Appistocracy

We’ve heard much about the slide into oligarchy – and with good reason: the members of the US cabinet’s collective worth is reportedly close to half a trillion dollars, with the majority of them belonging to the top 0.0001%.

But journalist Ken Klippenstein offers a better term that captures our current moment with uncomfortable precision. He calls it the ‘appistocracy’ – a ruling class whose power extends far beyond mere wealth.

Amid the pomp of Trump’s inauguration, the tech tycoons watched from VIP seats “like an approving collective of Greek gods”. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill plutocrats amassing wealth from afar; they’ve engineered an unprecedented intimacy with our daily existence. Their digital empires don’t merely occupy our homes – they’ve colonised our attention, our social connections, and increasingly, our conception of reality.

Klippenstein on what makes these figures uniquely powerful: “Oligarchs are nothing new, but these men have a power over us that is more intimate than other billionaires. They collectively build, run, and control what can only be likened to an appendage of our own human bodies, a new organ that most can’t imagine losing or losing access to.”

How the appistocracy differs from previous industrial titans: “The robber barons of yesteryear, the Carnegies, the Fords and so on, at least employed a lot of people. At least they manufactured something tangible and of use to people’s lives. The appistocracy doesn’t do anything to improve health care, housing, or education. Their contribution to infrastructure amounts to building more energy facilities to power their data centers and fuel their artificial intelligence empires.”

“We are told we are saving time through the products of the appistocracy and yet we have no time. They’ve hollowed out the malls, stores and other public spaces – even ourselves, as we spend more time alone. Call it the hollowgarchy.”

We voluntarily carry the surveillance and influence tools of the ruling class in our pockets, checking them compulsively throughout the day. We’ve willingly adopted their products as extensions of our consciousness, even as they hollow out our physical world and social connections. Their apps have become phantom limbs – the loss of which feels like a genuine amputation.

The true power of the appistocracy isn’t measured in billions but in dependence. It’s a relationship that transforms us from citizens into users. Yet even as these digital dependencies deepen, so too does our capacity to question them – to carve out spaces of genuine presence in a world increasingly defined by algorithmic engagement.  – Kai

Source: Dense Discovery