By: Sofia Ellington

When former Amazon CEO, and current billionaire, Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez appeared on the cover of Vogue in November 2023, social media was on fire, incredulous over the cover that seemed to exaggerate the tech billionaire’s biceps. Less ablaze was discussion about the setting for the photoshoot: Bezos’s ranch in West Texas. Dressed like Hollywood cowboys, Bezos and Sanchez harkened back to imagery of American film icons such as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. While the glitzy couple may seem to be a far cry from the national icon that has come to represent rugged individualism, personal freedom, and self reliance, I argue that the choice to exhibit Bezos as a modern cowboy reveals a salient truth about the status of billionaire tech tycoons and the businesses they champion: just like the American cowboy, the law has aided in making the myth of the genius tech billionaire. Both myths demand a harder look.  

The myth of the western cowboy plays on false myths of life on the range. The archetype of heroism and self-reliance is more accurately characterized as a life sustained by government subsidy and lack of oversight. The myth of the genius tech billionaire has captured the American imagination in much the same way as the cowboy. Distrust of government overreach and spending as well as lack of resources for life’s essential building blocks like housing, school, and healthcare leads to semi-reliance on the ultrawealthy’s philanthropic escapades and leave us in awe of their romanticized entrepreneurial genius. Behind the myth are exploitative practices that implicate anti-competitive practices and concerns over consumer exploitation. 

First, we must understand the cowboy archetype. Look no further than country music for imagery of the romanticized cowboy. In his 1993 hit, “Should’ve Been a Cowboy,” the late Toby Keith croons longingly, “Go west young man, haven’t you been told? / California’s full of whiskey, women and gold.” Drawing on the promise of manifest destiny, the cowboy archetype is full of imagery of young, brave men going West to an empty landscape full of opportunity, independence and a chance to strike it rich off the plentiful natural resources. In reality, the land in the West was never unoccupied because it had been the homeland of Native Tribe’s since time immemorial, and the seemingly endless supply of natural resources was a delicate environmental balance easily disrupted by exploitation. 

Initially, Federal laws encouraged early western homesteaders to settle by offering 160 acres of federal land for only the cost of an initial filing fee. Along with those 160 acres, ranchers and homesteaders were able to claim water rights and graze their cattle on public lands at no cost. The sense of ownership over public western lands increased, and some cattle ranchers began to erect barbed wire enclosures to keep out other competing users of the land, along with other tactics that created a hostile atmosphere that helped keep competition away. 

After a long period of little federal oversight, the increasing enclosure of public land and environmental concerns over grazing practices spurred Congress to act. In 1885 they passed the Unlawful Enclosures Act and then Taylor Grazing Act in 1934. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1895 decision in Camfield v. United States, made clear that private landowners could not make exclusive use of public lands and resources, holding a Nevada cattle rancher had violated the Unlawful Inclosures act after he fenced off nearly 20,000 acres. Additionally, the dust bowl in the midwest warned of the environmental consequences of overgrazing. The Taylor Grazing Act purported to curb future damage to the lands through establishing grazing districts and requiring grazing fees to be paid to the Bureau of Land Management. Congress must take similar legislative action to respond to the growing tech industry to help control the power that tech companies, and their billionaires, have on the economy and their consumers. 

Like a rancher’s exploitation of public lands to the determinant of other users, big tech has been able to harvest invaluable information and record breaking profits from a resource they never had to pay for: your data. Additionally, the escapades of once worshiped tech tycoons such as Bezos, Sam Bankman-Fried, Mark Zuckerberg, Elizabeth Holmes, and Elon Musk make even the biggest sycophants take pause.

In addition to the criminal proceedings some tech entrepreneurs are facing, the big tech business model is going through an antitrust reckoning thanks to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launching lawsuits against Amazon, Google, and Apple, to name a few, for alleged tactics that disadvantaged their rivals leading to illegal monopolies that hurt consumers. Policy on emerging technology has long prioritized the economic and social benefits of a connected world. That has left guidance on how to hold tech companies and their billionaires accountable for how they exploit user data, like early rangeland policies, severely lacking. 

Many of the provisions in the U.S. data privacy framework only minimally restrict businesses and allow for the maintenance of the status quo. Unlike Europe’s comprehensive privacy law, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the United States only has a conglomeration of laws that target specific types of data. For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) does not protect your private health information broadly, it only protects communication between you and your health care provider, or other similar “covered entities.” Additionally, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) requires that financial services like loan or investment service explain how they share data and requires an opt out option, but does not restrict how the data is used. The FTC is also empowered to go after companies that violate their own privacy policy by, for example, deceiving users as to the protection their products offer. Other federal laws such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act, The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act help to fill in the universe of federal U.S. data privacy. Your state’s laws may also offer additional protections. 

In addition to frustration with a lack of coordinated data protections that tech companies regularly exploit, public blowback on lack of taxes on the ultra-wealthy and reports that billionaires became richer during the pandemic has invigorated popular distaste for billionaires and an interest in holding their companies accountable. A slew of recent lawsuits have aimed at section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes tech companies from liability related to content posted by their users. The U.S. Supreme court however, in both Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh and Gonzalez v. Google, have balked at holding the tech giants liable when their algorithms promote problematic content, allegedly “aiding and abetting” terrorism.  Given the intense scrutiny that billionaires and big tech have been under recently, it is no surprise that Bezos tried to invoke the beloved American cowboy fantasies of freedom from federal oversight, independence, and self-reliance on the cover of Vogue. The irony is that by invoking the myth of the cowboy, Bezos’ cosplay underscored the need for more government oversight and regulation. Just as the practices of fencing off public land and overgrazing lead to more government oversight of ranch life, public frustration with the exploits of big tech are coming to a tipping point which suggest that a breakthrough is imminent. Just last month the FTC moved to ban data brokers from selling geolocation information for “sensitive data locations” such as visits to correctional facilities or reproductive health clinics. While big tech has had the tendency to divide and isolate, it has also provided the tools for a more connected public that has the potential to collaborate in order to protect against the disastrous consequences of unchecked exploitation of public resources.