Nadia Asparouhova, author of Working in Public and researcher on the emerging tech elite, discusses how today’s wealthy tech founders differ from previous generations of elites, how they wield influence through “idea machines” rather than traditional foundations, and why democratic governance models keep failing in practice — drawing on her research into open source software, philanthropy, and the sociology of elite power.
SBF, effective altruism, and the Davos vs. startup elite divide
Sam Bankman-Fried is better understood as part of the Wall Street-Davos finance elite than the tech startup world, despite surface associations with crypto and effective altruism.
His core motivation was utilitarian quantitative thinking, which aligns more with finance culture than the startup mindset.
The Davos elite mindset emphasizes globalism, institutional faith, efficiency metrics, and interconnected governance (UN-style).
The startup elite mindset, exemplified by Jeff Bezos’s later career, emphasizes individual talent, non-obvious bets on people, and skepticism toward established institutions.
Bezos’s recruitment of top scientists through the Altos Institute reflects a “lone cowboy” meritocratic approach rather than institutional trust.
Bezos also publicly mocks mainstream media and Davos-type institutions, aligning him more with the 2010s startup cohort.
Aristocratic vs. meritocratic elites and the future of inherited wealth
The US uniquely has both aristocratic elites (inherited wealth, socialized into public stewardship) and meritocratic elites (self-made, lacking generational socialization about wealth responsibility).
The risk is that children of today’s meritocratic tech elites become tomorrow’s aristocratic elites — inheriting wealth without the socialization to use it responsibly.
This is why some modern elites prefer to spend down their fortunes within their lifetimes or a fixed period after death, rather than creating perpetual foundations.
On philanthropy rates: the US has a stronger culture of private institution-building by citizens, whereas Europe relies more on government for public institutions.
This difference is cultural, not just about the ratio of aristocratic to meritocratic elites.
Gender dynamics and evolving structures of philanthropy
A recent pattern has the billionaire’s wife directing family philanthropy (Gates, Zuckerberg/Moskovitz couples), but this was not true of Carnegie or Rockefeller, who managed their own giving.
The model is shifting away from traditional 501(c)(3) foundations toward LLCs (Emerson Collective, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative) and donor-advised funds, which offer more flexibility.
This enables funding companies, individuals, and movements — not just nonprofits.
Philanthropy is better understood as elites seeking to control the three arms of public power (media, academia, government) rather than pure altruism.
Andrew Carnegie’s essays on wealth were partly a protective strategy to defend the concept of wealth itself from populist attack.
Open source as a metaphor for governance and participation
Contrary to the popular image of open source as a broad collaborative effort, most projects are effectively maintained by a single individual — a “Wizard of Oz” model.
This mirrors a broader pattern: democratic participation in open source generates mostly noise, driving away contributors until only one or a handful remain doing real work.
The same dynamic plays out in social media, where open public spaces (Twitter) become so hostile that people retreat to private spaces (group chats, Substack).
This has implications for corporate governance and DAOs:
Highly democratic models fail in practice; successful projects and organizations need a strong leader in their early stages.
Crypto’s “leaderless, governed by protocol” ethos has not yet resolved this tension, despite changing incentive structures through tokenization.
Nadia is skeptical of direct democracy as a governance model, favoring effectiveness and strong leadership over participatory methods.
Idea machines: how modern elites build influence
An “idea machine” is a community formed around shared values that gets capitalized by funders and turns ideas into real-world initiatives — a modern alternative to the 501(c)(3) foundation.
Examples include effective altruism and progress studies.
Unlike traditional foundations (donor-centric, top-down strategy), idea machines can be more community-driven, though they still depend on funder capital.
On whether movements survive without charismatic founders:
Larger movements (effective altruism) can survive the loss of their founders because they have enough true believers.
Smaller, founder-centric movements collapse without their leader — more like cults or religions.
Bitcoin’s model (a founder who permanently disappears) is interesting because it creates a fixed “North Star” that cannot change.
