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Comment by bigyabai | Hacker News Reader

If you think that it's Silicon Valley capturing the government and not the other way around, you must have missed your Political Science 101 course. They both sing the same tune because it's the feds writing the script, not Sam Altman and Tim Cook conspiring with Thiel.

All the seed funding in the world won't disrupt the monopoly on violence. We're here because some dolts actually believed the lie that Silicon Valley was on "our side" of the fight.

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Why does it have to be either-or? It's more of a revolving door.

One of the clearer modes of how this all looks can be seen when using public records laws to request information that was created through a government contract. On one side, trade secrecy is a legit thing. On the other hand, it's abused to the Nth degree such that just about anything is "trade secret". Government agencies will literally just ask the company's counsel if records in a records request can be released and they'll copy/paste the answer.

For example: I took an uber from an East Chicago, IN restaurant to a Chicago, IL planned parenthood and then FOIA'd for the GPS records that the city legally requires Uber to provide for every trip [1]. In the request I included the trip identifier that I found on the city's open data portal [2]. For months and months they denied, denied, denied, even after a request for emails gave me the exact SQL query they wrote to identify my trip.

Eventually when I narrowed the request down to the exact fields, they finally agreed that they have the records, but argued that the data (edit: just lat/lng of the start/end locations) showing me going to a planned parenthood was a trade secret. It would be trivial for Chicago's counsel to push back on that, but they seemed to have zero interest in reflecting on the risks of holding this category of data.

[1] https://chicago.github.io/tnp-reporting-manual/trip/ [2] https://data.cityofchicago.org/Transportation/Transportation...

I wish all the Political Science 101, Civics 101, and Economics 101 people would take another class. First of all, the government doesn't have a monopoly on violence, that's silly; the government has a monopoly on legitimate violence. Second of all, the wrestling valet and game show host and his array of dimwits aren't in control of anything, the people who pay them are. The people who pay them are also the people who run silicon valley.

If you hear that the government is coming down on somebody in silicon valley, it's because everybody else in silicon valley wanted him gone.

"The Feds" are people with no interests, no money and no power. They are where they are to execute for American business (and as we've sold off America, that just means any rich guy), and it's literally all they've been doing since WWII.

Exactly. Silicon valley is bending the knee to political institutions, not taking them over.

More like, several wealthy people from Silicon Valley funded campaigns to put a government in place which is now encouraging Silicon Valley and other business to bend the knee to the political institutions.

It's not always simple to be precise..

Silicon valley is not bending the knee. For quite a few of these people, this is the government they wanted and worked hard to get.

I just don't think that's true. Silicon Valley moguls vary in just how vehemently they endorse skilled immigration, but none of them wanted or suggested an illegal $100,000 H1B application fee. A couple did get tricked by promises that the Trump regime would be more favorable to tech than it's turned out to be.

as has been pointed out here, there is some subtlety. surely the cost of $100,000 a head is more significant to some businesses than others. and don't forget that the administration made it clear that they can make an exception to certain employers or sectors for whatever reason

I don't think that the government doing a handful of things that Silicon Valley dislikes necessarily means that overall the corpos don't support MAGA. That could just be the cost of doing business.

Really? I think Silicon Valley _loves_ the H1B fee. Prior to the fee, everything was purely a lottery. There was no pay-to-win. Now there is. Silicon Valley has the most money to spend here, so they get the most talent.

eh, weird way to describe fascism.

Hey now, you can't just call it "fascism" like that. It doesn't come from the Fascia region of Italy, and plus that word hurts people's feelings. Maybe try "sparkling autocratic authoritarianism" instead.

Fascism comes from “fascio” (not from the small town of Fascia) that means “bundle”.

The idea is that, like rods are fragile by themselves but strong as a bundle, an individual is either with the group (making it stronger) or an enemy of it. No room for discussion or disagreement

The idea is the fascists dont want to be called fascist because fascists are losers and _this_ time surely they will win.

it's corporatism, ref Mussolini

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