America’s corporate elite hopes to stay on Trump’s good side. It’s a stupid thing to do.

Moral stability has never been a prominent character trait of the obscenely rich. Even so, since the White House remains open for grabs, it would be nice to see a few billionaires and CEOs hedge their bets in order not to reveal the bad side of future President Donald Trump.

On the one hand, trying to stay in the favor of the president is business as usual for the corporate elite. They love distribute donations between partiessecuring the favor of whoever comes out first. But counting on a second Trump administration to deliver similar results this time around could turn out to be a bad bet for America’s 1%, bankrupting it not only morally but also financially.

Agreeable behavior of the fan Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk is a separate category among the billionaire class. But there were others among his financial stratum by silence. Midwestern tycoon Warren Buffett and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimonfor example, refuse to publicly support any of the candidates. Even if Trump were not a threat to American democracy, one might think it poses a threat to the health of the US economy it would be enough for them to take sides.

The spinelessness on display is even more evident when it comes to them billionaires who own major media. Last week, Los Angeles Times publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong caused outrage when he withdrew support from his paper. However, this paled in comparison to the outrage directed at Amazon owner Jeff Bezoswhose decision to bolster The Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris caused a mass exodus of the paper’s subscribers.

Their decisions are particularly telling because of the business their companies have with the federal government. Sun-Shiong has reasons for this stay on the good side of regulators with the Food and Drug Administration, even if Trump mass dismissals of civil servants replace with friends. There are only Amazon’s cloud computing contracts with the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency worth about 20 billion dollars. It is also reported that Trump met with Blue Origin executivesof Bezos’ rocket company and Musk’s rival SpaceX, the same day the Post announced it would not support the president.

Bezos wrote a piece of thought posted on Monday that he did not know about the meeting before it took place. But regardless of the time, the Blue Origin meeting is an example of the titans of big business — especially in Silicon Valley — trying to placate Trump in the event of his victory. There has been much discussion about the dangers that the next Trump presidency will present in the recent one meeting of the Business Councila high-level meeting of company managers.

Recently, two advisers to the Trump campaign, whose names have not been released told the Post that “numerous managers” applied. One of those advisers hinted at retribution for disloyalty from business leaders, almost warning that they have little time to appease Trump:

Trump was surprisingly transparent in his promises to various business sectors about how well he would treat them once in office. “Quo” in it’s a quid pro quo will be a donation to his campaign in the form or massive outpouring of cash (as in the case of crypto cabal) or contributions in kind such as mailings to voters declaring Trump’s new love for the vaping industry.

In a way, this could be seen as a return to form for America. This is how politics worked for most of the 19th century. The patronage system greased the wheels of robber barons to amass fortunes on the backs of poor workers. The 20th century saw a series of anti-corruption laws, but lax regulation of campaign finance made it easy for tycoons to place their chips on whoever could win, regardless of party. And Trump speaks of their long-standing interests in deregulation and massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. But these billionaires may have too much faith in the continued rule of law.

With Trump, there is no such thing as an iron deal that does not benefit him personally. Its desire for revenge is established, and any slight or perceived disloyalty is enough to incur his disfavor. Instead, the system Trump would run would likely more closely resemble the way Russian President Vladimir Putin has dealt with his country’s oligarchs.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, former party apparatchiks who seized control over former state-owned industries were at one point more powerful than the Kremlin. But during his stay in power, Putin brought them to fivetargeting their detractors for arrests and show trials, stripping them of their assets and handing them out to loyal supporters or appropriating them for themselves. The billionaires who still exist in Russia do so only at the mercy of Putin.

One of Trump’s former officials, Russia expert Fiona Hill, who worked at the National Security Council, noted in a recent interview with Politico that Trump “already made an example of Jeff Bezos, who was punished for his criticism when Trump was in power before because Trump tried to deny Amazon big government contracts. This is precisely a sign of oligarchy or autocracy.”

At this late stage in the game, it seems doubtful that many Trump-fearing titans of industry will heed Hill’s warnings about how Trump’s vision of power could be turned against them. There is no free market in a world of kings, just as there can be no fair dealings in a world where one man’s word is law. There is also no guarantee that Trump will lose, which could force these billionaires to make their own self-preservation a priority. But their willingness to potentially sacrifice the rest of us and the country’s well-being in the process is a true sign of cowardice.