Ask HN: What's your take on tech organisations getting involved with politics | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's your take on tech organisations getting involved with politics

3 pointsde6u99er11 comments

Musks compensation package from Tesla could easily be interpreted as a way to tunnel money into a political candidate, who in return could make the FSD lawsuits go away. I think politics should serve the people first, and not some billionaires personal interests.

View on HN

For US federal employees political endorsements are considered toxic career terminators as determined by The Hatch Act and DoD Directive 1344.10.

* https://osc.gov/Services/Pages/HatchAct-Federal.aspx

* https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/do...

I generally follow that same guidance even when not in federal employment just out of decorum, mutual respect, and professionalism. As such I would view my corporate business leaders becoming directly involved in elections and commingling that activity with their office leadership as completely and irreversibly toxic.

Remember "silence is violence" and "everybody has to stand with $CurrentThing" trends?

Perhaps making tribal affiliation a requirement was a bad idea after all.

All companies get involved with political stuff, Musk is just open and crass about it. If you think tech companies don’t lobby the government for things to be in their best interests then you’re fooling yourself.

Interesting point, I am very against voting for my wallet and vote for what is right.

Although it is interesting to see who all the rich and famous support.

Sadly though intellectual honesty is much more rare than you think.

See the movie "The Corporation", which compares corporations to psychopaths; they're very similar in that corporations don't have a conscience.

Corporations, IMO, should not be involved in politics at all - only real people. Rich people would still have more influence over political decisions, but not to the extent that rich corporations do now.

Should unions or associations?

It causes me some dismay when the IETF lurches into politics. It's with the best of intentions and I know and like most of the authors. I just think it's both naive and counter-productive.

From time to time I have thought ISOC was shilling for FAANG lobby ideas in discussions about European legislation.

So I guess my take is: inevitable, usually unfortunate.

The lack of a clearly left wing tech bro billionaire stance is obvious, but you could imagine one being more like Warren Buffet or MacKenzie-Gates, or even Bill Gates: more nuanced than Theil, Musk, Bezos. Not anti union, not oppositional to social agenda like women's reproductive rights, housing, regulation of their industry.

Here in Austria any new organization entering politics needs to collect support signatures first before it can register as a political party. Depending if it's a local or federal election they will get a certain amount of money by the government for campaigning. They are not allowed to be paid by companies for campaigning.

I think such a framework could work as a model to other democracies too.

Yes. I think this could work too. But at the pan-national level, multi-stakeholder-ism has carved out a distinct niche for tech bodies, groupings, alongside civil society and government.

This view that technocrats should decide governance matters alongside other groups sometimes concerns me. This dreadful naivete that "apply more technology" fixes social problems while we seem to ignore it causes as many as it fixes.

When it comes to regulation, tech sector voices universally decry it. Industry self-regulation is worrisome in every other sector, so why do we think not in ours?

Not that government regulation (cryptography, anonymity) is ideal either.

So far we have been able to defend cryptography on EU level because the argument is simple: > If the own government is capable to decrypt everything, it's only a matter of time that a bad adversary will be able to do the same.

I think capitalism is a wonderful thing, having been born and lived half my life in communist rule. But in my older age I’m jaded maybe. If you have the means to control media and outright buy out influence and outcomes, of course you don’t need to use brute force to suppress the population. I think that’s the natural evolution of capitalism. It enriches many along the way but ultimately power goes to a smaller and smaller minority.

It’s not exactly the question you’re asking, but what I’m trying to say is, this is the natural outcome of our economic system. Tech organizations involvement in politics is a side effect.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com