Mark Zuckerberg explores purchase of Washington DC property | Hacker News Reader

Mark Zuckerberg explores purchase of Washington DC property

ft.com

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https://archive.ph/udq8m

I saw this comment this morning and it feels pretty accurate:

"It’s never a good sign when CEOs think they must literally live in DC to successfully run their businesses."

https://bsky.app/profile/prchovanec.bsky.social/post/3lgv2lj...

To be fair Meta is not an ordinary business and Zuck is not an ordinary CEO.

True, we should expect special demands in the maintenance of a monopoly.

I don’t think Meta is a monopoly as they aren’t charging for anything and there are plenty of alternatives.

Aren't they primarily an advertising company? They definitely charge for ads. Probably more of a duopoly with alphabet though.

I would say any large corporation should meet higher standards of public benefit.

It's a business that controls how millions of people get their information.

Other than basically being THE owner of Meta, how is he different exactly?

Power

Echoes of Boeing moving its HQ from Seattle to Chicago to DC area.

It makes more sense for a defense contractor like Boeing to have a substantial office (if not their HQ) in DC given the Pentagon and all the program offices in the area. Especially since lobbying is the only way they can get business, not by the quality of their work. For non defense/intelligence contractors it makes much less sense to be in that area other than a small office at most.

Boeing is primarily a defense company - DC makes sense.

Moving to DC is to have meetings all day long with political party members, wine and dine with government lobbyists off the record, back scratching, back room deals off the record likely the most important aspect, etc...

When you're a member of the Inner Party the bellyfeel is doubleplusgood.

It mirrors the absolutist monarchy of Louis 14, where courtiers needed to be available for his lavish feasts (and couldn't be elsewhere to plot on their own)

All these CEOs spending so much time in DC. I really feel AI would be better at running most of these companies.

Right, I thought we couldn't get any work done unless we are in the office? How is Elon Musk able to run 4 companies and the Department of Government Efficiency?

I was told that being a CEO was much harder and longer hours than a normal employee and that justifies their salary. But if CEOs work 80 hours a week at their company like I was told it would be physically impossible for a CEO to run multiple companies and a government office at the same time?

Don’t forget he’s also a top player in Path of Exile 2 hardcore league - a feat that requires playing around the clock. He’s so good at gaming that he was playing it while at the inauguration without needing a computer.

There are indeed a lot of spots for ads on the whitehouse

sounds like an SNL skit, Zuckerberg is setting up extremely targeted advertising for Trump.

Slow news day?

Seemingly tiny, inconsequential stories like this can add up.

This sends a signal, and could hint at things to come.

This. If the timing were different, I'd agree with the "slow day" sentiment.

But, given we're not two weeks out of inauguration, it's a signal that at least some oligarchs are convinced that physical proximity to Trump will help them achieve their Machiavellian ends. It will be interesting to see who else follows along. Bezos has had a place here for a while.

It's a good time to be a realtor who specializes in Kalorama, that's for sure.

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/trump-sends-d-c-s-luxury...

I haven't followed this closely throughout history but I bet we're going to see cycles of people with power cycling in and out of the area based on who is in office and what they need to influence the government on.

Right? I am more surprised he doesn't already have an apartment in DC for when he needs to be there.

He probably does. Or at least I assume a furnished apartment is always available. Buying "property" (and I assume in Zuckerberg terms, that means a large home or a piece of land) implies a more substantial investment and possibly a commitment to spend a much larger percentage of his time in DC.

In DC you rent an apartment to spend time at the halls of power. You need someplace to sleep and keep your stuff. Not just lobbyists, but also senators and representatives do this.

You buy a home to entertain powerful guests.

The Conways famously purchased an 8 million dollar mansion during the Trump administration, IIRC. This stuff goes on all the time. If you pay attention to these stories, you can start to understand how power really works in the US.

Bill gates in his recent interview with WSJ said one of his past mistakes he regrets is not having a Microsoft office in DC sooner.

Jeff Bezos has owned an opulent mansion on a huge piece of land at the top of the hill in Georgetown for over a decade

He likely stays in a lot of hotels/airbnbs.

The risk of a hidden camera or microphone in an Airbnb/hotel would be reason enough to buy your own place, if you were a public company CEO with this much power.

