How Tech Oligarchs Profit from the Logic of 'Finitude Capitalism' and What to Do About It

This post is part of a series of contributor perspectives and analyses called "The Coming Age of Tech Trillionaires and the Challenge to Democracy." Learn more about the call for contributions here, and read other pieces in the series here.

In the United States, the wealth of tech figures such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison continues to soar. One or more of them may soon become a trillionaire—likely Musk, for whom Tesla shareholders just approved a pay package that could be worth $1 trillion over the next ten years. How the interests of the tech oligarchs are entwined with those of President Donald Trump and his administration’s brand of politics has been much reported on, including on Tech Policy Press, with various contributors detailing how the current configuration of power between the aspiring tech trillionaires and the Trump administration presents grave risks to core democratic principles, including the rule of law.

We argue that this phenomenon is not only a coincidental convergence of the personal, political, and business interests of the individuals involved, but that it should be understood within the broader logic of ‘finitude capitalism.’ Applying this concept situates the current rise of the tech oligarchs and their entanglements with the US government and its president in a broader historical context, and points to potential interventions.

What is finitude capitalism?

French economist Arnaud Orain observed that capitalism is marked by the historical alternation of ‘liberal capitalism’ and ‘finitude capitalism’ phases. In this framework, liberal capitalism is characterized by an ideology of indefinite growth, allowing for a positive sum game. It is based on the concepts of free trade and competitive markets and, relatedly, on the separation between states and industry. To the contrary, finitude capitalism is marked by an ideology that sees resources as finite and thus sees the economy as a zero sum game. Finitude capitalism seeks to unleash capitalist forces from the constraints of liberalism, such as those imposed by competition. (Indeed, as the billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel once put it, competition is for losers.)

Under the finitude capitalism model, various forms of public-private partnerships facilitate the capture of resources in the hands of a few sovereign corporations. A typical historical example is the British East Indian Company, which existed in a kind of grey zone between public and private status. In the past, such entities were granted some sovereign powers by way of charters, which included the ability to explore lands, make war, and enforce legal rules, namely competences classically considered as those of states. But at the same time they also employed private logics—of legal ‘personhood,’ joint stock offerings and limited liability—to acquire and trade assets in the pursuit of profits.

Orain draws a sharp contrast between liberal and finitude capitalism phases, but he does not discuss why and how a phase follows the other, thus leaving the reader with the impression that it is mainly ideology that drives the process. While Orain dismisses the concept of ‘neoliberalism’ as but a mere historical form of liberalism, our respective research as well as a rich literature suggests that neoliberalism is the bridge that allows the transition between the two models.

Neoliberalism comes in various forms with regional particularities, but a key feature of it is the infusion of law and regulation with a pro-market, capitalist ethos. Admittedly, the insistence on the benefits of markets and competition leans toward a certain form of liberalism. But centering this logic has clearly enabled some corporations—and the individuals that control them—to accumulate vast amounts of capital and expand their activities to what was previously reserved for state action, acquiring sustained and multifaceted ‘bigness’ as a result. Once out of the bottle, this genie is hard to tame with the classical tools of economic liberalism, such as antitrust law, which is also infused with the neoliberal ethos.

Corporations devour the public

There are many signs that neoliberalism has created the conditions for a period of finitude capitalism to emerge. For example, many governments have increasingly embraced ‘open government’ and ‘open data’ initiatives, aiming to foster innovation through publicly funded, openly accessible datasets with little to no restrictions on downstream use. But this openness, based on the neoliberal premise that only private companies create ‘value,’ often leaves the door open for tech companies to enclose the innovations they produce that result from access to open public data, calling into question the need for public value creation and the role of public institutions.

Similarly, this analysis extends to the public procurement of digital infrastructure from Big Tech corporations. When, operating under the assumption that private companies do better than them at technology and innovation, states rely heavily on big tech to deliver digital public services, they often surrender control over essential assets and capabilities. This is one basis for increasing calls for digital tech sovereignty as a means to counterbalance the disproportionate power of American tech firms.

Enclosing public resources becomes even more harmful when we consider regulatory loopholes that allow tech companies to fragment their supply chains across multiple jurisdictions. This fragmentation enables them to exploit the misalignment between where profits are taxed and where sales (or revenue generation) actually occur. Over the years, US tech multinationals with near-monopoly power have repeatedly lobbied the US Treasury to oppose international efforts, such as digital sales taxes or OECD proposals, aimed at fairer taxation.

Most recently, the Trump administration has consistently used tax policy as a bargaining chip in negotiations over economic and international cooperation. Its broader ambition seems clear: to assert control over global tax rules, effectively planting a flag in the treasury of every country “so that no country will dream again of asking US multinational corporations to pay their fair share of tax," as the Tax Justice Network put it. This intent has been framed, in a fact sheet released by the White House on efforts to combat the taxation of digital services, as a way of “defending American companies from extortion.”