Cryptic, long-winded writing (Curtis Yarvin, biblical style) can be more influential than clear writing because it allows diverse readers to project their own interpretations onto it.
Peter Thiel’s “Thielverse” is effective precisely because it is hard to define — it operates through distributed, subtle funding of individuals rather than a visible foundation.
This “arming the rebels” approach is more realistic and effective than traditional institutional philanthropy.
Political governance and institutional design
Nadia favors governance effectiveness over structural reform — she cares more about speed and efficacy than about whether one person or many are in charge.
America’s extreme heterogeneity makes simple governance models (monarchy, direct democracy) unrealistic.
Small, homogeneous populations can be governed simply; large, diverse ones cannot.
On why institutions drift left (Conquest’s Second Law):
Institutions need simplified, feel-good messages to transmit (democracy, peace, freedom), which naturally favor left-leaning values.
Nuanced, non-playbook thinking doesn’t scale well for institutional messaging, so conservative intellectual movements struggle to run institutions.
On long-term endowments (1,000-year horizons):
The hard problem is not preserving assets but ensuring future managers share the founder’s values.
The Ford Foundation is a cautionary example: Henry Ford created it for tax reasons, but subsequent boards spent the money in ways he would have hated, leading his grandson to resign.
Nadia prefers finite-lived organizations that do impactful work in 10–50 years over perpetual foundations that decay and drift.
Companies release open-source software worth trillions collectively because mindshare and recruiting matter more than protecting IP.
Open-source projects signal the quality of internal engineering culture and attract developer talent.
This is analogous to why people publish essays and research for free — capturing attention is more valuable than monetizing content directly.
Why some wealth booms create philanthropic movements and others don’t
Being wealthy is not the same as being elite. Texas oil billionaires, for example, tend to operate locally and do not build broad public-facing influence.
Tech elites became publicly active only after the mid-2010s tech backlash threatened their power — the need to defend power motivates public engagement.
Not all technology creates paradigm shifts. Only true technological revolutions drive the cycle of frenzy → backlash → institution-building (per scholar Carlotta Perez).
Generational shifts matter: the Koch family’s father operated with a local wealth mindset, while his children (Koch brothers) moved to a national elite stage, influencing media and politics.
Media, influence, and the tech elite’s relationship with institutions
Tech founders increasingly bypass mainstream media, giving interviews to individual creators (Ben Thompson, podcasters) instead of the New York Times.
This reflects the startup mindset: fund individuals who defy institutions rather than building new institutions.
The open question: can a decentralized, anti-institution approach work long-term, or will individual behaviors eventually codify into new institutions as they always have?
The Davos elite extended influence by building institutions across sectors; the tech elite’s individual-creator model may be a temporary state.
Doomerism, talent gravity wells, and meaning-making
Climate doomerism and AI safety function as secular religions that give smart, talented people a sense of existential purpose.
This is a recent phenomenon (last ~5 years). Before that, existential threats (World Wars, Cold War) provided shared meaning for talented people.
In the absence of shared narratives, people create their own meaning — doomer narratives fill that vacuum.
“Doomer industries” share a key property: they are adjacent to commercial opportunities, allowing people to earn real salaries while working on social causes.
This explains why talented people cluster in climate or AI safety (funded, relevant) rather than global poverty (no money).
Other talent gravity wells (trading, advertising, video games) attract smart people for different reasons:
Trading may provide a constructive outlet for zero-sum competitive instincts that would otherwise be destructive.
These industries share the property of being specific, non-obvious career clusters that talented people “flop into” for hard-to-articulate reasons.
Religion and the new elite
Religion is largely absent from Silicon Valley’s idea machines, but the new right is bringing Christian values back into public discourse implicitly.
Nadia argues religion is not dead — it has just shifted to new objects of devotion (climate, AI, etc.).
These function as real religions: providing meaning, community, and moral frameworks, even if not explicitly theistic.
Shamelessness
When asked what she is most shameless about, Nadia notes that truly shameless people don’t recognize their own shamelessness — suggesting the answer would have to come from someone who knows her.
