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Comment by quantified | Hacker News Reader

People I trust who caucus with Musk fans tell me they really like him because he thinks like they do and acts like they do or would. Isn't acting smarter or more goody than them.

Under that theory, being a normal guy would be bad for business in some places (and probably excellent for business in other places). Guess what? This is normal for business, not just tech. For some reason we're past "big business", "conglomerates", "industrialists", etc as the boogeyman archetype and now it's "tech".

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An interesting take. Politics has become who we like, instead of who will do a good job. I suppose business will follow that. Not sure where it leads.

Hopefully it leads to a lot of businesses who are overburdened with nonessential trappings of public posturing. Makes it easier for the rest of us to compete by simply executing well.

Musk isn't running for office. Politics is always about who you like, even office politics, else brown-nosing and loyalty wouldn't be a thing.

Michael Jordan was careful and successful in not having social/political stuff affect his business. But he was in a more underdog class. Musk is already an overdog.

One can be more specific about likes and dislikes. I dislike racists. I dislike people who think trans and gay people should be invisible. I dislike religious bigots. I dislike fascists. I dislike White supremacists. I dislike members of brown shirt gangs. Those kinds of social pathologies are always a bundle deal. It's never just one of those things.

Dislikes can be pretty weak, but still should be observed by operators of commercial spaces. Monks in robes passing out flowers might be pretty innocuous, except for the whole religious cult thing, but if you're a store owner you don't want them in the mall. Brown shirts are a lot worse.

This is known as "identity politics". Another concept in politics are "single issue voters". There's a big push to transition single issue voters towards an identity based view.

That's because tech-opolists are the new robber barons.

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