The jolly heretic can sometimes be accused of saying interesting things. He recently seemed to coin a new measure of how bad things are going: Just before the end politicians [continue to] lie about everything knowing that everyone knows they are lying and everyone knows they know. Infinite recursion. What they know that we don't isn't even important, it is bad enough not to see the point of simply doing their job.
At least it's clear now: It's not about blue or red, it's all about who has the green vs. everyone else.
"There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties." - Gore Vidal
When Sheldon Edelstein, the Koch Brothers, Michael Bloomberg (who famously during the 2020 Democratic primary debates had a Freudian slip of admitting outright buying congressional seats) and sundry other oligarchs throw their assets around, it's a non-issue, but suddenly new blood and noveau riche start doing it and it's somehow gauche and a threat to democracy, while also being outright misandrist. Selective rigor is the enemy. It's bad when anyone does it, not just when your outgroup does it.
Nah. There was plenty of pushback & rage against the previous ultra-rich & their ability to exert such massive political control over what nominally was a democracy too.
Selective rigor this is not. Nor should it be; it's all gross as hell & a horrible perversion of democratic interests.
And the stridency with which these folks work against democracy has only intensified. The article cites what books/influences these people have spoken for, and this is worthy coverage to consider.
> ...The Sovereign Individual, by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. The text unironically likens the ultrarich to "the gods in Greek myth," and assures readers that they deserve no less than world domination: "Commanding vastly greater resources and beyond the reach of many forms of compulsion, the Sovereign Individual will redesign governments and reconfigure economies.
Democracy should remain vigilant to enemies within and without. It's hard for me to read something like this & not form a belief that these people are working against our democracy in ever more direct conflict. Perhaps even more vigor is needed, given the magnitude of the conflict.
>Nah. There was plenty of pushback & rage against the previous ultra-rich & their ability to exert such massive political control over what nominally was a democracy too.
Citation needed. Especially from outfits like the Atlantic, replete with invented pejoratives.
> Eight years ago, the PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel was an outlier in liberal Silicon Valley for publicly supporting Donald Trump.
Is the opening sentence supposed to imply that Thiel (and Elon) are no longer outliers?
I thought 99% of the SV elite were still donating vast sums of money to the other party. Since, all of a sudden, everyone is concerned with billionaires why the obsession with Elon? It’s OK when big money donates to one side but not the other?
To be honest my impression is that any "loud" VC is firmly in the Musk camp. And maybe just disagrees with Musk on a tactical level but generally would like for a lot of discussions to stop happening. There's probably a bit of a "intellectual dark web" silliness going on where they all think they are being oppressed for their opinions, despite probably being the silent... plurality I guess in their cohort.
Of course when they talk about this in public fora, many people outside their cohort[0] will react negatively to them.
It’s OK when big money donates to one side but not the other?
For those not familiar with American politics, virtually all large money donors donate to both sides to varying degrees. This is primarily to get both your favored candidate in the race and remove tough matchups from the opposing side via the primary process. The real difference is who you choose to vocally support.
It’s OK when big money donates to one side but not the other?
Yes. People are reasonably permitted to form opinions based on causes that people fund.
I think it is bad when people pump money into a cause, campaign, or other endeavour that I think is harmful, and think people can reasonably be criticised for doing so. Funding the opposition isn’t something I think is bad; you are free to feel differently.
I don’t like the idea that we are somehow obligated to be neutral in all things. Trump is awful, any person contributing to his campaign deserves to be criticised, and that’s totally okay.
The article explicitly references donations to the Democrats too btw, the authors overarching point appears to be this idea that the vastly wealthy consider themselves above the state and the rule of law. This is not a new phenomena, history is resplendent with examples of the abundantly rich desiring, obtaining and then exercising absolute power. Spoiler alert: it usually doesn't end well for the populace at large or ultimately themselves. I'd agree with the authors point about the ostensibly short sightedness of Elon et al's seeming desire for a rich absolutism: they are barking up the wrong, unsustainable tree. A well functioning and financially supported democracy is very very good for the economy and good for them! A better provision of public goods, infrastructure and a healthy populace is very very good for business isn't it? Democratic decline also brings with it instability, anti competitive kleptocracy, stagnation, and consumers strapped for cash; not the ideal conditions within which to sell their services. Which makes me wonder: is Elon's current political posturing not really based on any canny reasoning, but just plane old reactive emotional impulse. I really wouldn't be surprised if, as the author suggests, Elon's perceived Biden snub is really a big part of this or at least behind its genesis. Which is a good final point on unchecked power and its pitfalls, who wants to be at the mercy of an individual's emotional petulant whims, compulsions and outbursts? Surely none of us right?
Elon is notorious for chasing the limelight and keeping it on him personally more so than the product. Most billionaires are content with doing this type of stuff fairly quietly, hence they attract less attention.
If you do shit for attention all the time you're probably going to get more of it, but it won't necessarily be flattering or directed in the way you want.
'non-obese' when talking about 'tech bro' / Musk is a stretch. He probably is medically obese (above 30 BMI). I know it isn't what USians call obese, but basically, for a man, once fat can be seen on your face, you're obese (I'm an ex-obese, I know).
To start with, which opinions? I may disagree with your (hypothetical) opinion that Go is the best language developed so far. I would not call you "bro" because of that, even if you were a non-obese male.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brogrammer notes that '"Brogrammer" or "tech bro"' are "often used pejoratively to describe toxic masculinity and sexism in the technology industry".
