I arrived at the Pentagon in February 2003. Whenever I could, I followed the official tours, learned every corridor, and later guided colleagues and friends through the building myself. Rank rules the real estate. The highest officials claimed the outside windows on the Potomac side. The office that allocated space sat on the inside ring, looking over the courtyard with its trees, benches, and the five-sided sandwich stand that served a genuinely excellent Philly cheesesteak. Even the people who decided who got the best views kept the second-best for themselves. Power allocates the good stuff. It’s not theory. People do what they do because they want what they want.
Even socialists are personal capitalists. They talk fairness and the common good. In practice, they gather the most they can for their own families, using political leverage. In East Berlin in 1981, the Party stores were impossible to miss. The select goods were in shops reserved for members and us hard-currency foreigners. More than 90% of the population was locked out. The rhetoric was equality. The reality was a privileged caste.
I’ll give you a dynamic we see played out everywhere: As it was 100,000 years ago, the Beautiful Woman “I’ll give you this if you give me that” privilege card is second only to the “Armed and Dangerous” privilege card. It’s paid where distribution begins. Taxpayers fuel the life of the unscrupulous. Power is money, for more power and more money. We’re all equal, but my motives are for the collective, so I’m just a little more equal. And by the way, when the show trials are over, there will be fewer but better socialists next year. Unchecked power always does that.
Look at the pattern in our own system. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, product of a comfortable intellectual family, secured a prized rent-stabilized apartment while working at a progressive housing nonprofit organization that lives on government grants, a paperwork bureaucracy of case files, compliance forms, and taxpayer-funded advocacy. He was not yet elected, but he was already inside the network that benefits from the controls it expands. Later, as an assemblyman on a six-figure salary, he kept the unit. As mayor, he stacked the rent board and delivered the freeze. The people who profit from these laws often help write them. They design the rules so they can take advantage of the taxpayer without ever breaking the law. The costs do not vanish. They simply appear later as national debt.
Rent-seeking is the polite term for it. Harry Reid, while Senate majority leader, aggressively promoted a multibillion-dollar solar farm and panel plant in the Nevada desert for a Chinese company, ENN. His son, Rory, a lawyer, represented the firm and helped it lock up thousands of acres of public land at a fraction of appraised value. Family succession fills Senate seats as a matter of course. Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline, was appointed after his death to finish the term. Jean Carnahan was appointed after her husband’s plane crash and posthumous election. Dynasties transmit networks across generations.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) father and brother were powerful Democratic officeholders before she rose. Early career boosts come through personal relationships with power brokers. Former Vice President Kamala Harris received paid state board appointments from Willie Brown while they were involved. Former first lady Hillary Clinton had never lived in New York. Her Senate seat rested on the national brand of her marriage and the White House years. Politicians’ children receive preferential access to elite schools, jobs, and government-linked contracts. Hunter Biden’s lucrative Ukraine arrangements are only the most publicized example.
Let’s talk about “Uncle Bernie.” He works on a book advance with guaranteed sales revenue. Campaign committees buy large quantities of the books from the publisher, give them away at rallies and fundraisers, and he still pockets the big checks from advances and royalties. He also routes campaign funds into a family nonprofit organization, the Sanders Institute, founded by his wife and run by his stepson, who draws a six-figure salary. Donor money is converted into personal and family income while the formal rules are carefully observed. The same pattern appears in solar deals, land sales, board appointments, and foundation jobs. The connected design or navigate the system so that the transfer looks legal. When Pelosi says, “We have to do it for the children,” I guarantee her children are going to see more money than it takes for a thousand kids to get K-12 in Alabama. Their children get paid through mechanisms that cost you money.
Even when rules are broken or bent, the well-connected sometimes appear insulated. Mortgage-fraud allegations against a Federal Reserve governor, a state attorney general, and a sitting senator have produced investigations rather than swift, even-handed accountability. The message is the same: proximity to power changes the consequences. Under the prior administration, the same category of mortgage fraud was prosecuted, and the IRS treated high-end enforcement as a clear priority. Selectivity in who faces the full weight of the law is itself part of the pattern.
WHEN ‘FREE HEALTHCARE’ CAN’T FIX YOUR JOINT, IT OFFERS YOU EUTHANASIA
Expand the state’s reach over housing, contracts, land, appointments, and lending, and you multiply the opportunities for those who already know how to work the system. We are personal capitalists. But people who use our power to enrich their family, friends, and donors are an organized crime operation, and Social Security makes Bernie Madoff look like a bush-league scrub. The best apartments, the best deals, the best access, the best outcomes for their own. Elect them, and you hand them more leverage. The Pentagon showed me how hierarchy claims the windows with a view. East Berlin showed me how an ideology of equality produces special stores for the connected. Our own politics show the same allocation of the good stuff under democratic clothing. And family dynasties swap from media to government and banks to government and back. The language changes. The reality does not. The bill just gets added to the debt our children will bear.
Even if socialism worked, it would still be immoral. The hours of your life are yours. If it defends and protects and benefits everyone, then everyone should pay a share. If it benefits individuals on any other characteristic than in trade for their time and service, it is a force-imposed seizure of the hours of a person’s life. If you work anywhere in a non-government-funded job or you work in government as an agent for national security and internal order, you are funding this. It doesn’t work, never has, and that’s the definition of insanity. Repeating something that doesn’t work and makes someone else richer. They take the years, weeks, days, and hours. As in Orwell’s Animal Farm, you get the second serving of your minutes after the pigs get finished at the trough.
Michael Breeden is a retired Air Force chief master sergeant with 29 years of service as a combat controller in special operations. He writes on sovereignty, culture, and institutional accountability.