Who will keep the parasitic billionaire in check — before it’s too late?

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 II.

So nation-states have avoided nuclear confrontations. But can humanity and the fragile ecosystems of our planet survive the rapid succession of newly minted trillionaires with such capabilities?

There is no historical precedent for such concentrated wealth and power accumulating in so few hands and at such an unprecedented rate. If this is left unchecked, do we truly believe we can coexist globally for the next 80 years of the nuclear age?

In this way, the trillionaire may pose the single greatest existential threat to humanity.

This phenomenon defies all but the most extreme ideologies of free-market capitalism. In 2025, what reasonable economic school of thought can justify the existence of trillionaires as anything other than malignant? What we are witnessing is not capitalism but a systemic cancer. This metastasis has grown so rapidly that no regulatory or legal framework has been able to contain it.

Centi-billionaires are not merely a social anomaly; they are a cultural virus. Their wealth is a self-replicating contagion. These men consolidate media, fund research and shape global narratives, often unconsciously. Like any virus, their accumulation reshapes the environment to sustain itself. But within this very process lies its antidote: the forced reckoning with the concept of a trillionaire — heretofore incomprehensible.

These men (and they are always men) have shown themselves incapable of moral responsibility. As they align with figures like Trump, their primary concern seems to be ensuring their own survival. And for these individuals, survival is synonymous with growth. Their wealth becomes proof of their superiority, their influence a justification for their actions. Yet in this uncharted territory, these men are walking warnings — harbingers of what unchecked hyperaccumulation can do, not only to economies but to the very fabric of humanity.

And yet, in this crisis, they offer us an unexpected opportunity: Centi-billionaires force us to grapple with numbers that were once beyond comprehension. Their wealth embodies “God numbers” or “Sagan units” like billions and trillions, concepts essential to understanding the vast scale of existence. A few generations ago, millionaires were a rarity, and many still believed the Earth to be only 10,000 years old. Today, centi-billionaires compel us to imagine the 4-billion-year history of planet Earth and humanity’s tenuous 200-year experiment with industrialization.

In this way, centi-billionaires serve a purpose akin to that of fossils. Fossils allowed humanity to grasp the deep history of life on Earth, to imagine massive creatures that ruled millions of years ago — and, importantly, to understand the catastrophic extinction events that wiped them out. The centi-billionaire provides a similar lens: forcing us to confront the scale of their destruction and the inevitability of the system that created them becoming extinct.

The only viable future for humanity requires that these men become fossils — relics of a bygone era, studied by future generations to comprehend the absurd scale of their existence and the devastation they caused. Like dinosaurs with tiny brains and outsized bodies, they are capable of immense destruction yet seem unaware of their own impact.

This is not a socialist entreaty to “eat the rich.” But let’s at least stop feeding them — no more subsidizing them with tax breaks, government contracts and armed bodyguards.

People are hurting out there. As of last year, the average American household carried $104,215 in debt. This number grows each year. That’s not healthy competition.

Instead, we must take the lessons of paleontology and apply them to the wealthiest among us. Just as the fossilized remains of former reptiles taught us to imagine a world beyond our immediate grasp, we must use the financial scales of magnitude that the existence of the centi-billionaire rex has forced us to confront — to ensure its extinction and our survival.

Will Cathcart is an American journalist, producer and war correspondent based in Tbilisi for 16 years.

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