Silicon Valley Is Panicking About Zohran Mamdani. NYC's Tech Scene Is Not
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Even if the podcast makes it obvious that these men are clueless dilettantes, they were still lucky enough to have invested money into the right companies at the right time. They are well connected and rich. They're part of the private group chats that people like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreesen are using to shape the vibe, and like it or not, people like this have a lot of influence over the business culture in the valley.
> A handful of questions focused on how a Mamdani mayoralty would affect the tech industry. Borthwick says he asked Mamdani how he would respond to the risk that artificial intelligence poses to jobs—in particular, entry-level white-collar jobs—over the next several years. “I'm kind of amazed that this has not become already a campaign issue,” Borthwick says. He says that Mamdani “admitted that this hasn't been a focus of the campaign, but would need to be a focus if he was elected.” But overall, Borthwick didn’t feel Mamdani’s answer was specific enough.
I continue to be amazed by how many tech-oriented people assume this possibility is a matter of when, not if. What evidence is there that it has displaced workers? Competence on benchmark tests does not imply competence at creating complete solutions for complex, bespoke systems. These sci-fi speculations increasingly feel like self-absorbed delusions of grandeur.
Yes, Garry Tan's message is disappointing: https://archive.ph/o/mTmBP/https://x.com/garrytan/status/193...
In this case, does that mean something more like "an exclusive clique of lucky tech-bros that converge on political views in their private channels"?
As a larger region/industry, I can't see why SV would "panic" about a city mayor of a different city in another state thousands of miles away, no matter how populous the city is.
Fortunately, they failed. They tried to recruit a populist veteran into their ranks who had no particular love for a government that had abused its World War I veterans... But had less love for a bunch of (essentially) early-twentieth-century technocrats that had profited off the sacrifices of the veterans. He refused to keep the conspiracy and blew the lid off it, and his reputation was both public enough and spotless enough that the conspirators couldn't either silence him or tarnish him.
Wikipedia overview is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
There are better scholarly sources for the details, but an entertaining source for a summary is here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/behind-the-insurrectio...
(The conspirators were never prosecuted. One hypothesis as to why is that Roosevelt saw an opportunity and co-opted the plot: some of his New Deal policies were facing pushback and he might have put on the table for the conspirators "You can dodge a treason trial if you just back the new policy with your capital and your political will").
(p.s: I probably shouldn't extrapolate this historical anecdote to the modern era, but this story does give me reason to wonder if a rule like "In the industrial era, massive inequality due to under-regulated capitalism leads to attempts at reform, and those attempts breed counter-reform in the form of fascists and their sycophants formed by those who perceive they have the most to lose in reform..." might hold water).
Just for balance here's some cherries I've picked on the left side of the political spectrum:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot
Mamandi, for his part, is not a malignant narcissist, so New York should probably not turn out like Soviet Russia. The US as a whole on the other hand may not be so lucky.
You argument is that this is "just generally bad"? Or somehow a socialist mayor will be the downfall of western civilization or something? It seems like if his policies are bad, he won't be reelected and you'll have a more succinct example to point to than "all of human history". The great thing about a mayor is that they have very limited ability to impact civil rights, Giuliani notwithstanding.
What you are saying is effectively dog-whistling in support of Stalinism. And that means you support the killing millions of people.
Clearly you are evil and your career should be destroyed.
Look how smart and virtuous I am everybody!
The hard truth is that New York isn't even remotely dense enough for the demand. The entirety of lower Manhattan from Canal St. to midtown is "low" density. As is everything above 59th. And this is codified. So no wonder NYC housing prices are out of control. NYC should look like Sao Paulo based on demand.
For a long time, neoliberals like Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have run the Democratic party. They have enjoyed soaking up the progressive votes from the more left parts of the party, but they have done everything possible to prevent those elements from rising too high in the power structure. You saw it in 2016 when the party leadership coalesced around Hillary to nudge out Bernie, and again in 2020 when they did the same with Biden after Bernie won Nevada.
Neoliberals and the left have a lot of tension. The left believes that liberals, due to their affinity for corporations, will side with fascists over socialists when it comes time to choose sides.
