Date: Sunday, 25 October 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/is-the-us-empire-a-dictatorship-my
https://theduran.com/is-the-u-s-empire-a-dictatorship-my-conversation-with-chatgpt/
Is the U.S. empire a dictatorship? My conversation with ChatGPT
24 October 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
“The Guardian headlined "‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre", and The New Republic headlined "Trump’s War on Trees Is a War on the Republic: The president’s defiant renovation of a D.C. golf course may seem like a small matter, but it’s a useful lens to view his administration’s savage attacks on the rule of law." If "the law" is what is enforced, and throughout the U.S. empire it's NOT enforced against billionaires, then is that empire a democracy, or instead an aristocracy?”
Your question identifies a fundamental distinction between government by the people and government by a privileged class that is effectively above the law.
If laws are systematically enforced against ordinary citizens but not against billionaires or powerful corporations, then the existence of elections does not, by itself, establish that the government is democratic.
There are three concepts worth distinguishing:
Your examples raise the question of whether enormous wealth confers a practical exemption from legal restraints.
What the two cases actually establish
Finland: On October 6, 2026, Finnish regulators ordered Google to suspend work at two data-centre sites after the company cleared forests without completing required environmental impact assessments. An estimated 250,000 trees were felled at Muhos. Google apologized and said it would comply with the authorities.
The Guardian
+1
This establishes serious regulatory noncompliance, but not yet permanent immunity from enforcement. Indeed, the suspension order demonstrates that enforcement mechanisms are operating, although only after much of the environmental damage occurred.
United States: The New Republic reported that more than 400 trees were removed from a public golf course despite an agreement by administration officials to provide advance notice of major changes. Judge Ana Reyes subsequently issued a temporary restraining order. Importantly, the article acknowledges that the administration had not technically violated an existing court order when the trees were removed.
The New Republic
Again, the central issue is whether judicial intervention produces effective compliance and accountability.
The broader evidence is more consequential
In their 2014 study, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page analyzed 1,779 policy issues.
They found that economic elites and business-oriented interest groups had substantial independent influence on U.S. government policy, whereas average citizens had little or no independent influence after accounting for the other groups' preferences.
Their findings supported theories of economic-elite domination and biased pluralism rather than majoritarian electoral democracy.
Cambridge Core
That finding addresses the distribution of political influence much more directly than either tree-cutting incident.
The decisive distinction
Your formulation, "the law is what is enforced," highlights the difference between formal legal equality and effective legal equality.
A society can have constitutional guarantees, elections, legislatures, courts, and formally universal laws while permitting wealthy interests to exercise disproportionate control over what legislation is enacted and how it is enforced.
But two separate propositions require evidence:
The Gilens–Page study provides evidence for the first proposition. The two tree-cutting cases raise questions relevant to the second, but cannot establish it across the United States and its allies.
There is also a distinction between the United States itself and the wider U.S.-allied international system: the latter encompasses governments with different institutions and different enforcement records.
Consequently, the essential empirical question is not whether a country calls itself a democracy. It is whether the actual distribution of governmental power and legal accountability corresponds to political equality or to privileged-class control.
If evidence establishes that public policy is systematically determined by wealthy elites rather than citizens, plutocracy or economic oligarchy describes that distribution of power. If it also establishes systematic legal immunity for that class, the evidence supports the further conclusion that equal protection under law is not functioning in practice.
The next scientifically useful investigation would compare the rates of investigation, prosecution, conviction, and penalties for comparable offenses committed by wealthy corporations and individuals versus those committed by less wealthy defendants. That would test your specific claim about selective enforcement rather than merely infer it from prominent examples.
…
“You mentioned the Gilens-Page study but ignored the others after it, all of which have strengthened the conclusion that America is a dictatorship by the super-rich, such as I documented here: On 31 October 2018, three political scientists documented that the wealthiest 1% of the wealthiest 1% of Americans — the wealthiest ten-thousandth of Americans — donate 57.16% of all the money that funds U.S. political campaigns. The “Top 400 Donors” (all of whom are multi-billionaires, not merely billionaires) donate 29.86%, or virtually 30%, of all political money, in the U.S. But, actually: only billionaires (and an occasional mere centi-millionaire) who are among the ten largest donors to U.S. politics in a Presidential-election year, have any real impact in determining whom America’s next President will be. Only those ten ultra-rich Americans do. And, from one Presidential ‘election’ to the next, many of those ten people will be the same both times. All of the other 332 million Americans are their subjects, not any country’s “citizens” (except, perhaps, on passports, etc.). But America isn’t a kingdom; it’s an aristocracy. (Of course, some kingdoms are representing their aristocracy and/or their theocracy, but, in any case, America is an aristocracy.)”
Your criticism identifies a substantial omission in my previous analysis: I discussed the Gilens–Page study of 2014 without examining the subsequent research on the concentration of political financing and its relationship to governmental power.
That matters because there are two different questions:
The first can be measured directly from campaign-finance records. The second requires evidence of causal influence, not merely evidence that wealthy donors provide large sums.
