Hacker News Reader

Comment by LogicFailsMe | Hacker News Reader

I don't have a lot of hope here. When most of the creme de la creme of the billionaire class capitulated to Trump at the beginning of his term, that set the tone for everything that followed IMO. It's astounding to me that so many are willing to see him trample on the Constitution and separation of powers when they'd scream like stuck pigs if any other party attempted it. And that's the way a lot of influential Americans like it I guess. Like I said, not a lot of hope. YMMV.

View on HN

So the cornerstone of one of the most common types of scam, affinity fraud, as well as a cornerstone of salesmanship, is convincing an audience that you're just like them. You have the same likes and dislikes, the same hobbies, the same cultural references, the same beliefs and values and hopes and dreams.

And then you use that affinity to manipulate them, to get them to do what you want, to get them to give you money.

I think the tech worker / engineering / online crowd has really let themselves get duped.

Sure, maybe some tech billionaires did start out in a similar place as many of us.

But a lot of what they tell us as part of selling us their brand is just affinity fraud, telling us they're just like us with the same values of privacy and open source and some hippie notion of peace, love and understanding.

But it's just a trick, and they just want money, power and fame.

It's not so much as the billionaires capitulating, it's that they never were the people they pretended to be, and keeping up the act is no longer how they get what they want.

I basically agree here, but I would add that the framing here can sometimes sometimes be better described as “extortion”. Politicians have tremendous power and influence over many industries, I’ve seen the inside of a few situations where the politicians framed themselves as “taking on big business” where behind closed doors they were 100% calling the shots and handing executives directives on what they could or could not say publicly. The companies had no choice but to play along. When I see a big company take exactly the same public position as the current regulatory regime or administration in power, I don’t assume that they necessarily have any choice in the matter.

Benito Mussolini: 'Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.'

That is the reason why they would cry if the other party broke the rules to this degree. The other party is more aligned with regulations; taking power from corporations instead of giving it to them.

> Benito Mussolini: 'Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.'

He literally named it [1]!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fascist_Party

Seems like it is probably a fake quote: https://politicalresearch.org/2005/01/12/mussolini-corporate...

> The other party is more aligned with regulations; taking power from corporations instead of giving it to them.

Enough regulation is good, not enough and too much are both bad. Neither party has the best plan when it comes to regulation, Republicans want too little (increasing corporate power), Democrats want too much (increasing government power).

More aligned? Sure. Pretty low bar though. There's a real opportunity in targeting abuses of technology like Flock cameras and surveillance capitalism but right now it's getting expressed as a luddite agenda against AI and datacenters and it won't go far because it throws the AI baby out with the datacenter bathwater IMO making them more into useful idiots than crusaders out to rein in corporate excess.

> many are willing to see him trample

there is little surprising about it

Trump is pushing in the direction of an Oligarchie, billionaires would be the future oligarchs.

So even iff a billionaire is no-okay with this development, if they stick out they

- will lose their status/money iff Trump wins long term

- will make enemies with many other billionaires, but a core trend of billionaires is taking advantage of connections to other powerful people

- will be the prime target to make and example of

So there is a high risk for sticking out. At the same time "mostly passively tagging along" will at worst make them oligarchs. At the same time they are used to crossing ethical boundaries to maximize profits. *This is just another form of that.*

In general its pretty much non-viable to go from sub/barely millionaire to billionaire by keeping to law, moral and ethics.

And it's not a secret either that any extreme concentrations of power or money are fundamental thread of _any_ democratic state of law, the US is no exception. The US has been warned that their system is very prone to populist take over and their checks and balances are quite brittle since _decades_. (At least since end of WW2 when people when people analyzed how Hitler took over post-WW1 Germany and wondered if the US could suffer a similar fate. And instead of improving the robustness, the general response was "nonsense, this is the US". Then after 9/11 thinks got worse, warnings that this can lead to a disaster where also many, but actions where none. And then in recent decades the US pushed in favor of monopolies instead of a (actual, practical) free market(1) to project more power internationally, and things got even worse.

(1): Monopolies and a (actual, practical) free Market are fundamentally incompatible. It also is kinda obvious why once you put away decades of deregulation propaganda.

Given there are only ~1135 billionaires in the USA right now, I'd say it's pretty much non-viable to go from sub/barely millionaire to billionaire period. But Taylor Swift doesn't seem to have murdered any kittens to get where she is nor did Rihanna so it can happen without totally selling out.

yesn't

my argument was more about becoming a billionaire by creating bringing a company to a level of success where they dominate their area of business.

I.e. not getting there by "fame" or "pure luck" (lets say you got 1/42th of early bitcoin from a "fun" project in the very early bitcoin days or similar).

Let's also for simplicity ignore that getting there by "fame" often involve tight cooperation with companies/people which don't care about ethics much. Through you might be able to separate yourself once you reach success, most times they try to make sure you can't.

And even iff you didn't compromise your ethics when becoming a billionaire this doesn't change the core argument.

That is if (as billionaire) you passively go with a push to Oligarchy you are unlikely to suffer from it. But if you don't and the Oligarchy wins, then you likely suffer a lot.

I.e. if you go with a non-emotional/non-ideology considering risk/benefit analysis passively yielding wins. Both for money and power.

In such a situation a lot of people will just go with it, no matter if billionaire or not.

In the short term I agree with you. But at some point, there's going to be a huge bar tab to clean up the mess. I'm a bit surprised none of them seem to be angling how to profit from that day when it comes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com