To date, liberals have proven that correct. The result has been for my lifetime that no matter which party is in power, corporations are treated favorably.
But times are changing. The neoliberals are getting old, and it's time for them to retire and pass the torch. My whole life, I'm 40, Democratic leadership have been pro corporation liberal boomers: Clinton, Gore, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer... they held onto power as long as they could, but time is ticking and it's time for millennials to takeover.
And millennials are decidedly less pro corporation. We are not like our parents, we are not going to treat corporations like our parents did. For my whole adulthood, we've been told by the boomer generation that our ideas about society and governance are not good, and progressive ideals are unelectable. AOC began a wave of congressional elections that proved them wrong, at least for local congressional elections. Then we started to see rising stars like Buttigieg get top leadership positions in government. Now, Mamdani represents the next milestone -- a progressive millennial at a high executive position for a huge city like NYC.
So that's what this race is about and why it has national implications. It's progressive versus neoliberal, and if the progressive wins, it's going to be harder in the future to claim that progressives are unelectable. If he (god forbid) ends up doing a good job, then it's going to be harder to claim progressive policies are wrongheaded.
It's also millennial versus boomer. Cuomo and Adams are both boomers. It's probably not lost on a lot of people that if they lose, it might be the last time a boomer will ever be elected as Mayor in NYC. Mamdani's election would really be the end of the post 9/11 era for New York and the start of something new for the city.
So why is SV anxious? Mamdani is a harbinger for a new age. It means the neoliberal boomers are going to the wayside, and the progressive millennials are coming to power. Which, if you listen to what they have to say about billionaires, might make you nervous if you're a billionaire.
Social policy is popular among millennials, that doesn't make it good. Mamdani and his followers are wilfully ignorant to the root causes of the issues NYC is facing.
Billionaires don't like it when politicians put a target on them.
Billionaires (or Landlords) have been hiding behind class war for thousand years. They continue to find ways to divide and conquer.
The moment a popular politicians start to poke em a little bit is the moment where they will react swiftly
I’m surprised you chose Vancouver for your argument. Are you aware this is one of the worst housing markets in North America for exactly the same reason as NYC?
The one thing BC is doing correctly right now is getting rid of a lot of the market controls and introducing a lot more ways to build new housing, without any explicit focus on “affordable housing” (because that’s a tar pit.) These changes (by a social-forward party like the NDP no less) are what are easing pressure on the market, though it is still deeply unaffordable.
That's because you pointed out rent control in your earlier argument. It's not the end-all-be-all. I don't know why you picked that specifically knowing that Vancouver has rent control and to some degree it's fine.
His platform is more than rent control no?
> The one thing BC is doing correctly right now is getting rid of a lot of the market controls
BC got rid of Airbnb and that's one factor among many others that influence the pricing today: high interest rate, Trump tariff, China econ not doing well hence not a lot of Mainland China money flowing to Vancouver like it used to be. All these contribute to weaker demand.
The getting rid of zoning, while I fully support it for my own benefit, is yet to be seen IMO.
Young progressives can iterate. Old people cannot, conservatives cannot.
I agree with you about the 50 years: it started in 1980, if I had to pick a specific year, so, good news!
I'm a silicon valley founder but definitely not investor and I'm quite optimistic about Mamdani's approach to measuring where problems are and then pitch complicated fixes in a way that can be understood by average voters. The "socialism" label doesn't bother me. I know a lot of people in silicon valley rank and file engineers and technical founders who think similarly privately.
Their assets continue to generate generational wealth and once that concept is taken away, they lost the only leverage for power: wealth.
The closest position he's advocating for is to freeze the rent stabilization rate for 5 years while massively ramping up the construction of new apartments to bring rental costs down.
Much of the pushback about Mamdani seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference betwene "rent control" and "rent stabilization". I think it's extremely rare to see a politician understand the supply/demand aspect of housing costs so well. He really seems to understand these dynamics, certainly better than anyone he's running against.
