"Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven" I guess. In terms of wealth they may have lost some, but they absolutely gained power. Fascism is only about power, it doesn't care about anything else. Especially not stability or rationality.

Not all of them have gained power in exchange for the wealth.

They do benefit a lot. They may have a smaller amount of money relative to what they could have had, but they have a LOT more power than they had before.

If the comment had said "the five most powerful people", I wouldn't have quibbled with it. But the overlap between the richest and the most powerful is not perfect, and the rich people outside that overlap are gonna be pissed.

But they will become considerably less rich while beconing no more powerful.

>They don't benefit though! This is bad for them too! Elon Musk is way poorer today than he was on inauguration day.

If the end goal is to become authoritarian shithole, then no, he isn't, as the government he captured will be buying teslas and space launches from him at a price he sets, quantity he (co)decides and quality that nobody oversees. That's a pessimistic take.

We'll see! That might be the goal. I'm pretty skeptical that is going to work. And a big part of the reason why is that there are a lot of wealthy businesspeople in the US, and that would be bad for most of them.