figures to work for him; he can only pick fellow leaders of the donor class. Starting with the woke faction of the elite, I asked chat GPT to provide me with a list of the biggest donors to the Democratic Party, which are as follows:

• Michael Bloomberg

• Tom Steyer

• George Soros

• Dustin Moskovitz

• Cari Tuna

• Reid Hoffman

• Fred Eychaner

• James Simons

• Marilyn Simons

• Reed Hastings

• Patty Quillin

• Haim Saban

• Jeffrey Katzenberg

• Steven Spielberg

• Kate Capshaw

• Abigail Disney

• Sam Bankman-Fried

• Karla Jurvetson

• Elizabeth Simons

With the exception of Haim Saban (who is more part of the Zionist faction) all of these donors belong to the woke faction of the elite. In our formalist experiment we will give each of these people, besides Hoffman who we already made the leader, others who either passed away or are in jail, and Saban who will be given a foreign policy position, various positions within the new regime that woke people would be interested in. The list is as follows:

Bloomberg (Secretary of State)

Tom Steyer (Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency)

George Soros (Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services)

Dustin Moskovitz (Secretary of Transportation)

Cari Tuna (Secretary of Health and Human Services)

Fred Eychaner (Secretary of Homeland Security)

Haim Saban (Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs)

Patty Quillin (Attorney General)

Reed Hastings (Secretary of Education)

Jeffrey Katzenberg (Secretary of Housing and Urban Development)

Steven Spielberg (Chair of the Federal Communications Commission)

Kate Capshaw (Secretary of Labor)

Abigail Disney (Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration)

Karla Jurvetson (Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights)

Elizabeth Simons (Deputy Attorney General)

Republican Donors

However, the donor class does not exclusively consist of the woke faction which gives to the DNC. It also encompasses the Zionist faction, which generally gives to the GOP. I asked ChatGPT for a list and this is what it gave me:

• Harold Simmons

• Bob J. Perry

• Kenneth C. Griffin

• Richard Uihlein

• Elizabeth Uihlein

• Miriam Adelson

• Jeff Yass

• Janine Yass

• Timothy Mellon

• Bernard Marcus

Additionally, I will add Bill Ackman, Les Wexner, Len Blavatnik, and Larry Ellison to this list since they are well known. To formalize their power, Hoffman will give them various positions related to foreign policy. The list is as follows:

Harold Simmons (Under Secretary for International Security and Arms Control)

Bob J. Perry (Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Global Communications)

Kenneth C. Griffin (Deputy Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the

Environment)

Richard Uihlein (Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs)

Elizabeth Uihlein (Chief of Protocol)

Miriam Adelson (U.S. Ambassador to Israel)

Jeff Yass (Under Secretary for Economic Affairs and Technology Diplomacy)

Janine Yass (Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs)

Timothy Mellon (Special Envoy for Infrastructure and Reconstruction in Conflict Zones)

Bernard Marcus (Director of Foreign Assistance Programs (USAID))

Bill Ackman (National Security Advisor)

Les Wexner (Chief of Staff to the United States Secretary of State)

Len Blavatnik (Deputy Secretary of State)

Larry Ellison (White House Chief of Staff)

The Techno-Globalists

The last faction that needs to be formalized are the techno-globalists. This will be a lot easier to do since there are really only four people in this faction: Larry Fink, Bill Gates, Salim Ramji, and Tony Blair. Both Fink and Ramji run two different large investment companies (BlackRock and The Vanguard Group) which basically control every other corporation by the shares they own. For this reason, it would be more appropriate to give them economic positions within Hoffman’s government. As for Gates, a position related to tech would be appropriate, and for Blair, since he is based in Britain, he will get to govern the island on behalf of Hoffman. The positions are as follows:

Lary Fink (Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers)

Bill Gates (“AI Czar”)

Salim Ramji (Secretary of the Treasury)

Tony Blair (governor of Britain)

Final Thoughts

I should make it clear that this is a thought experiment to describe the current political system and elite class that we are living under, not a prescription for what should be. I regard this entire elite class and everyone on this list as evil, and wish to remove them from power rather than formalize their power. However, I still believe this fictional government can provide us with a better understanding of how our political system actually works and who actually runs it. This formalized Hoffman dictatorship is fictional, but it still describes more or less how our government works in real life. The only two differences between our government and this fictional one are that in real life the power of mega donors is hidden, and in real life each one has equal power and Hoffman is not the final leader. Yet, the superior organization of donors and the combination of the three factions sharing power makes it so that the state behaves as if Hoffman had absolute control over it. We functionally live under the government described in this essay. Understanding who is actually in charge and how power really works in our political system will help right-wing dissidents in their efforts to replace it with something better.

This was a guest essay by Wolf Ponziani . Follow his and my account on Substack