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In the past week, the headlines have been relentless. Nineteen Russian drones breach Polish airspace. Israel bombs Gaza and Yemen in one sweep. NATO talks about invoking Article 4 for the first time in years. Two cargo ships sink in the Red Sea. Taiwan holds its largest military drill in history. Putin and Kim join Xi in show of strength as China unveils new weapons at huge military parade

At the same time, governments fall. Nepal’s prime minister resigns after anti-corruption protests. France’s Bayrou government collapses in a confidence vote. Indonesia reshuffles its cabinet and markets nosedive. In Kenya and Serbia, the streets erupt. In Utah, an American political activist is shot dead on stage.

It would be easy to treat these as separate stories. Different continents, different crises. But together they tell a larger truth: the global political order is bleeding legitimacy faster than it can patch itself up.

The Era of Illusion Is Over

For decades, leaders managed to buy time. They could distract with new slogans, reshuffled cabinets, emergency meetings, endless promises that reform was just around the corner. Those tricks no longer work. From Kathmandu to Paris, from Belgrade to Nairobi, the crowd has stopped believing.

What remains is exposure. Leaders who once cloaked themselves in the language of competence now look like what they are: administrators of decline. They rename the US Department of Defense the “Department of War” as if language can mask failure. They build alliances, break alliances, start wars, all while housing costs soar and wages stagnate.

The mask is gone. The anger is raw.

When Leaders Collapse, Streets Take Over

Charlie Kirk’s assassination in Utah shocked America not only because of the act itself, but because it revealed something darker: politics is no longer theatre. Rhetoric now bleeds into violence. The same mistrust that drives Nepali youth to topple a prime minister fuels armed rage in the United States.

In Serbia, protesters risk bullets to shout down corruption. In Kenya, crowds flood the streets, refusing to be silenced by tear gas. Each eruption may look local, but together they form a global bonfire.

People have had it. They are tired of elites who hoard wealth, trade influence, and pretend to govern while reality disintegrates. They no longer trust the ballot box to deliver justice. So they march. They burn. They occupy. They imagine power without politicians.

The Real Crisis

The gravest crisis today is not Russian drones over Poland or missiles in Gaza. It is not even the collapse of one government after another. The real crisis is legitimacy. The belief that leaders are capable of governing in the public interest has snapped.

Without legitimacy, armies are just men with weapons. Parliaments are just rooms with microphones. The entire edifice of modern politics—states, treaties, elections—rests on a fragile foundation of consent. That consent is eroding everywhere at once.

What Comes Next

When leaders collapse, crowds do not go home. They take up space. They organize. They experiment. What begins as rage can grow into something else: a refusal to return to normal. The old world of managed decline is cracking. What replaces it is still unknown, but it will not be built by the politicians who failed us.

That is the real lesson of this week. From NATO’s panic to Nepal’s fall, from the streets of Nairobi to the assassination in Utah, the story is not about isolated events. It is about the collapse of patience on a planetary scale.

The world has stopped waiting for leaders to lead.

India, the “world’s biggest democracy,” doesn’t hesitate to flirt with Beijing. Because democracy no longer sells. It is messy. It is slow. It is hypocritical.

Autocracy is the upgrade. It is packaged as efficiency and growth. Sleek. Dangerous. Seductive.

Democracy was Coca-Cola. Sweet, global, everywhere. Now it is flat.
Autocracy is Red Bull. Ugly. Addictive. Global. It promises wings, even if it wrecks you.

Look at the parade in Beijing. Missiles rolling like limited-edition sneakers. Xi, Putin, and Kim posing like brand influencers at a launch event. This wasn’t a military march. It was an ad campaign.

Naomi Klein warned us how brands hollow out meaning. That’s what autocracy is doing now. Strip out human rights. Strip out transparency. What’s left? A clean pitch: speed, growth, security. The Apple Store of geopolitics.

Meanwhile democracy runs on nostalgia. Freedom. Rights. Integrity. Beautiful words. But when the infrastructure breaks, when governments gridlock, when politicians keep stealing money, when scandals are daily, when people feel betrayed—those slogans sound like jingles from a dead brand.

The West thinks the world still buys its values. The Global South is shopping for results. Ports. Railways. 5G. Debt relief. They don’t want democracy’s story. They want autocracy’s product.

Missiles are the new billboards. Parades are product launches. Power has become a spectacle, and the audience is global.

The Coca-Cola of politics is sliding to the back shelf. The Red Bull of politics is now at eye level. And the world is reaching for the can with wings.

Every empire ends the same way. Not with a bang. With bad branding.

In a world of unprecedented wealth, millions still struggle to meet their basic needs. The richest individuals amass fortunes so vast they could single-handedly end world hunger—and still remain billionaires. Yet, we are told this is the best system we have.

At what point does extreme wealth stop being a mark of achievement and start being a sign of systemic failure?

This is not just an economic question—it is a moral one, a political one. It is about democracy, justice, and what kind of society we want to live in.

