Friends who follow this blog will know that I often invoke Hannah Arendt to highlight how Western business and political elites have throughout recent history ill-disguised admiration and envy for the brutal despots of the Far East, from Russia to China, from India to Thailand. Particularly, Arendt pointed out how Western political and business elites could never explain to themselves how Oriental despots could manage to govern and rule over hundreds of millions of slavish subjects with seeming effortlessness compared with the political tumults of Western populations.

 Now that the question of eastern oligarchs in Russia and China who are the true representatives of modern day Oriental despotism has come to the top of our discussion and attention we think it may be useful to return and reflect on the far-reaching implications of Arendt's brilliant intuition.

Specifically, we must not forget that our own Western variety of capitalist oligarchs have led us to the edge of doom...