Is that the new/modern definition of oligarch, or how oligarch is used in US?

I dont see how Jeff or Elon are oligarchs in the sense of russian oligarchs.

IMO you have to maintain or exert some control over a nation in order to be an oligarch. So Jeff and Elon are out, but David Koch and Robert Mercer meet the definition for me. These guys have exerted huge control over the US over the last 30-40 years.

Jeff Bezos owns the 2nd largest newspaper in the country, and now a major movie studio. I would say he qualifies.

How has he used that newspaper to exert political control over the US?

How easily is that question answered?

Would you like a list of stories they decided not to run?

…yes? I’ve seen articles openly critical of Bezos in the WashPo and ones supportive of Amazon workers unionising.

He might not have used his newspaper, but AWS was instrumental in de-platforming Parler after the Jan 6 mutiny.

Johnny Depp would basically qualify under that definition.

According to Google his net worth is $150 million, so that is 0.1% of Bezos, and he owns 0 powerful companies to Bezos' 3. Not remotely in the same league.

Perhaps they are not able to move the lever as much as russian oligarchs, but both have some levers to pull.

Given that Russia has mostly an oil based economy roughly the size of Italy, the levers they are moving are quite a bit smaller than their American counterparts.

Bezos or Koch or Hamm or DeVoss can't move their American levers as far, but the overall output is quite substantial compared to what Abramovich can achieve with his.

What's the difference between an American oligarch and a Russian oligarch? Aside from the nationality.

Oligarchs were basically given large existing monopolies and then just sit on them and make money with no reason to innovate.

While it’s a fun jibe to throw at them it’s a completely different thing to just being insanely wealthy through actually doing something effectively (if sometimes immorally)

Is that what makes an oligarch? The way I use it, oligarch implies political power. You could, in theory, be a poor oligarch.

As you said, oligarch implies power, and with power one typically controls resources in a way that wealth can be generated for selfish purposes. The strict definition is something like "ruling by few", but I've always thought of it as rule by the extremely wealthy since that's how it typically seems to play out.

Sure, they are pretty closely related in pratice. The Senatorial oligarchy of Rome were pretty much also the wealthy of Rome, and often those with military power.

Still, the term implies politics... not just money. I would also hazard that it implies hereditary power. You could argue that dynastic politicians are oligarch. I'm not really disputing, just pondering.

Ultimately, for both Russians and Americans, oligarch is a (usually derogatory) analogy. It's not a formal oligarchy. We could also say aristocrats, which is more appealing to me.

Also, there's an idea that all governments, or systems of power are oligarchies. No matter what the formal system of government, some group of powerful people wield a lot of power. Rich people, religious leaders, senators, backscene power brokers, generals...

Oligarch tend to need outsized control over the government in addition to billions of dollars. I don't know if Elon and Jeff have that yet.

This seems like an oligarchy to me https://theintercept.com/2021/05/25/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-s...

Redundancy for NASA funded projects makes sense, and it's how we regained the ability to launch human crewed rockets from US soil: Boeing wanted to be the sole contract, and has bungled their launch projects, and it was due to NASA also contracting SpaceX that we've had any successful launches. When SpaceX was recently awarded a sole contract, plenty of people — including here on HN — howled that NASA was letting SpaceX turn into a monopolist like Boeing tried to become. NASA has historically chosen multiple providers for redundancy, and the SpaceX sole contract was a unique departure due to NASA lacking sufficient funding. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/16/nasa-lu...

The Intercept isn't exactly known for... neutral... reporting.

'neutrality' is a mirage, but WaPo isn't known for it, either, and in this context it's an especially egregious choice

Okay, here's CBS saying the same thing: NASA always wanted two contracts, and was forced to give up on redundancy on the lunar lander due to their budget getting slashed. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-wins-2-9-billion-contrac...

"Agency managers originally hoped to award follow-on HLS contracts to two of the companies to encourage competition and protect against the possibility of major problems or delays that might affect one company but not the other.

But Congress only allocated $850 million in NASA's fiscal 2021 budget for lander development, about one quarter of the amount the agency said it needed to have a new vehicle ready by 2024.

Given the available money and projected future spending, NASA "down selected" to a single contractor — SpaceX — deciding the California rocket builder offered the most attractive combination of cost, technology and management expertise."

Neutrality may always have some element of manufacture, but that doesn't mean it's equivalent to intentionally trying to generate partisan outrage. This isn't a "bailout fund for Jeff Bezos" — word-for-word quote from the headline of the Intercept article! — it's just NASA continuing to try to get budget for the projects it wanted all along, so it can have redundant contractors like it did with the commercial crew program and avoid getting stuck with monopolist pricing (and monopolist poor performance) like it nearly did with Boeing.

One creates businesses that have scale in a quasi open market while the other privatized formerly state run businesses and keeps their position by further supporting the head of the nation in all matters.

Level of control over governmental functions?

I don’t know, the yachts that have their own yachts look kind of cool. Oh, wait, Bezos is building one for half a bil. Never mind.

I suspect the Russian ones are up to plenty that's "interesting", but not in a particularly positive way.

If we could get every billionaire to reinvest their money in world changing technology like Elon we’d live in a much better world. Honestly this is capitalism at its best, how do we do more like this?