The Myth of the “Self-Made” Billionaire

The idea of the self-made billionaire is one of the most enduring myths of modern capitalism. The narrative suggests that through sheer determination, talent, and hard work, individuals ascend to extraordinary wealth. But no billionaire builds an empire alone.

Wealth of this magnitude is rarely the result of individual effort. It is a product of systems—of labor, resources, tax structures, and often, exploitation. The fortunes of figures like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk are not just testaments to innovation but also to the underpaid workforce that enables them, to tax loopholes that preserve their fortunes, and to monopolistic practices that stifle competition.

Amazon, for example, did not become a trillion-dollar company solely because of Bezos’s business acumen. It did so because hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers labor under grueling conditions for wages that often leave them dependent on government assistance. It did so because of aggressive tax avoidance strategies and anti-competitive behavior.

This is not the free market rewarding innovation. It is a system tilted in favor of those who already hold power.

The Concentration of Wealth in a World of Scarcity

A billion dollars is an almost incomprehensible sum. If a person earned $50,000 a year, it would take 20,000 years to reach $1 billion. Yet some individuals have amassed fortunes that stretch into the hundreds of billions.

The world’s top 10 billionaires control more wealth than entire nations and many of them are soon to become trillionaires. Meanwhile, half of humanity lives on less than $6.85 a day. The cost to end world hunger is estimated at around $330 billion per year—less than half the combined wealth of the five richest individuals.

Despite this, there is a persistent claim that there simply isn’t enough money to provide universal healthcare, eliminate student debt, or address housing crises. But the issue is not a lack of resources—it is how those resources are distributed.

Extreme wealth is not just excessive; it is extractive. It represents money that is not circulating in the economy, not increasing wages, not funding education or infrastructure. It is money sitting in offshore accounts, in private investment funds, in assets that serve only the ultra-wealthy.

Billionaires and the Corrosion of Democracy

Extreme wealth is not just an economic problem. It is a political one.

Billionaires do not simply accumulate money—they accumulate power. Their wealth allows them to influence elections, shape policies, and control industries in ways that undermine democracy.

They fund campaigns, ensuring that politicians remain loyal to their interests. They lobby for tax cuts and deregulation, securing policies that further entrench their wealth. They own media outlets, shaping public opinion and discourse. In some cases, they even own the platforms on which political debates unfold, as seen with Elon Musk’s control of Twitter (now X), Zuckerberg Meta network etc

This is not democracy in action. It is a form of oligarchy, where a small elite wields outsized influence over the political system, often at the expense of the majority.

Philanthropy is Not the Answer

Faced with criticism, billionaires often point to their philanthropy as evidence that their wealth benefits society. Bill Gates, MacKenzie Scott, and others have donated billions to causes ranging from global health to education. But philanthropy is not a substitute for systemic change.

Most billionaire philanthropy operates within a framework that preserves power rather than redistributes it. Many charitable foundations serve as tax shelters, and money laundering, allowing billionaires to avoid taxation while controlling how and where money is spent. Unlike public spending, which is determined democratically, billionaire philanthropy is governed by individual preference.

A billionaire’s decision to fund climate initiatives or medical research is not the same as a government enacting policies that address these issues at scale. Private charity cannot replace progressive taxation, labor protections, or wealth redistribution.

A World Without Billionaires

Critics argue that eliminating billionaires would stifle innovation and ambition. But the question is not whether individuals should be allowed to succeed. It is whether any single person should be allowed to accumulate more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes while millions go without basic necessities.

A society without billionaires would not be one without prosperity. It would be one where excess wealth is reinvested into the economy, where public services are properly funded, where opportunity is not concentrated in the hands of a few.

What might such a system look like?

  • A wealth cap: After a certain threshold—say, $999 million—any additional wealth is taxed at near 100 percent and reinvested in public goods.
  • Higher progressive taxation: In the mid-20th century, the United States taxed the wealthiest Americans at rates as high as 90 percent. The economy thrived.
  • Breaking up monopolies: Tech giants, media conglomerates, and financial institutions should not be allowed to consolidate unchecked power.
  • Universal basic services: Healthcare, education, and housing should be rights, not privileges determined by market forces.

None of these measures would prevent innovation or economic growth. What they would do is ensure that prosperity is shared rather than hoarded.

Throughout history, societies that allowed wealth to concentrate in the hands of a few—while the many suffered—have faced dire consequences.

From the fall of Rome to the French Revolution to the Gilded Age, extreme inequality has always led to instability.

The world is once again at a crossroads. The rise of trillionaires is not a sign of progress. It is a warning sign, a signal that the system is failing the vast majority while rewarding a select few.

If billionaires exist, it is because policy choices allow them to. The question is whether societies will continue to tolerate a system that produces such extreme disparities—or whether they will choose to build something fairer, more sustainable, and more just.

Because the true measure of a society is not how many billionaires it creates.It is how many people it lifts out of struggle.