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Comment by cbb330 | Hacker News Reader

The soapbox-vs-megaphone analogy falls apart fast.

Name me one serious, intellectually honest critic of Thiel—say, Malcolm Harris, Evgeny Morozov, Shoshana Zuboff, Mariana Mazzucato, or even random Substackers with 100k+ followers who’s struggling to be heard because Thiel bought all the megaphones.

They all have huge platforms, book deals, TED-level reach, or blue-check amplification. The “undue amplification” crowd never points to a single silenced dissident; they just dislike that Thiel’s ideas are winning in the marketplace anyway.

If every prominent counter-voice already has a bigger megaphone than 99.9 % of humanity ever will, the complaint isn’t about access it’s that voters and readers keep choosing the “wrong” rich guy.

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Thiel owns Vance. That's the undue level of influenece that should be illegal via anti-corruption laws.

"Thiel owns Vance" is obviously shorthand, but is there evidence that Vance is actually under Thiel's control or do they just agree on stuff? I think proving corruption would probably require that Thiel personally/materially benefit from actions that Vance takes in office, not just that he funded Vance's campaign because he agrees with Vance's politics.

Edit: I think there's a much stronger case for some kind of corruption charge against Trump, since he's been using the office to enrich himself.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/$Trump

If anything they seem to be friends, with Curtis Yarvin as well, and believes that democracy has run its course. It doesn't really matter if he's just bought by money or if he has bought into the same ideas. Thiel maneuvered Vance into this position using his money and power, and their plans extend far beyond Trump's lifetime.

> not just that he funded Vance's campaign because he agrees with Vance's politics.

That should be sufficient. We need to start the process of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and we need to do as much as we can to enforce existing laws against dark money and enact as much as we can while Citizens United is in effect.

Does it matter then he can just buy direct political influence and power? He's not winning on the merits of ideas on a marketplace other than getting other billionaires and SV tech people on board as they would be on top of his new hierarchy, much more so than they are today.

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