It is worth noting that the list of measures adopted by other countries that are viewed by the Trump administration as exploiting successful American businesses, extends beyond taxation to include for example European Union digital regulations such as the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act. The message is clear: no one can impose limits on US corporations, and particularly its tech firms.

How is finitude capitalism sustained?

Imperial silos are the archetypical form of finitude capitalism, and are now actively being pursued by China and the US on a global scale. In the face of competition with China over dominance in technology supply chains, US politics are shifting away from neoliberal globalization towards what might be perceived as a protectionist approach. But beneath the surface, the shift towards protectionism may actually indicate the re-emergence of various features associated with finitude capitalism and underlying imperial motivations.

For instance, the release of the Chinese DeepSeek AI models in January caused a flurry in the US, as these models appeared to perform as well as OpenAI’s LLMs and StabilityAI’s generative models, despite reportedly being built for a fraction of the cost and computing power. Initiatives that were launched close to the time of the release of the DeepSeek models—particularly the Stargate alliance between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank to invest more than $500 billion to build data centers in the US that was announced at the White House the day after Trump took office in his second term, as well as Trump’s bid to “buy” Greenland and thereby own critical minerals under the Greenlandic ice sheet, and public-private partnerships on critical raw materials, revealed deep American insecurity over the potential loss of US technological dominance in the AI age, especially against China.

In other cases, such as the US government acquisition of a 10% shareholding in chip manufacturer Intel and facilitating the transfer of ByteDance-owned TikTok to a group of US investors, the US desire to displace China’s dominance is articulated explicitly by the Trump administration. They also evidence a desire to recast the resources deemed necessary for continued dominance as necessary to enclose and secure for the benefit of American sovereign corporations. Likewise, the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan, released in July, sets as its goal “for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance.”

Devising solutions

Obviously, the stakes are high and there is no magic wand. But looking at current events through the lens of finitude capitalism and understanding the key role played by neoliberalism in creating the conditions for the present day illuminates solutions and strategies to counter the influence of the new sovereign corporations and the billionaires that control them. To do that, we need to break out of our current sector and disciplinary silos, a daunting agenda in the face of the fast-evolving and complex world we live in. The concept of finitude capitalism helps us understand the bigger picture and target actions, rather than passively endure and fulminate.

First, wherever possible, state capacity should be rebuilt, especially in the digital domain. This means investing in sovereign digital infrastructure, building public alternatives to private platforms and the ensuing equipment and high-skilled staff that it requires, and reducing dependency on proprietary systems. This approach requires significant public funding and political will. It can succeed only if rolled out in tandem with a policy and legislative agenda that addresses the domination that Big Tech (and a few other types of firms, too) exercise through rent-seeking as the private infrastructure of society. If we are to believe that liberalism has some good, the time is now to return to the origins of antitrust and infrastructure law as anti-domination mechanisms.

A complementary set of solutions lies in rethinking of global taxation. Current regimes allow companies to arbitrage between jurisdictions and optimize their tax burden, thus putting States in competition with one another with the law being reduced to a product for larger corporations to choose. We need coordinated international efforts to enforce digital tax regimes, redistribute wealth, and curtail regulatory arbitrage, especially in light of the (claimed) borderless nature of digital capital. One step in this direction is the implementation by multiple countries of Pillar Two of the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) initiative, which aims to establish a standard minimum tax rate of 15% for large multinational enterprises. On the one hand, the race to the bottom that states run against each other in an era of finitude capitalism may complicate this endeavor. On the other hand, other countries and regions, such as Europe or individual States using innovative and ‘anti-exit’ taxation mechanisms, may take up the case for their renewed sovereignty agenda and set a useful precedent.

We also need to build a new research and policy discourse. As the threats posed by recent developments intensify, we must embrace greater multidisciplinarity in both research and public policy. The way we conduct research across disciplines should mirror the complexity and entanglement of tech power itself. This calls for joint research efforts that integrate historical, economic, ecological, regulatory, and governance perspectives, supported by sustained public investment.

The solutions we present can be pursued individually or in combination and they are certainly not exhaustive. Yet they all require recognizing that we are at a turning point, what historians of institutions term a ‘critical juncture.’ The moment demands both material and rhetorical shifts in the way we understand regulation and governance. Tech trillionaires step into and out of public roles as they please, blurring the boundaries between corporate power and state authority. We must therefore ask: how do we envision their role inside and outside the public sphere?

Finitude capitalism has one advantage: it lays bare the deceitfulness of the neoliberal narrative. This pattern is not new, rather it echoes past moments that left us with colonial legacies, practices of dispossession, and enduring global inequalities. Once again, we are called to confront the role of sovereign corporations and the people that control them in public life. We suggest doing so with bold measures that acknowledge the real risks they pose to democratic governance worldwide.