Over at The Conversation is an interesting article, “Andrew Carnegie and the 19th-century ‘robber barons’ have lessons for today’s oligarchs about the responsibilities of wealth“.

Based on medieval feudal lords who used often illegal means to amass wealth at the expense of the rest of the population, the robber baron label was applied to industrialists and oil magnates like John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Carnegie to criticise their perceived ruthlessness.

Today’s tech titans appear to share numerous similarities with them. Zuckerberg’s Meta dominates social networking, Jeff Bezos’s Amazon rules e-commerce, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX commands the global rocket launch market, while his control of X (formerly Twitter) gives him a massive voice on social media. The influence of these men is immense, their empires expansive, their assets astounding.

It’s therefore unsurprising that the notion of robber barons is undergoing a renaissance. Whether that comparison is appropriate is debatable. Some commentators have suggested that this label is a misnomer – and a better one might be “tech tyrants”. They may share “some” robber baron characteristics around ruthless capitalism, but display fewer of their potentially redeeming features around using their wealth for the wider public good.

The Gospel of Wealth offers Carnegie’s reflections on how to appropriately use one’s accumulated wealth. Carnegie acknowledges that, while inequality of wealth is unavoidable, massive wealth should come with moral obligations. In his view, the wealthy should act as trustees for the poor and support those less fortunate.