In societies like that, Silicon Valley’s rich nerds might discover that they’re not the ones with the real might, see Putin’s Russia, which many of them adore. Money is but one of the facets of power.
Russia is a country with a strong centralized government capable of enforcing laws whenever it wants.
In the absence of effective laws, one of the biggest threats to rich people would be their own hired thugs. If the thugs decide that they don't respect you and they would make better rich assholes, they will kill you and take your property. Historically, societies like that were often ruled by the biggest and the most charismatic thugs, who could command the respect of lesser thugs. Or warrior nobility, if you want a fancier term. Today's billionaire nerds would not be among those.
Russian state is a final form of the thug-centric governance. The economic oligarchs maintain their riches at the behest of thugs, but they don’t have the power nor freedom.
> Russia is a country with a strong centralized government capable of enforcing laws whenever it wants.
Russia is 15 slots lower than Nigeria on government corruption. Putin can easily have someone killed but the idea that if he needed money for the war he could get it by e.g. enforcing the law against taking kickbacks for misallocating public funds is so ridiculous that even attempting to do it might be one of the few things that could cause him to be removed from power.
And for a similar reason he can't enforce laws that require any form of localized information, because everybody is just fabricating the numbers.
The trouble with running a kleptocracy is that there's no honor among thieves.
It’s no accident that the schmoozer media/real estate/car dealer/mining/energy guys in US wield more power than their wealth relative to SV VC bros would seem to merit.
