> Billionaires won't just sit around and not develop military power, for one.

I argue against this here: https://borretti.me/article/on-vulgar-materialism

Of course I don't expect a single post to erase a huge divergence in worldview about the relationship between money and power, but that's my argument.

> you start or fund a think tank that writes policy proposals, or a media organization that advocates your views

Or you run "money primaries", financially filtering the menu of candidates before democratic voting. Or you pay/lobby for (non-democratic) judicial appointments, which is a strategy that's been openly pursued since 1971: https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/powell-memo.pdf