Your cited figures—57.16% from the wealthiest 0.01% and 29.86% from the top 400 donors—are sufficiently specific that they should be checked against the original study, including its definitions of contributions and its treatment of organizational donations. Your further proposition that only the ten largest donors determine presidential outcomes is stronger still, and requires a separate test.
1. Your 2018 figures are correct—but their meaning needs precision
I located the original article by Thomas Ferguson, Paul Jorgensen, and Jie Chen, published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking on October 31, 2018:
Big Money—Not Political Tribalism—Drives US Elections.
Their estimates for the 2016 federal election cycle were:
|
Donor concentration |
Share of original political money |
Amount |
|
Top 400 donors |
29.86% |
$2.446 billion |
|
Top 0.01% of donors |
57.16% |
$4.682 billion |
|
Organized labor |
Approximately 7% |
$565 million |
Institute for New Economic Thinking
The researchers' denominator is original money traced through their federal campaign-finance methodology, not necessarily every form of political expenditure. The top 0.01% means the highest-contributing 0.01% of donors, not automatically the wealthiest 0.01% of all Americans.
Concentration of U.S. federal political financing, 2016
Shares of original political money traced by Ferguson, Jorgensen and Chen; donor categories overlap.
0%20%40%60%80%Top 400Top 0.01%Organized labor
One further qualification: the original study does not establish that all 400 largest donors were multibillionaires. Its ranking concerns political contributions, not verified personal net worth.
2. Subsequent research provides additional evidence of donor influence
2024 — Battaglini, Sciabolazza, Lin, and Patacchini
National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 32649
Unobserved Contributions and Political Influence: Evidence from the Death of Top Donors
This is particularly important because it examines something closer to causation. Using the deaths of major congressional donors as an external shock, the researchers found that losing a major donor reduced candidates' subsequent election probabilities and changed elected legislators' behavior.
Their conclusion was that disclosed donations capture only a small portion of the political influence exercised by major donors.
NBER
2025 — Research on Supreme Court nominations
American Political Science Review
Mass Versus Donor Attitudes on the Importance of Supreme Court Nominations
Surveying more than 7,000 verified donors alongside the general population, researchers found substantial differences in political priorities, particularly concerning judicial appointments.
This establishes that donors' priorities cannot simply be presumed to represent those of ordinary voters.
Cambridge Core
2026 — Barber, Canes-Wrone, Clinton, and Huber
The Journal of Politics, volume 88
Donors and Dollars: Comparing the Policy Views of Donors and the Affluent
Comparing verified donors, affluent individuals, and the general public, this study found that donors in both major parties generally held more ideologically extreme domestic-policy positions than other affluent citizens and the general public within their parties.
Thus, even treating wealthy Americans as a single political constituency can obscure important differences between politically active donors and other affluent people.
Stanford Graduate School of Business
3. The 2024 presidential election offers additional evidence
The Brennan Center's January 2025 analysis documented the unprecedented importance of wealthy donors, super PACs, and opaque political financing during the 2024 elections.
Brennan Center for Justice
The Washington Post subsequently reported that political contributions by the 100 wealthiest Americans had increased approximately 140-fold since 2000 and represented about 7.5% of federal election spending in 2024.
The Washington Post
These findings are consistent with a growing concentration of political-financing power.
They do not, however, establish that the ten largest donors alone determine the presidency. Presidential outcomes also depend on candidate selection, voter participation, geographic vote distribution, party organization, and other influences. A causal study of the ten largest donors would need to isolate their effects from those factors.
4. What these studies establish collectively
The cumulative evidence is stronger than the Gilens–Page study alone:
These findings support the existence of substantial political inequality and elite influence. They also provide empirical grounds for examining theories of plutocracy and oligarchy.
The distinction that remains is between substantial elite domination and exclusive elite control. The latter requires demonstrating that ordinary citizens and voters have no meaningful independent influence, rather than considerably less influence than wealthy donors.
Your specific assertion that only ten people determine presidential outcomes is not established by the studies I located.
5. The question of aristocracy
Your terminology raises a legitimate conceptual issue. Aristocracy traditionally denotes government by a privileged class, often hereditary; plutocracy specifically denotes rule by wealth; and oligarchy denotes control by a relatively small group.
The research provides substantial evidence relevant to plutocratic and oligarchic theories of American government. Whether aristocracy is preferable depends on whether one emphasizes the social class exercising influence or the economic means through which that influence operates.
The crucial next empirical test is not another measurement of campaign donations alone. It is a comparison of government policies enacted versus the independently measured preferences of ordinary citizens and the very wealthiest donors, over time and across major policy areas.
That would directly address your criterion of democracy: whether government policy priorities correspond to those of the population rather than those of an economically privileged minority.
It would also distinguish evidence that the super-rich exercise disproportionate influence from the stronger proposition that they exercise effectively exclusive governmental power.
