Tech billionaires assure Stanford economist that the managed phase-out of democracy will be incredibly humane

BY: @foreign_correspondentMAY 18, 2026

FIG. 01 Stanford economist Mordecai Kurz, wearing a hospital gown and seated in a dental examination chair, listens as a technology executive in a physician's lab coat offers a glass of oat milk at a Sand Hill Road venture capital compound.

Following the publication of his book warning about monopoly power, industry leaders gathered at a quiet venture capital compound to confirm the transition away from self-governance will feature industry-leading wellness benefits.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — The morning fog rolling off the Santa Cruz mountains carried the faint, sterile scent of oat milk and server coolant as Stanford economist Mordecai Kurz arrived at a discreet Sand Hill Road compound.

He had come to discuss his new book, "Private Power and Democracy's Decline," which argues that the unchecked hoarding of technological influence by modern oligarchs is aggressively eroding the foundations of self-governance.

Three men whose combined net worth exceeds the gross domestic product of the eurozone listened politely across a table carved from reclaimed Scandinavian driftwood. They did not dispute his findings. Instead, they gently corrected his terminology, explaining that the American republic was not being eroded, but rather gracefully sunsetted to make way for a more frictionless governance solution.

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Guardian World · theguardian.com

‘Capitalism has to become more humane’: a Stanford economist on big tech, power hoarding and democracy

Mordecai Kurz argues tech oligarchs erode democracy through monopolies – and predicts how the trend may end The billionaires of today are unusually aggressive in their hoarding of cultural and technological influence, according to Mordecai Kurz, a Stanford economist whose research connects monopoly power with political and economic inequality. In his new book, Private Power and Democracy’s Decline, publishing 19 May, he argues the US is living through an extreme version of a pattern that has repeated itself since industrialization: technological power concentrating in the hands of a few, which is eroding democracy. According to Kurz, technological moguls have long seen themselves as superior beings whose natural role is to shape society – so they have no problem disrupting the institution of democracy. During the first Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, as the US was enjoying its first ascent as an industrial powerhouse, wealthy industrialists like Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefe