IMO the elephant in the room is even more fundamental: the _existence of billionaires_.
There is a disturbing narrative I now notice whenever it appears, specifically, the formulation of "good billionaire X takes on public interest Y."
The subtext is, we should celebrate that some wealthy titan has decided to back an interest aligned with our political interest.
The problem is that our current political and cultural divisions are, if not necessarily solely originating in, primarily–even, almost exclusively–_driven and determined_ by a battle of billionaires.
So long as "normal" people are reduced to pawns in a not so secret chess match between billionaires, our entire civilization is hostage. Our democratic institutions certainly are.
The GOP's contempt for public opinion in pushing through a crappy tax bill which extracts a trillion dollars from the collective future, to further enrich its richest stake holders, is just one more example of the consequences.
And it's getting worse, not better.
The last 40+ years have consistently accelerated the consolidation of wealth. This process gives every appearance of having passed an event horizon, beyond which all political remedies to that consolidation are neutralized, through the simple expediency of the very very wealthy seizing ownership literal and figurative of political process.
The historic solutions to the extreme consolidation of wealth are few and don't offer much road map.
But we solve this, or it looks like we get a 2.5 class society.
An underclass, a 1% overclass–and a frightened buffer class jealous of its limited remaining prerogatives and lottery chances of entering the overclass.
Recognize that last cohort? That's the readership of Hackernews.