By the time the sun rises over the spires of Silicon Valley, a certain brand of chaos has already taken hold. It’s a controlled chaos, carefully crafted and nurtured by the so-called “disruptors” who sit in high-backed chairs made from the bones of yesterday’s industries. These men—and they are almost always men—are the Venture Capitalists, the VCs, the self-proclaimed apostles of innovation, prophets of the new world order. They wear their disruption like a badge of honor, a symbol of their willingness to throw the dice and turn the tables on the stale and outdated.

But don’t be fooled by the gleaming rhetoric and flashy PowerPoint slides. Underneath that thin veneer of rebellion beats the heart of a rank coward. The moment you so much as hint at the idea of taxing their unrealized gains, the profits they haven’t even pulled out of the market yet, you’ll see a transformation that’s as predictable as it is pathetic. The disruptor becomes the defender, the revolutionary the reactionary, and the bold, brave iconoclast turns into a pearl-clutching prude, muttering sophistries about stability and the dangers of tampering with the sacred free market.

These VCs, with their sleek Teslas and designer drugs, talk a big game. They’re all about shaking up the status quo, smashing the establishment, and creating a world where the little guy finally gets a piece of the action. Or so they say. But threaten to take even a slice of their ill-gotten gains, and suddenly they’re channeling the spirit of William F. Buckley, standing athwart history and yelling “Stop!”

What they don’t tell you is that the system they’re so eager to disrupt is one they’ve already rigged in their favor. They’ve got their tentacles wrapped around the throats of politicians, their hooks buried deep in the flesh of the economy. They don’t want to change the system; they want to own it. And they’re damn close to doing just that.

The irony is almost too much to bear. The same people who built their fortunes on the idea of “move fast and break things” are now desperately clinging to the very stability they claim to despise. They’ve built a gilded fortress out of stock options, shell companies, and offshore accounts, and the last thing they want is for anyone to come poking around and asking uncomfortable questions about who really benefits from all this so-called disruption.

When you suggest that maybe, just maybe, the public ought to get a cut of the action—after all, it’s our roads, our schools, our infrastructure that these companies rely on—the VCs start wringing their hands and wailing about how you’re going to kill the golden goose. They’ll tell you that taxing unrealized gains is a slippery slope, that it’ll stifle innovation, that it’ll bring the whole house of cards crashing down.

And maybe it would. Maybe the whole damn thing needs to come crashing down. Maybe it’s time to stop listening to the technocrats and the financiers and start asking what kind of world we really want to live in. Because if this is the best they can offer—an endless cycle of boom and bust, where a handful of people get filthy rich while everyone else is left scrambling for crumbs—then we’re in deeper trouble than we thought.

The VCs will keep singing their hymns to stability, clutching their pearls, and spinning their sophistries, but the truth is staring us all in the face: the only thing they really care about is protecting their loot. And if that means throwing the rest of us under the bus, they won’t hesitate for a second. The revolution was never about you, or me, or anyone outside their little bubble. It was always about them.

So, the next time you hear some slick-talking VC yammering on about disruption and innovation, just remember: the only thing they really want to disrupt is your ability to hold them accountable. The rest is just noise, designed to keep you from seeing the truth. And the truth is this: they’ve built their empire on a lie, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep it from crumbling.

But crumble it will. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But the reckoning is coming, and when it does, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves. Until then, keep your eyes open and your wits about you. The great Silicon Valley shakedown is just getting started.