The digital Gilded Age: DC faces Silicon Valley's riches – and ever-growing power
UK GUARDIAN
Through charities, lobbying groups, and head-to-head fights with the
FBI, tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook wield influence
comparable to that of Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller
The late 19th century was a period known as “the Gilded Age” in
America. As the railroads, mining industries and factories boomed,
millions of workers were inspired to migrate from Europe, yet the wealth
became concentrated among a small set of industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie,
a steel magnate, and the oil baron John D Rockefeller. These men
wielded massive power through business, political efforts and
philanthropy.
Yet even Carnegie, whose ruthlessness earned him a reputation as a
“robber baron”, would have been amazed by the power the heads of
technology firms wield today, according to the Carnegie biographer David Nasaw.
“Carnegie could never have imagined the kind of power Zuckerberg
has,” said Nasaw, a history professor at City University of New York.
“Politics today is less relevant than it has ever been in our entire
history. These CEOs are more powerful than they’ve ever been. The
driving force of social change today is no longer government at all.”
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