JOEL KOTKIN: Fully Oligarchic Luxury Californication: The tech elite have joined forces with progressive visionaries to establish a model of America’s feudal future. “What California is creating can be best described as oligarchic socialism, a form of collectivism that combines hierarchy with ‘equity,’ regulation with oligopoly, and progressive intentions with feudal results. Like so much else, the pandemic has accelerated this trend, vastly enriching the tech elite, while turning much of the working and middle classes dependent on what Marx called ‘the proletarian alms bag.'”

By design.