Startup founder behind San Francisco pro-billionaire rally | Hacker News Reader

Startup founder behind San Francisco pro-billionaire rally

sfgate.com

I was one of the dozen or so who photographed this event. The breakdown was about a third there for the march, a third there for counterprotesting, and a third there documenting the event.

The Mission Local report is a little more colorful: https://missionlocal.org/2026/02/sf-march-for-billionaires-b...

> Kauffman, who recently left his tech job, has since been completely occupied with organizing Saturday’s march. He said he expected dozens to join him.

Getting a little to Arrested Development for me.

Wow these people have serious mental issues and are detached from reality:

> Annie is a software engineer, she told this reporter. She draws a six-figure salary but lives frugally in an “attic cordoned off with curtains” so that she can retire early. She said there was “no way in hell” she’d share her last name, because A) she could lose her job, and B) she did not trust reporters.

> “It is the intention of journalists to lie, which is why we need to not do anything to the journalists themselves, but we need to simply remove them as a class,” Annie said. “Just like Germany does to the extremist organizations.”

This looks a lot like someone eating up the rhetoric of Trump and Musk, who attack “legacy media” daily. It’s especially weird given that the person being discussed is trans and would encounter the vile hatred the far right has towards them. But I think many wealthier people like those in tech keep thinking they won’t be victims of this machine.

As an outsider, how did silicon valley turn so fast? Or was it always ~50/50 with the dominant image reflected by what the powerful thought should be the dominant narrative?

I am an outsider too but I think there’s a mix of things like:

1. People being richer already due to Silicon Valley pay, think they’re immune to harm. It’s easy to be in a bubble in SF, where life is good, without truly knowing what it’s like to see ICE kidnapping children in black SUVs on the streets of Minneapolis.

2. If someone is fitting to the dominant demographic group (white, male, straight, born in America to citizens, etc.) then there is little empathy or understanding of what others are going through and what risks they face from the current administration and the far right shift in general.

3. Many people genuinely think they will belong to an ultra rich class in the future. They want to get into that same group through startups or whatever. And they don’t want that opportunity to go away.

4. People in tech skew younger. And the young often lack the maturity to understand how the world truly works. Sure the top 1% pays most of the income taxes. But they are also hoarding most of the capital and profits to begin with, so of course they would be paying most of the taxes. Those in this article view the rich as generous for paying the taxes they do, instead of realizing that everyone else is not competing with the super rich in a fair way, because they have to live paycheck to paycheck and any risk is existential.

> how did silicon valley turn so fast?

When the script says 'turn', they turn, they're actors with no agency of their own, they work for money alone.

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