The Coming Age of Tech Trillionaires and the Challenge to Democracy
"Tech trillionaires have effectively privatized these digital public goods. Platforms such as Facebook, Google’s Search engine, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT now operate at scales and with degrees of societal dependency that effectively render them infrastructural in many countries. And yet, their governance structures remain private, unaccountable to the broader citizenry that depends on them daily. The moral significance of this shift is not merely a matter of accountability or regulation: it represents a form of enclosure, where what, due to its civic significance, could have been a commons for democratic discourse and ethical development becomes a proprietary asset ruled by corporate interests."
Who Owns the Future? Ways to Understand Power, Technology, and the Moral Commons
Thomas Meier, Kristina Khutsishvili / Jun 13, 2025This post is part of a series of contributor perspectives and analyses called "The Coming Age of Tech Trillionaires and the Challenge to Democracy." Learn more about the call for contributions here, and read other pieces in the series as they are published here.
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The Coming Age of Tech Trillionaires
and the Challenge to Democracy
