Who are the rich people you associate with the rationalists?
The main influential people I think of in that crowd who steer the conversations are Eliezer Yudkowsky and Scott Alexander. They're both doing fine financially at this point, I think, but not "buy politicians and laws like Elon Musk" fine.
There are some very rich people who might be loosely associated, like Dario Amodei (maybe?) or perhaps some VCs, but I'm not sure anyone really thinks of them as being a major influence among rationalists, more like people who hopped on the bandwagon. Certainly not ruling it.
I'm not denying that there's a shadowy ruling elite cabal of influential billionaires in the US, but if any of them are members of the rationalist community, they're certainly not influential within it. Maybe Elon lurks on lesswrong and posts stuff under a pseudonym or something, it's certainly possible, but doing that doesn't make someone a ruler of the group.
the people with vast money buy politicians and laws