This is especially relevant in this election, as Cuomo is attacking Mamdani for living in a rent stabilized apartment, suggesting it's hypocritical because he can afford a more expensive apartment. This is deliberately trying to muddy the distinction between "rent stabilized" and "rent controlled" (about half of NY apartments are rent stabilized, and there is absolutely no cultural expectation that people move out when they get a raise, or whatever nonsense Cuomo's suggesting).
Rent stabilization is roughly based on the inflation rate, so, while tenants who've lived in one place for a while might be getting something approximately considered a "sweet deal", it's not the ridiculous scenario rent control can produce. One other relevant distinction, rent controlled units can be passed down to family, keeping the same rent rate. Rent stabilized apartments can also be passed down, but it's the same as if a new tenant was taking over—the price can be reset back to market rate.
But don't mistake socialised service provision for socialism
Socialism implies state control of the means of production.
The results of socialism, we witnessed in Eastern Europe and elsewhere during the 20th century: scarcity of goods and services
Eventually a socialist state runs out of private wealth to seize, and it becomes completely corrupt and totalitarian due to its monopoly over the means of production. And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
Socialism literally implies the opposite. That's why it's called socialism. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production. Under fascism, the government and the state collaborate to own the means of production. Under socialism, the means of production are socially (collectively) owned. In the most extreme interpretation of socialism, communism, the goal is the elimination of the state entirely.
Granted, historically, communist states tended to centralize power rather than work towards their own elimination because that's the inherent evil of governments, particularly revolutionary governments. But to claim that socialism presupposes authoritarianism is to expose the fact that everything you know about socialism comes from capitalist propaganda.
>And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
(╯°□°)╯ ┻━┻ That's socialism!
There’s no getting around this.
If everyone owns something, no one owns it.
But when the monopoly on violence gets involved, socialism often gets co-opted to serve the interests of the state rather than the people. I would argue that authoritarianism and and the creation of an elite centralizing and controlling wealth and resources for itself is as much a fail state for capitalism as it is for socialism, that it's just a different bunch of pigs feeding at the trough.
And to refer to your earlier comment, socialized provision of services is absolutely a form of socialism. If those services aren't being run for a profit under market principles, made available only to consumers who can afford it, and that profit isn't being captured to increase the wealth of private ownership, then it's a form of socialism.
In the US we have Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are ostensibly socialist programs (certainly they were denounced as such when created.) One might argue that they aren't truly socialist since they don't collectivize the means of production but they certainly aren't capitalist in principle.
Of course it also helps to remember that "socialism" encompasses a wide spectrum of ideology and theory, and that if you get five socialists in a room and ask for a definition of socialism you'll wind up with seven manifestos and a fistfight. There are socialists who will argue for Soviet and Chinese style central control, and will point out (as capitalists will about capitalism) that socialism brought those states out of grinding poverty and vastly improved their peoples' quality of life, and others who abhor the violence and oppression of authoritarian socialism, believing it can only be achieved through nonviolence and voluntarism.
Point being that absolutist phrases like "socialism inevitably means state ownership" don't work as a useful critique because they don't consider the flexibility and adaptability of socialism as a concept. They tend to be thought-terminating cliches, like "capitalism is the worst system, except for all others," which serve to to normalize the premise that criticism of capitalism is futile because no useful alternatives to capitalism can possibly exist.
What are "capitalists" and by which rules of capitalism do they hold a monopoly on the means of production?
I live in a capitalist country (the UK), I'm an ordinary member of the public, and I'm free to start a business, own it, and therefore own a means of production.
Which UK citizens are unable to own the means of production?
I don't think that I've ever heard anyone in SV, at least not anyone with any real power, honestly suggest that. They don't want to pay people more than they absolutely have to now, and that's with most labor being done by humans. When humans stop being the engine of economic growth, why would those people suddenly want to implement UBI and end scarcity?
It's a fugazi meant to make you think that the people doing things have considered all of the angles, but they haven't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect
I was aware of that one, but this one, while being entirely obvious, is quite thought-provoking:
He's terrible though. Is that "panic".
Is any negative assessment of the candidate "panic"?
Should they go into the voting booth without looking and randomly pull levers?