Deindustrialization laid low the industrial working class and the labor movement. Lamentable, perhaps—but why should it matter, some might ask? That question itself is evidence of how much our world has lost. For a hundred years the labor movement was the bone and sinew of social protest against the iniquities and inequities of industrial capitalism. It is, either solely or in conjunction with other rebellious elements, responsible for the weekend, for the eight-hour day, for the abolition of child labor, for minimum-wage and hour standards, for some semblance of democratic rights in the workplace and civil rights for excluded minorities, for progressive taxation, for protections against the safety and health hazards of industrial work, for old-age pensions, for low-cost public housing, and for health insurance. That is an impressive list of reforms, to be sure: ones that define much that is essential about modern life, a list that could easily be extended.

There is no Tycoon Party in the United States to impose ideological uniformity on a group of billionaires who, by their very nature as übermensch, march to their own drummers and differ on many matters. Some are philanthropically minded, others parsimonious; some are pietistic, others indifferent. Wall Street hedge-fund creators may donate to Obama and be card-carrying social liberals on matters of love and marriage, while heartland types like the Koch brothers obviously take another tack politically. But all of them subscribe to one thing: a belief in their own omniscience and irresistible will.