The broligarchs are trying to have their way
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I get you don't have a choice in the matter, because the rich are in power, but still kinda sucks.
"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
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.
Citation needed. Especially from outfits like the Atlantic, replete with invented pejoratives.
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?
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.
Of course when they talk about this in public fora, many people outside their cohort[0] will react negatively to them.
[0]: glibly, outside their bubble.
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.
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.
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.
Bro in this context refers to "tech bro' oligarchs" (https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/broligarchy dates the popularity starting last month).
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
Maybe AI caregivers will help at some point.
The more of the market the worse it would be.
But compared to regular car companies, are Tesla shareholders on the whole "regular" investors?
Or maybe more like regular speculators when they could have bought Ford or GM instead?
I suppose there would be a lot of effort put in to blur the distinction :\