There are limits to what money can buy. This is not just a proverb, but a practical reality that has been tried and tested across humanity’s history. However, wealth is important, and it can define the positions of individuals in society and nations in the world. But the wealth of nations is not only defined by money: it is the sum of many riches including of the economic, military, and cultural kind.

Over the last few decades there has been a new phase of capitalist development known as “financial capitalism.” With this change have come new ways of measuring wealth. Before the earlier development of industrial capitalism, the state led business through laws, regulations, and policy formulation and execution. Business then began to finance imperialist states in the colonial era to benefit from economic growth. Then it gained power and operated on a par with the state, financing the two world wars that marked the first half of the last century.

Today, business sometimes leads states by influencing policies and shaping international relations. Some of the world’s billionaires have accumulated wealth that amounts to more than the budgets of some countries. Traditional wisdom holds that very rich individuals avoid any direct involvement in politics and prefer to make their moves in the shadows. This, however, has recently changed, with their wealth empowering some of the world’s very rich to play politics even in a vulgar way.

One man who embodies this is the US billionaire Elon Musk. His vast wealth has led to his being described as one of the richest men in the world. There is very little financial gain to be had from publicising his political views, but even so he has become known for his strong views on current affairs. Sometimes these have led him to intervene in major world issues from the war in Ukraine to the war on Gaza.

At the start of Ukraine war, Musk gave the Ukrainian military access to his Starlink satellite Internet service. Then he backtracked and began charging the Pentagon heavily for the service to Ukraine. When far-right protests spread in UK cities recently, Musk said that Britain was on the verge of civil war. He is now in a fight with Brazil after the high court there banned his social media platform X (formerly called Twitter).

Musk once said that he would give access to his Starlink service to humanitarian agencies operating in Gaza, but he then acceded to the requests of his friend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said he would not do so unless Israel approved it.

Musk is at odds with the US government on China. While the Biden administration is squeezing the Chinese and encouraging American businesses to move out of the country, Musk is expanding the Shanghai factory making his Tesla electric cars. In short, he sees himself as empowered to chart a foreign policy of his own that is distinct from that of the country of which he is a citizen. He can be rather blunt in doing so.

Like other politically vocal billionaires, Musk may be a smart businessman and a successful venture capitalist.  But that does not mean that he is also a brilliant politician or even a sound economist. Known for his maverick views and sharp U-turns, Musk was once a US Democrat. Now, he is a far-right agitator and a supporter of Republican Donald Trump. He has assumed the role of a journalist and broadcaster by interviewing Trump on X in an interview that turned out to be a farce, both journalistically and politically.

When he bought Twitter a couple of years ago, he began to use it as a platform for his personal views, with these sometimes being far-fetched and even conspiratorial. Of course, we have seen well-known business people buying media outlets to strengthen their political influence before, though this was chiefly within the context of political lobbying to advance their business interests. By contrast, Musk and a few others that now have similar interests have felt empowered to dictate their own views through the media they own, using them to broadcast their political, cultural, and even scientific views.

While wealth can empower people, it has got limits. Being a billionaire, whether as a result of tactical deal-making or innovation, is not necessarily a guarantee that one is a natural leader. There are many examples of billionaires who have ventured into politics, using media empires to achieve it, but who have finally ended up disastrously failing. One example was the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

There have been examples of this in our region too, though they were not on quite the same level and they have never transgressed the boundaries of the state. The state might rely on the vast wealth of private entities, such as the US space agency NASA hiring Musk’s SpaceX rockets to send astronauts into space or the defence industry’s reliance on steel produced by the company of a private metals magnate. But it will also draw a line in the sand when entering into such agreements and refuse to have its arms twisted.

All citizens have to abide by the laws and regulations of the nation of which they are members. It is the exclusive job of the state to legislate and to execute the law. Even if some billionaires today are wealthier than some states, huge red flags should be raised if and when they start to play the role of a state.

The same thing applies to other aspects of being rich, which does not mean that one is necessarily knowledgeable in every field. The power dynamic will continue to shift between the state and influential private agents within it. The line between the two can become blurred, with huge implications for the economic direction of any nation, as we have been witnessing today,

The writer is a London-based seasoned journalist.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 19 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly