As the economist Tom Nicholas has pointed out, the American institution of venture capital (VC) emerged out of the attempt to ensure the persistence of capital amid economic windfalls connected to easily depleted natural resources, a monetary message in a bottle passed from one boom to the next. In an economy geared toward the rapid exploitation of immense natural re-sources, VC was the way in which quickly earned money could be transformed into capital for the next boom. The great whaling families of New England secured themselves against the inevitable depletion of whale stocks with venture funds. And the railroad entrepreneurs, who had extracted enormous sums from the state, pooled their money to reinvest it for the moment when those subsidies inevitably dried up.

Today, venture capitalists are the central drivers in what tech calls governing. They are an integral part of the ecosystem, but a part that reaches both backward and forward, into a time before Silicon Valley and a time after it. The money they invest is of dynastic, sometimes even feudal, origin. The arrangement of this money with pluralism, with free competition, with liberal democracy is entirely provisional. This is something that those who manage it seem to sense acutely. Among the CEOs of the large technology companies along the San Francisco Bay, those openly sympathetic to the Trump regime are still in the minority. Among the venture capitalists, however, especially those you hear from in media, many are right-leaning.