Since the advent of globalization and the financialization of the economy, the few people who truly matter have vanished from reality, acquiring an ethereal quality. They are no longer earthly; their numbers are dwindling, and we cannot place them anywhere in particular. Large landowners, the wealthy of yesteryear, operated in specific locations. This was the case in the 19th and for much of the 20th centuries. Industrialists and financiers had a homeland; they identified with a culture, territory, and people. They wanted to be part of a community and be recognized as its most prominent members. Whether industrialists, financiers, or rentiers, the ruling classes, while continuing to exploit their contemporaries as much as possible, had limits and made certain gestures, precisely to be recognized as patrons or benefactors. They wanted to distinguish themselves, but they asserted their belonging by leaving traces of being from a specific place. In Catalonia, there exists a large bourgeoisie that, in other times, wanted to be respected, recognized, and valued, even though its main business was the slave trade. The Botín family, who amass their fortunes through banking across the globe, are careful to maintain a privileged relationship with Santander, the city that lends its name to their business. Their attempt to remain grounded in reality didn't necessarily make things fairer, but it did mitigate inequality somewhat, acknowledge its existence, and foster a connection with the people and the region, even if they always looked down upon them.
Today's super-rich, few in number and extremely vain, live outside the world and are no longer connected to any territory or person. They have so accentuated the economic and physical distance that they are not part of anything and have no way to mitigate their shameful activities. They are generally global investors in multinationals or technology platforms, and have no contact whatsoever with the workers who run the companies that generate their profits. They live in a parallel reality, having fled from the figurative or settled into a world of abstraction. Their decisions affect, often very negatively, millions of people who, for them, are merely numbers on a spreadsheet. They will never meet, anywhere, the families they may have ruined or the thousands of people they have left jobless. They inhabit a video game where there can only be single winners; that is the battle. There are no people, no social effects, and even less so, the obligation to pay taxes. It's not that today's rich are more cosmopolitan; they are now extraterritorial and live in a post-reality that makes them insensitive to any human or social considerations. Steeped in a rampant individualism, they believe they deserve their achievements, forgetting that they have turned the fruits of technological research funded with public money into a business, or that they secure global monopolies thanks to an imperialist state that protects them. Today, 0.001% of the population possesses three times more wealth than the poorest 50% of the world's population. The 100 wealthiest individuals hold a combined fortune exceeding $6 trillion, equivalent to five times Spain's GDP.
These people don't live anywhere permanently and never make themselves seen. They congregate in extremely exclusive places. They want nothing to do with reality or the world. They detest minor forms of recognition, like having streets named after them or statues erected in a town square. They are invisible, because that is their intention. They want to be idolized and deified, and that requires mystery, not closeness. It is essential that reality doesn't lead them to make the wrong decisions; they cannot afford any sense of fairness, justice, or even mere humanity. Lately, the declassification of Epstein's papers—the pedophile and organizer of events for the ultra-rich and influential—has exposed the "playful" side of this world, where one can obtain things without any ethical or moral considerations. The Epstein case will be very revealing. An extremely perverse system of espionage playing with the blackmail afforded by well-photographed and documented private perversions. It is not clear who was pulling the strings, but Israeli espionage seems a strong contender. Millions of documents and photographs illustrate the other side of the real world. What do they do in their free time? The powerful and influential, of diverse ideologies, indulge their darkest side, convinced that everything is permitted to them, that their kingdom is not of this world, and above all, seeking to mingle with one another, living in a parallel world where, despite the presence of many believers, the concept of sin and a vulgar penal code do not exist. Epstein acted as a facilitator while simultaneously providing them with a culture and habits of hell. A demonstration that the class struggle still exists, also in a moral dimension, only today it has become savage.