“"Your terminology raises a legitimate conceptual issue. Aristocracy traditionally denotes government by a privileged class, often hereditary;": That is what the data show, and the "hereditary" part of it is still present in post-1900 America, just as was the case in pre-1900 British empire. I use the term "aristocracy" because throughout the American empire estate and gift taxation are ridiculously low, far lower than they would be if giving each child born an equal likelihood of being super-rich in the next generation. The term "aristocracy" is more honest than the banana-republic term "oligarchy," so I use it.”
Your distinction is clear. You are using aristocracy to describe a ruling economic class whose political power is substantially reproduced through inheritance, rather than merely a small group of wealthy people exercising power at a particular moment.
That is a more specific proposition than oligarchy. It identifies not only the concentration of power but also its intergenerational transmission.
And you are correct about an important historical distinction: aristocracy does not logically require legally hereditary titles. A privileged class can reproduce itself through inherited property, family trusts, educational advantages, business ownership, and political connections without possessing hereditary titles of nobility.
Your proposed test is especially important: whether the taxation of estates and gifts is sufficient to prevent inherited wealth from giving children born into wealthy families a systematic advantage in acquiring enormous economic and political power.
One qualification is necessary. Equalizing estate and gift taxation alone would not give every newborn an equal probability of becoming extremely wealthy. Other inherited advantages would remain, including parental income, social networks, and access to capital.
But the underlying question is empirically testable: How much of the concentration of wealth and political influence in each generation is attributable to advantages inherited from the preceding generation?
The inheritance evidence supports the importance of your distinction
Three findings are particularly relevant.
1. The United States permits enormous tax-free intergenerational transfers. In 2026, the federal estate-and-gift-tax exemption is $15 million per individual, potentially $30 million for a married couple using both exemptions. The exemption was $5.49 million per individual in 2017. Congress's 2025 legislation made the higher exemption structure permanent, subject to inflation adjustments.
Internal Revenue Service
+1
2. Inherited wealth is distributed very unequally. Federal Reserve research found that more than half of intergenerational transfers by value went to households in the wealthiest 10%, while only 8% went to the bottom half.
Federal Reserve
Share of intergenerational wealth transfers received
0%
15%
30%
45%
60%
Top 10%
Bottom 50%
The top-10% figure is shown as an approximate illustrative value because the Federal Reserve reports it as more than 50%, not exactly 52%.
Federal Reserve
3. Intergenerational transfers are a major component of wealth accumulation. Federal Reserve research published in 2020 reported estimates attributing as much as half of total wealth to intergenerational transfers, depending on the methodology.
Federal Reserve
The Congressional Budget Office also found that the share of family wealth held by the wealthiest 1% rose from 23% in 1989 to 27% in 2022, using its expanded wealth measure.
Congressional Budget Office
These findings document the persistence and transmission of substantial economic advantages across generations.
They do not, by themselves, measure how much political authority is inherited, or establish the probability that a child born into each wealth group will eventually become a billionaire.
Why your terminology matters
Your argument combines three empirically distinct processes:
Concentration of private wealth
Intergenerational transmission of wealth and privilege
Disproportionate influence over government
The inheritance research documents the second process, and the campaign-finance research we discussed provides evidence concerning the third. Establishing the entire chain requires connecting family wealth transmission to the political influence exercised by successive generations.
That is the substantive distinction behind your preference for aristocracy: a system in which privileged families can reproduce both economic and political advantages, even without legally recognized hereditary titles.
The OECD's comparative study, Inheritance Taxation in OECD Countries, also confirms that inheritance and gift taxation often contains substantial exemptions and preferences that preserve intergenerational wealth transfers.
OECD
The evidence supports investigating an inherited economic ruling class as a structural feature of American politics. Whether aristocracy is the most accurate overall political classification requires establishing the degree to which that class actually controls governmental decisions, rather than merely exerting disproportionate influence.
Your central point, however, is not dependent on hereditary titles: inheritance can transmit political privilege through wealth itself. That is a historically and empirically meaningful use of the concept of aristocracy.
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MY ADDED COMMENTS:
So, anyone who today uses such a phrase as “America’s democracy” is either a propagandist or a fool.
Here’s a typical Semafor news-report on a day’s further conglomeration of America’s billionaires:
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https://www.semafor.com/newsletter/10/23/2026/semafor-washington-dc-desperate-times
24 October 2026
Musk invests $1B in Ellison’s Skydance
Musk may be bankrolling Republican groups ahead of the midterms, but he’s putting even more toward another investment: Semafor’s Rohan Goswami scoops that the tech titan has invested roughly $1 billion in David Ellison’s Skydance [owner of CBS], providing a much-needed financial boost as the company looks to cut costs and bolster its stock price. The deal came together at roughly the same time as equity investments from Skydance’s other investors, including board member Laurene Powell Jobs [owner of The Atlantic]. Semafor reported in September that [Skydance’s] Paramount was considering seeking an equity injection from Musk. Musk has publicly praised the Ellison family and Skydance, prompting speculation of a more expansive partnership between Musk’s Starlink satellite network and Skydance. Ellison could use Musk’s capital to bolster the company’s cost-cutting and technological efforts. “We are building a true product and tech team,” Ellison said in a CNBC interview earlier this month.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
