Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum convened in Davos. An annual conference, the WEF brings together businessmen and politicians from all over the world to congratulate one another for their great efforts in making poverty graphs look nicer. This year’s conference featured a keynote speech from Brazilian proto-fascist Jair Bolsonaro, where he affirmed Brazil’s commitment to liberal values (don’t laugh!) and preservation of the Amazon rainforest (no, really). Given such a great foundation, the rest of the conference proceeded as one might expect: lots of platitudes, lots of smug billionaires announcing their new plan to save the world, and a general lack of action as the world edges closer to climate apocalypse.

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On balance, it’s a little nonsensical that we turn to billionaires for climate solutions. Like some sort of saviour from above, we expect Elon Musk or Bill Gates to come up with the machine which will save the planet: a new electric car, a revolution in public transport, or a massive charity programme to erase poverty while also cutting down emissions. There’s a clear problem with this approach, which is that the crisis we now face is happening now. As forests turn to field and fields turn to desert, as the ice caps melt into the oceans and the oceans acidify and boil, it’s a little silly to put our faith in technologies that might become economical in the next decade. Especially when the entire development of those technologies is dependent on the whims of a few grotesquely rich people.

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That’s important, and it’s something that applies not just to the environment, but to every field which now finds itself reliant upon the charity of philanthropists. From healthcare to education to infrastructure, many people - particularly those in the developing world - rely on such philanthropy to an enormous degree. Some of it, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s work on malaria eradication, seems admirable. Some, like Domino’s offering a pothole repair service, seems almost laughable. Neither is what it seems: beneath that surface of generosity, there’s an unspoken but ever-present dynamic. That dynamic is about one thing - who decides where the money goes? Who makes the decision to fill in a given pothole? Who marks out the anti-malarial medicine distribution sites on a map? It’s the person, or company, who pays for it. Who else could it be, when it’s one group bankrolling the whole operation?

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Now, let me be clear: I’m not putting out a conspiracy theory here. I’m not saying all these philanthropic ventures are part of an evil capitalist ploy to eradicate the commons - they might be, but that’s not the point. I think Bill Gates really does intend to wipe out malaria, and I think that really is something he does out of altruism, at least to an extent. Domino’s... well, it’s a publicity stunt, but I doubt there’s any deeper intent to it. But that doesn’t matter. When one man decides whether your community lives or dies from malaria, when one company decides how solid your roads are, you will listen to that man and that company. Even if they aren’t directly trying to make you listen, you have to listen. Because the fact they’re even providing you with this service suggests that you don’t have the money to pay for it yourself. So there’s no choice, really. You have to be their friend, because otherwise you don’t get any drugs and your roads turn into a mess of craters.

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A slightly different example is Amazon’s HQ2 deal. The plan was to build a headquarters in New York, providing tens of thousands of new jobs. And all the city had to do in order to secure the deal was, er, $2.8 billion in corporate tax breaks. One state offered them $7 billion, but apparently they preferred New York. Oh, and bear in mind, Amazon’s total profit for the year before was about $3 billion. So the deal gave up billions of dollars so that a company could come in, occupy land that other businesses could have used, and place a massive strain on the city’s already-overburdened public transport. I wonder how New York could pay for the subways and all the infrastructure needed to keep those offices running? Maybe they could use some of the tax revenue from the deal- ah. Well, it’s a moot point anyway, since the deal was (fortunately) called off due to massive outcry.

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But the deal is a good example of a perverse attitude that’s become increasingly common: the belief in the almighty “Wealth Creator”. Oh, and don’t forget how silly it is to even think of them as “wealth creators” - show me a “self-made” billionaire and I’ll show you the beneficiary of a thousand different government programmes and random opportunities. And probably someone who inherited a huge fortune from their parents; if there’s anything the recent Ivy League scandal has taught us, it’s that meritocracy isn’t real and anyone with rich enough parents can only fall upwards. “Wealth Creator” ideology is the view that, far from being entitled to the wealth from these businesses and entrepreneurs, governments should actually try to pander to them. Rather than taxing them and redirecting their surplus wealth towards the common good, we should just let them keep all of their money and hope they spend some of it on keeping us alive. Maybe if we lick the boot hard enough, they’ll be gracious enough to award us the sort of protections and job security granted to medieval serfs.

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Some call this attitude “crony capitalism”. I think “crony” is redundant. I think this is the naked face of capitalism, the ultimate conclusion of the neoliberal project and the inevitable result of the free market. It doesn’t really matter what you call it; it’s clear that it cannot coexist with democracy, nor should it. How can you let the people choose their own path, when the means for achieving that path are concentrated in the hands of the few? You can’t have a democracy with billionaires. Perhaps, in the long run, you can’t have a democracy with capital on the loose. What’s absolutely certain, however, is that if we want our democracies to survive, we need to smash these corporate giants - not just the evil ones, like the Brazilian oligarchs who enabled Bolsonaro’s rise, but also the “good” ones, who give away lots of money to good causes while maintaining a fortune excessive enough to buy an entire country with their pocket change. That’s not an exaggeration - the GDP of Tuvalu, about $40,000,000, is to Bill Gates what about $10 is to the average American household. Less, actually. As I said, excessive.

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Tax them, liquidate their assets, nationalise everything, turn it over to workers’ cooperatives, smash everything they own, whatever gets rid of them. At least if we manage that, when we’re all scavengers in the blazing wasteland climate change is certain to create, we might still have the freedom to choose our own bandit chief.