This definition highlights how it's not merely 'opinions with which I disagree', but a specific set of opinions.
FWIW, The Atlantic is the publication which brought us the term "Bernie Bro", "to describe young, white, progressive men who, in his view, support unrealistic progressive policies and promote the Bernie Sanders campaign obnoxiously", including "sometimes attack in very sexist ways" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Bro
The connection there is the toxic masculinity and sexism.
To a reasonably informed outsider the entire US political system looks like a cynical dirty circus.
I have no horse in the political race; I only wish for the US to be strong, since I see it as a shining beacon for many good in the world.
That said, you mentioned the ridiculousness of one side, with completely ignoring what has happened on the other. So let me list some of the hard to believe details regarding that other side:
- the current presidential candidate has not won a single delegate in the primaries in 2020
- in 2020 they have had an attrocious performance while campaigning
- they've been a steady stream of cringe and embarrassment for the US in their public appearances for the last 4 years
- in 2024 the primaries have been shut down, only for this candidate to be hot-swapped in!
... so now as an opposition to the ridiculous orange candidate that you described on the other side, you now have a candidate that no one has voted for!
How is that a democracy?
Your entire two-party political system is rigged and you should own up to it, or not engage with it at all.
Tbh the entire primary process is very skewed by the democratic machine. The outcome of the primary is only window dressing on what is essentially an anointment process.
It definitely is rigged, and those with the power to fix it have a vested interest in keeping it exactly as it is.
This seems like a silly comparison, doesn’t it? She’s been nominated by the party following their internal rules, and now the voting population has the free choice of whether or not to support her.
I’m not seeing where the democratic compromise is; this is exactly the sort of thing that happens pretty frequently, globally, where party candidates are nominated unopposed.
That you think any of those are anywhere near the realm of a US President attempting to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, a la third world dictator status, is exactly what OP meant. Dems are trying to field the candidate that Americans will vote the most for, so that tragedy doesn't happen again. The prediction markets are way up for a Dem win compared to Biden. It's what most Americans that would vote Democrat want.
No one voted for them when they were campainging by themselves in 2020 - 0 delegates won.
2024 primaries were shut down - so no one voted them again. They wouldn't have won the primaries if the primaries were held.
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The fact that you mention they have been voted for because they were the second person on the ticket that won the presidential election is exactly what is wrong with the US. They only managed to win by association and now they hope to fail-upwards solely on name recognition (gained through association!)
In the US you don't win on merit anymore, now the game is:
1. get a small win by association
2. use the newly gained name recognition to fail upwards
I absolutely agree that this entrenched two-party system is a clear issue that needs to be resolved if the US is to become a real functioning democracy. But also woe to noting that there are other parties in the race also; they just don’t have popular support.
Two parties is the mathematical equilibrium of every first-past-the-post system.
Only way to have more parties is to adopt something like a proportional parliamentary system. Which will never happen because you'd have to change the constitution.
What I find most frightening is the trick Musk played on regular investors via his pay package that is now worth tens of billions. Multiple times more than what Tesla earns per year.
No regular investor digs into this kind of company details. Nor do they understand the risk reward mechanics at play. And they shouldn't have to.
If the stock market gets played with unusual contracts like this one, regular investors will be cheated out of the value that is created by replacing more and more jobs by AI.
> If the stock market gets played with unusual contracts like this one, regular investors will be cheated out of the value that is created by replacing more and more jobs by AI.
The only people in the world who deserve money even less than sociopathic billionaires are investors. I'd say cheating them out of their money should be free game. Isn't that basically what they're doing to every worker-class human being in the world as it is?
You realize the government funds most people's pensions/retirement via investment right? Either directly via pension funds or indirectly by encouraging people to save in 401ks etc?
It used to be that companies paid pensions. They had to pay for the full life-cycle cost of the humans that they used for labor. Companies hated that of course both for practical reasons, but mostly because they'd rather that pension money went to shareholding executives.
The 401k was originally a special interest clause inserted in a bill designed for kodak employees (kodak was a crazy profitable company at the time, and with that came the power to lobby changes to bills). But others picked up on in and also used it as a tax haven, then over time its existence effectively eliminated private pensions. In the 80s there were a number of big pension blowouts (some real, some manufactured) so that companies could offload these commitments to the government, to externalize these costs. The 401k was then sold as the way retirement saving should be done.
Investments don't actually pay for retirement costs, only selling investments can do that. Younger people have to buy the stocks of the older people who need to sell them to pay living costs. So that of course leads to growth and demographics problems to keep the system working.
Yes, and what happens when the company paying your pension goes bankrupt? You're up sht creek.
At least 401ks let you diversify across the entire stock market, much less risk of every company in the US (or world) going bankrupt simultaneously.
> So that of course leads to growth and demographics problems to keep the system working.
Let me tell you a secret: even in a communist country demographics still matter. If you have just 1 healthy adult caring for 4 aging grandparents, that's going to be tough in communism or capitalism. Money is just an abstraction, what matters is resources, which young healthy people are.
> Let me tell you a secret: even in a communist country demographics still matter.
At no point did I suggest otherwise. Regardless of the political system at play, physics says that continued exponential growth is not an option. So how do get to a system that works on with a plateaued population / economy?
I think many systems can work with a plateau (but it will be less pleasant than the growth phase). Shrinking populations are much more unpleasant though, at least for the old people getting insufficient care.
