Hacker News Reader

Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

I’m curious if someone can truthfully explain this. What’s the main motivation for all the money being thrown at R’s from these and other high up tech people?

What I want is specific reasons not the usual Reddit “they’re rich therefore evil blah blah” zero-insight answers. Okay, but why? Almost nobody wakes up and says “I’m going to be evil today!” People have motives and objectives and belief systems.

View on HN

Wooing the Republicans (despite them being scoundrels openly) is the wealthy and powerful tacitly saying they believe that the Democrats are toothless. The Democratic Party has shown no real leadership, has no real popularity (again, despite an open scoundrel being the President opposing them giving them a perfect target for energizing undecided voters!) and has no interest in changing their tactics or platform to increase their popularity. While the Democrats are likely to make gains and have a better shot than they deserve at winning the presidency in 2028, they are very much unloved and will be at risk of being deadlocked in Congress and then kicked right back out in later election cycles.

An example, "... A record-high 45% of U.S. adults identified as political independents in 2025 ... Importantly, these party shifts do not indicate that Americans are warming to the Democratic Party. In fact, favorable ratings of the Democratic Party are no better than those of the Republican Party, and are among the worst Gallup has recorded for the Democratic Party historically." from https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...

(These aren't my personal opinions. I'll also note that the YC super PAC seems to donate to Dems and Republicans seemingly equally.)

There's a list of things. I can't find much about this specific Super PAC, but things in the past I've heard concerns about:

Prevent limitations to QSBS

Protect H1B / access to global talent

Banning non-competes

Expensing software development

Removing antitrust / regulatory barriers

Light regulation on AI / pro data centers

Because that's how corruption and graft works in the US. Donating to political campaigns doesn't count as bribery. The donation is what gets them access to the candidate, so instead of writing a letter or calling their office you can have 30 seconds to a few minutes of their time at an election campaign fundraising dinner or over a phone call where they want to thank their donors during which you can press them to support whatever you personally want.

They're giving them money in exchange for the opportunity to try to convince the candidate to support what they want.

Republican policies probably benefit them, and the donation also curries favor with the politician.

Isn't it endless loop of US politics that especially clear during current presidency?

Make money to control policies. Control policies to make more money.

I posted a longer comment above which kinda answers this but without repeating myself too much, Republicans mainly serve to keep Democrats from being able to consolidate power, and Democrats have now shown us what 15 years of a (D) trifecta gets you.

Taxes are higher than ever, cost of living has spiked even more here than other places, tens of billions wasted on CAHSR with nothing to show for it, and no good news on homelessness, poverty, or housing costs either.

Crime has been gradually going down per capita (at least what people have bothered to report), but that's a nationwide trend. If Dems are as good at governing as they claim to be, they ought to have more to show for their efforts than "we had the same results as Texas did."

And the latest Democratic superstars like Mamdani enter the picture, with "government run grocery stores" as his big innovation?

So, my question is why wouldn't one want to deprive these people of more power?

Edit: I'd like to add a reasonable example of what a successful (D) trifecta should have got us, lest you think I'm just some conservative who doesn't want them to accomplish any progressive goals:

As the largest state in the union, California has tremendous power. It could have come up with a 'MediCare for all'-like plan, which would cover all Californians who don't have MediCare. Basically a single public agency that insures all of us, and is run efficiently and transparently and which returns all premiums paid that aren't spent on care as a dividend check back to the taxpayers proportionally to what you paid in. If they accomplished nothing but that in 15 years I'd consider them worth supporting for that alone.

If they couldn't pull that off, successfully building HSR from SF to LA in a decade, by whatever means were necessary, would have been a pretty good accomplishment!

Or finally, if they could have caused enough housing to be built to just keep home prices stable, not even decreasing just stable.

Nothing about this is based in truth.

I won't bother with the rest, but in the past 15 years Dems have only had 2 years of a "trifecta" while republicans have had 4.

Dems have had more presidential terms, the senate has been split, and Republicans have held the House for 11 of the past 15 years. The Supreme Court has been a Republican majority the whole 15 years (with an exception of a tie after Scalia died).

Republicans have the incredible ability to have overwhelming control and agency yet still act like the victims.

EDIT: In response to your edit... you claim Republicans exist solely to keep Democrats in check, and then you list a bunch of things Democrats weren't able to accomplish because they were blocked by Republicans. Your logic is that Dems are bad because they couldn't make certain things happen, but those things were all blocked by Republicans.

He’s literally doing the meme of republicans stopping democrats from legislating and then pointing to the lack of legislation as why they should be blocked.

Also lol at the trifecta for 15 years comment from him.

Was talking about California. Where most of these VC types live and experience unmitigated Democratic Party rule.

I’m talking about in California! If you want to know what Democrats are capable of accomplishing, look to the state where they have had carte blanche to do whatever they want. California is their testing platform.

Everything I discussed was in the context of California. Show me where the Republicans blocked all of your great policy goals in California. Please.

Garry Tan is an anti-liberal who doesn't believe that democratic input in the functioning of the state is a good thing and that we should instead be ruled by a class of technocrats making the "right" decisions for us via a system of enforced hierarchies. This sort of belief system didn't fit into previous era republican politics, but it absolutely fits into the modern republican party.

Tan obviously does not just see this as evil. He thinks that it will genuinely produce a better society. I think that he is egregiously wrong.

I don’t know tons about him but those assertions would need at least a link to a not out of context quote to take seriously.

BTW I apply the same standard to right wing slams. Stuff like “??? wants to let eight year olds get sex change operations!” Citation needed. Etc.

Most of online discourse is a slug fest between straw men.

> leaders at the San Francisco-based tech incubator are trying to build a tech-forward future

They're donating money to anyone who isn't anti-tech / anti-business / anti-datacenter / anti-AI

That ~50% of those folks are R being the newsworthy part is the real question. Why should Silicon Valley support people who clearly loath the technology industry just because they're blue? The simplest explanation is the most obvious one, and the one this article explains: Tech leaders are donating money to tech-friendly politicians.

Tech tended to be blue and seen as an ally of at least liberal/center-left politicians until the mid-20-teens, and my memory is that it was tech that shifted way to the right and it was after that occurred that the left started its tech-hate. There was some anti-tech on the left before that but it wasn't the mainstream.

I loathe even bringing this "G-word" up, but my memory from the time is that Gamergate and all the stuff adjacent to it was a huge part of that. It wasn't rational and it wasn't motivated by concerns rooted in the real world. It was vibes and culture war crap.

I didn't get any of it at the time and was wondering why everyone was losing their minds over such stupid nonsense.

Of course I'm sure there's people around here who would argue that "woke" came first, then a huge counter-reaction in the tech world, and then what I said above. My memory, again, is that "woke" and the "alt-right" rose concurrently at the same time. I'd have to write a book to get into why I think that might have been.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com