Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has a message for the tech elite: Henry Ford, for all his flaws, understood capitalism better than you do.

In a post on X Monday, Scaramucci called out what he sees as a blind spot among today's technology billionaires. "Henry Ford was generally a racist and a bad person, but he understood something our current broligarchs have completely forgotten," he wrote. "He said: I have to pay my workers enough to afford the products they're building. Give them a house, decent schools, reasonable healthcare."

Ford's 1914 "Five-Dollar Workday" more than doubled daily wages at Ford Motor Co. (F). The company has said the move stabilized its workforce and eventually let employees buy the cars they built. Scaramucci's point: that's not charity—it's smart capitalism.

"Capitalism works, but only if people believe the game is worth playing," Scaramucci wrote. "Right now they don't and history is very clear about what comes next."

The SkyBridge Capital founder didn't name names, but the term "broligarchs" is widely understood to refer to figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and their circle of venture capitalists and tech executives who increasingly shape debates on regulation, AI, space, crypto, and politics.

Musk is the clearest example of this fusion of wealth and political influence. His swing back toward Republicans, his sway over deregulatory arguments, and the Democratic Party's struggle over whether to engage or confront him all fit the pattern. Scaramucci recently called Democratic leaders "clueless" for not reaching out to Musk as he returned to Trump's camp.

Thiel is another central figure. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has warned that Thiel and other billionaires could shape major parts of Trump-era policy through what Reich called a "billionaire brain trust."

Scaramucci's critique isn't simple anti-billionaire populism. He has said he owns SpaceX (SPCX) and participated in a private round, arguing that Musk's "cult of personality" gives his companies a valuation premium that can go "off the charts." He still calls SpaceX compelling because of Starlink and the potential for orbital data centers.

But Scaramucci has also warned that "checks and balances are failing," corruption risk is rising, and political elites are enabling dangerous behavior. His latest post folds those concerns into a broader economic warning: a system that produces would-be trillionaires while ordinary workers lose faith is a system headed for trouble.