Stephen Schwarzman, the chief executive of Blackstone, is supporting Donald Trump. Other Wall Street billionaires are poised to follow. Palo Alto isn’t without its Maga magnates either. What explains their choice? Self-interest? To an extent, no doubt. But it isn’t as if their alternative is death through taxation. Joe Biden is president, not Huey Long.
Besides, greed doesn’t account for other rich people with similar views. It doesn’t explain the pro-Brexit industrialists who had little obvious to gain outside the European single market. It doesn’t explain why I can’t attend a finance dinner without hearing the Kremlin script (“You know, Zelenskyy’s no saint”) from someone who neither profits from the Ukraine invasion nor loses from the retaliatory sanctions.
Don’t look always for the material motive. There is such a thing as sincere wrongness. So how might the rich have reasoned themselves into these positions? Having some exposure to that world, and a serviceable radar for human frailty, I’d suggest two things.