Slow news hour.

I remember my father saying something like “if this is all they got for news, it means pretty much everything is okay in the world”.

I feel like this is a damning statement this about the current political environment. Someone like Zuck thinks it is a useful to his company if he spends a significant amount of time away from it in DC dealing with political things. I'd imagine most people would agree that CEOs should be focused on the act of running their businesses rather than managing political situations.

This just proves to me Meta can't build a product users actually want to use, they can only acquire other products, or lobby.

All of it?

I know a corrupt real estate developer who would probably love to sell him a property at 500% of the market rate.

The oligarchs will continue to oligarch as long as the exchange rate between money and power and power and money remains low.

if exchange rate in one direction is low, I think that means the rate in the other direction is high. They can't both be low at the same time.

I think they mean the fees / commission

Thanks for taking the time to point that out. Maybe high exchange rate or highly convertible is more correct to say.

It's quite a bad omen that the last sentence even needs to be said: "... Trump last week denied that Musk would be getting an office in the White House itself."

They do that hoping you click on other articles, "Trump denied" to me implies someone asked the question from the press.

Which neighborhood do you think he will buy in? Georgetown is the obvious choice, or maybe something closer near the Facebook office in Chinatown?

West wing would be preferable

I hear the White House is for sale at the right price.

A lot of affluent people buy houses in Bethesda then commute via the Red Line.

I don’t think a lot of billionaires ride the metro.

You'd be surprised who you see.

It's unlikely he'd buy a property here for normal "running the corporate empire" stuff - hotels or short-term leases (not Airbnb, but month long lease of luxury properties) are adequate for short trips like that.

More likely, he's looking for a place where he serve as power broker, king maker, and socialize with other oligarchs, heads of state, etc.

Kalorama puts him on equal footing with Bezos. Half the Trump clan already has homes there. Obama is there. And a bunch of other millionaires and billionaires most of us have never heard of.

We're just going full oligarchy, huh.

Neat.

It seems unclear if he's looking at build a home, or if he is looking to buy up some of the government office building the Trump administration wants to put up for sale.

Don't worry, he just wants to lower the price of eggs and combat unemployment!

Perhaps the Jan 6th people should consider moving to Washington and hold Trump accountable. Whereupon he'd have them arrested.

"Elon Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency and has been working out of SpaceX’s Washington office, has reportedly also been seeking to invest in a DC property, prompting a backlash from locals in the city’s Adams Morgan neighbourhood."

Adams-Morgan isn't really a Musk-style neighborhood. Kalorama, on the other side of Connecticut Ave. NW might be.

There is a hotel in Adams Morgan called the LINE that was up for auction and he allegedly wanted it, but did not win the auction. He could still buy it from the auction winner though. The story is that he wants to turn it into some kind of social club.

How many SpaceX employees in D.C. shit their pants when Musk showed up?

So did he change his mind about the whole "I am selling almost all physical possessions. Will own no house" thing?

New Broligarchy req?

For anyone who was confused, this is about the Mark Zuckerberg from Meta, not the other Mark Zuckerberg.

Are you joking or is there another Mark Zuckerberg we need to keep a tab on?

There's also Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook.

Reminds me of that quote from Paul McCartney and John Lennon (from The Beatles) about Jesus (from the Bible)...

To be clear, I was referring to the 1960's band The Beatles, and the religious text called The Bible.

That doesn't narrow it down. Who isn't on Facebook these days?

One is pale and wears a hoodie and loves DEI. The one described here is tan and wears a gold chain and is really mad that some lady executive forced him to do DEI in the past.

I assume this is again some kind of joke. I'd appreciate if someone explained it without making another hard to decipher joke.

Yes, this is a joke - implying that his stance on DEI is self-serving and simply changes with the political climate. The physical appearance change is more superficial, but could also be seen as a change in PR strategy.

The joke above was that in a phrase like "Meta's Mark Zuckerberg ...", the first word is unnecessary because he's one of the most famous people in Tech, if not the country in general.

I guess my problem is that I had no idea that he changed his visual appearance so these references just confused me. I'm not really following his personal life.

Does not help much, 'meta' is pretty generic word.

Thank you for clarifying!

we're waiting for you Mark!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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