Oh goodness, well if a pithy quote said it then it must be true.
In retort I'd offer the pithy quote by Churchill that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other ones. But as is usually the case I don't think Churchill ever even said it.
Maybe theocracies and military dictatorships are what happens when politicians have all the money and all the power, and thusly become theocracies and military dictatorships.
The big difference is that the elite here invent crazy-useful shit like online-shopping or iPhones or map-reduce. The elite in a theocracy or military dictatorship accomplish and contribute nothing.
>The big difference is that the elite here invent crazy-useful shit like online-shopping or iPhones or map-reduce.
No elite ever invented any such things. Engineers working for the elites (and getting shit all for their invention most of the times) did. Same way the Pharaohs didn't built the pyramids themselves...
That's very easy to disprove as a claim. Engineers in the US and elsewhere routinely get very wealthy from companies they found or are involved with and their inventions.
Robert Noyce invented the first practical integrated circuit and was quite wealthy. As a brilliant engineer he co-founded both Intel and Fairchild. There's probably nobody in the history of the semiconductor industry that had a greater impact. He's a big part of the reason Silicon Valley exists. Gordon Moore was another talented engineer along with Noyce and a co-founder of Intel (resulting in a ~$20b fortune).
Ray Dolby was a brilliant engineer that became a billionaire from his inventions and eponymous company.
Linus Torvalds, a very skilled engineer, created Linux and is now quite wealthy. He was a self-made millionaire in his 30s.
Thomas Edison was both relatively rich and a very prolific inventor.
George Westinghouse was a very skilled engineer as well as a prolific inventor and became extremely wealthy.
James Dyson is both an inventor and extraordinarily rich.
Robin Li was a skilled engineer and helped pioneer search engines.
John Carmack and Tim Sweeney are both inventors and rich (extraordinarily rich in the case of Sweeney).
Larry Page invented PageRank, which was a critical shift in the way search engines work versus all the existing peers at the time. It was in fact the very foundation of Google's dominance.
Bill Gates started the first software company. It's easy to argue he didn't invent much, however he did help blaze the trail of software as an industry unto itself.
Larry Ellison - a skilled engineer - along with his co-founders, launched one of the first relational database products.
The founders of Cisco were both skilled engineers and got very wealthy from their ownership (despite conflicting with the VCs and being tossed out later).
Steve Wozniak was both a very skilled engineer, an inventor, and someone who got relatively wealthy.
Paul Allen was both an inventor, skilled engineer and someone who got extraordinarily rich.
Jensen Huang was a skilled engineer and got extremely wealthy by founding nVidia.
Robert Metcalfe, a talented engineer that co-invented ethernet, got wealthy from 3Com and various companies he was involved with over the years.
Andy Bechtolsheim was a very talented engineer that became wealthy from Sun Microsystems, Arista and investments.
Marc Andreessen was an engineer that helped to co-create Mosaic and went on to found Netscape. Few people did more to spark Internet adoption than Andreessen's early browsers.
James Clark was a skilled engineer that founded Silicon Graphics.
Pierre Omidyar was a skilled engineer and helped write the early code for eBay, which was one of the first online auction sites.
This list keeps going. These people all fall into the "elite" category and they're all engineers.
Where’s the evidence to suggest repatriating these huge sums of money will be used to improve society?
Where’s the evidence to suggest the money would be used to build public transport, improve the education system, reduce poverty, build more public / affordable housing?
The preponderance of evidence suggests any and all of these things would be poorly managed, massively over budget, and approximately a decade behind schedule.
I think it was PJ O'Rourke who said something like giving money and power to politicians is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.