...but my overall point is that the tech elite is composed of a lot of rich white guys with connections, who naturally help each other out. Sam Altman runs YC now and as of last year was apparently seriously considering running for governor of California. That strikes me as grandiose and not good for society. Sam is 33 and because he's a tech billionaire thinks that he should run the most developed economy in the world? He genuinely believes that people outside of tech and business know who he is? He's qualified, because he's shook hands with the best off of society for the past decade?
Why does he deserve that power? Why does Zuckerberg deserve to be president? What makes him qualified? He made a PHP app that got big. Come on. That's what all this boils down to: money and power and a lot of people value that more than anything else in life.
How about we be honest with ourselves as individuals and societies and stop enabling that?
What they miss is that running as a republican is very different than running as a democrat (as I guess most tech people would want to). Zuckberg would beat Trump in the democratic primaries, no question about that. But he won't be in front of Trump, he would be in front of many experiences politicians who actually have a clue about how one manages a country.
So, where is this all coming from -- that Zuckerberg wants to run for president? I'll bet my house and every last penny I own, he does not want to be president, he will never run for president.
Oh, and he would never win. He's an insanely smart dude, but he hasn't got the charisma to win presidency.
(I do think that a lot of people on HN should run for some higher office in gov't, particularly tptacek and rayiner).
However, some of his actions are distinctly political.
http://people.com/politics/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-team-202...
He hired "Joel Benenson, a former top adviser and longtime pollster to President Barack Obama and the chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign", and prior to that he hired "David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama’s 2008 presidential run".
Your statement is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not sure Zuckerberg is actually "insanely smart". He's similar intelligence to a lot of people on HN, but people conflate power and success with visionary ability. Maybe he is that, or maybe he's just a relatively smart guy with lots of connections, a very favorable background, and the same hangups, limitations, biases, and delusions as everyone else.
That's why I agree with you that he wouldn't run for president.
The actual merits of Trump or Obama notwithstanding, it's been three election cycles now since without traditional career politician in the White House. I'm not sure I can fault tech billionaires for thinking that this might be a real emerging trend, rather than just a pair of consecutive flukes.
That is 100% traditional career politician in almost every way, it's just he was good enough to do it faster than most people.
Either way, if anything in U.S. politics is non-controversial... it should be the observation that three Presidential cycles in a row have been won by upstarts, whose credentials are strikingly out of place alongside their peers of the past century. That's not arguing equivalence, but ignoring all commonality is absurd.
Maybe it's attributable to being "good", or "lucky", or "racist", or some other factors of sheer coincidence. Or maybe it's a symptom of fundamental social or media shift, and signifies a new norm.
As old as this might make one feel, George W. Bush's last victory was four election cycles ago.
The Roman Republic had a concept, the New Man. W was not a New Man nor was his father. Neither were upstarts.
My point was, the dude is not as clueless as the media and pundits portray him, and he did accomplish the impossible more than once in his life, most recently in the 2016 election.
Yeah the republican primaries are more fair and balanced - we all saw what happened to Bernie in the democratic primaries.
I don't know what you saw, but I saw Clinton winning 55% of the vote.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Governor of California. At least as far as the 'what makes him qualified' thing goes, apparently that's not a real concern for voters :)
The correct spelling is Gray Davis [1].
The rolling brownouts were caused by Enron [2] who was enabled by legislation (AB 1890) that his predecessor Pete Wilson signed in 1996 [3]. People went to jail for that. [4]
There were no massive deficits under Davis. When the tech bubble burst in 2001, there was a revenue decline but that's about it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Davis
[2] https://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/wec/enron...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis
Staff concludes that supply-demand imbalance, flawed
market design and inconsistent rules made possible
significant market manipulation as delineated in final
investigation report. Without underlying market
dysfunction, attempts to manipulate the market
would not be successful.
Et cetera.
Wilson enabled this although to be fair, he didn't foresee it. The CA energy crisis was the result of mid-90s neoliberal hubris. Like supply side voodoo economics, its lessons get quickly forgotten. Hubris is like that.
>Some critics, such as Arianna Huffington, alleged that Davis was lulled to inaction by campaign contributions from energy producers.[28] In addition, the California State Legislature would sometimes push Davis to act decisively by taking over power plants which were known to have been gamed and place them back under control of the utilities, ensuring a more steady supply and slapping the nose of the worst manipulators . Meanwhile, conservatives argued that Davis signed overpriced energy contracts, employed incompetent negotiators, and refused to allow prices to rise for residences statewide much like they did in San Diego, which they argue could have given Davis more leverage against the energy traders and encouraged more conservation.[29] More criticism is given in the book Conspiracy of Fools, which gives the details of a meeting between the governor and his officials; Clinton Administration Treasury officials; and energy executives, including market manipulators such as Enron, where Gray Davis disagreed with the treasury officials and energy executives<
The fact remains that the CA energy crisis was enabled by Republicans for the benefit of Ken Lay's Enron Corp. Then when it happened Republicans complained loudly and political advantage of their created crisis.
I'm not sure the fault there was Grey Davis's. Seems there was skulduggery afoot (it's actually a really interesting story, and seemingly a perennial one)
the candidates you mentioned only did well in limited/specific geographies (such as their home state). i followed the primaries on both sides, and had you consolidated the votes to trump vs other, trump would have won. its also very unlikely that 'other' would all vote for 'other' if they weren't specifically allowed to vote for someone like Cruz.
That is because the other candidates all took their own piece of the pie. The republican and democratic primaries were very similar. You had someone framed as a populist outsider who was selling themselves on their ability to fix the system. On the democratic side you had one other establishment candidate who more or less campaigned on the status quo. On the republican side you had numerous establishment candidates that basically campaigned on the status quo who split the vote and several outsider candidates that never had much support at all. The democratic side was consolidated much earlier around their candidate. The republican side never consolidated around an establishment candidate because it was never clear which establishment candidate was the favorite. This allowed Trump to succeed with his consistent 20-30% of republicans in early primaries.
Really agree with this post
https://medium.com/@russroberts/the-world-turned-upside-down...
That being said, the point of campaigning for office is to demonstrate why you deserve the votes. Nothing wrong with a young successful guy giving it a try. Who knows - maybe the qualities that made him successful would translate well to governing. If anything, I think we should encourage more non-lawyers to run!
California ranks #8 in GDP per capita in the US among states. It's around $59,000 for 2017, which is high globally but not particularly high vs the overall US figure of ~$57,000.
California ranks near the bottom in education and is 35th in poverty rate.
The title of most developed US state goes to Massachusetts most likely. It has a super high GDP per capita and median income, and is generally highly developed in most regards including education, poverty, and median standard of living. The problem is, it's the size of a Scandinavian nation. New Hampshire is even worse: they have one of the world's highest median incomes and GDP per capita figures, but only 1.3 million people.
The bar is not terribly high and I think successful tech leaders are probably more qualified than anyone else that shows up.
I think the idea of having representatives and leaders is a bit old fashioned to begin with. But if we are going to have them, they should be the most competent intelligent people we can find from outside of politics.