As billionaires flock to President Trump’s second administration, it’s worth remembering that, just as in biology, parasites can sometimes serve a purpose.

That purpose isn’t building rockets or enabling online shopping. Rather, it’s providing a fleeting yet necessary leap in our understanding of enormous numbers and the urgent need to dismantle what they represent.

The more these billionaires surround Trump, the less dangerous he appears in comparison. One might ask: Who can keep them in check?

The existence of centi-billionaires — those whose wealth exceeds $100 billion — is not merely a symptom of systemic privilege or exploitation. It represents a flaw, a glitch in capitalism itself: a runaway mechanism of hyper-accumulation that has enabled unimaginable fortunes to balloon in an absurdly short time. In just a decade, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have grown their wealth from billions to hundreds of billions. At his current trajectory, Musk is expected to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027.

Consider: Centi-billionaires are walking nation-states. They not only possess rockets but are tasked with building them. As Jeff Bezos launches his own fleet into the sky, it’s worth noting that the nuclear material to arm such rockets is both cheap and increasingly accessible. In the 80th year since nuclear weapons were developed, they have not been used again since World War........

© The Hill