Hacker News Reader

The fundamental error of this piece is that it assumes that if you vote Democratic, you're by definition not a one-percenter.

What? Much of the article is devoted to making the opposite point: that the SV elite overwhelmingly support the Democrats.

That was my point -- whether SV's elite support the Democrats or the Republicans is kind of irrelevant to the question. Both parties have been captured by economic elites. These elites have some issues they disagree on, but lots of issues they mostly agree on, and the ones they agree on are the ones that impact the highly wealthy. Where there is consensus, it is the consensus of the elite, for the elite.

In other words -- Jamie Dimon is a Democrat. Robert Rubin is a Democrat. Larry Summers is a Democrat. These are the voices that shape Democratic economic policy, and they are not exactly a group of fiery progressives. They are the evidence of how narrow the difference between the parties is on the issues that the 1% care most about. The issues the parties fight over are by definition issues that guys like these just don't care about. If they cared about them, they would drag the parties kicking and screaming to a consensus just like they have on economic policy.

This is no different than how it was in the first Gilded Age; most of the most notorious political figures from that era were Republicans -- James G. Blaine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_G._Blaine) and Roscoe Conkling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_Conkling) come to mind -- but there were plenty of Democrats too, like Boss Tweed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_Tweed). And all leaders in both parties overwhelmingly hewed to an ideology that business interests were more important than any others.

Political affiliation seems like a red herring in a two party system. It wouldn't surprise me if people in SV vote democrat because they don't like certain things associated with the republicans (religion , anti-gay rights, guns , whatever) rather than agreeing wholesale with the democratic party manifesto.

In a straw poll at work some years ago we found that a hypothetic economically liberal, and socially liberal party would handily trounce both Democrats and Republicans. I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds fairly broadly among people in IT.

As the old joke goes, "I can't vote Democratic because I want to be able to spend my money, and I can't vote Republican because of what I want to spend my money on!"

By economic liberal do you mean left wing? Economic liberalism usually refers to right wing economic policies.

I meant the usual thing.

Right wing economic policies. Left wing social policies.

So relatively low taxes, less bureaucracy, balance the budget, etc. But also gay marriage, equal rights for a variety of groups, and science based environmental policies.

Totally agree that such a party would be great.

Does left wing social policy include e.g. universal welfare, health care and access to education though? Or are you thinking mainly of "liberal" rather than "left wing"?

Part of the problem is that left wing social policies cost money and have to be administered, conflicting with low taxes and less bureaucracy.... :(

You hit the nail on the head. Reality wouldn't let you do all of that without compromises, and we didn't agree where the compromises should be. But that wouldn't stop a politician from promising all of the above. :-)

That said, we did find broad agreement on many things that are completely off the political map in the USA. For example we could reduce the size of our military, liberalize drugs, get rid of the DEA, and reduce prison populations. All of that saves money. We also agreed that none of us actually expect Social Security to still exist when we need it, and so we'd prefer it replaced in the long run by something out of the hands of the politicians. Something along the lines of Australia's Superannuation would make sense. (But it wouldn't be fair to do it like Bush suggested - where it is privatized but with cutoffs that massively reduce what people can expect to get.)

Absolutely none of that is in the public discourse. But it would have been more popular in that office than anything being offered by the political parties.

In other conversations we also agreed that in general it is better to make rules simple and clear with the right incentives, rather than trying to add rules and counter rules that are guaranteed to give perverse incentives and a field day for lobbyists. For example we have laws mandating fuel efficiency standards, with complex exceptions saying that different types of vehicles get different treatment. I can't say anything about the net result other than that I'm sure that it lets politicians say that they solved the problem, while giving established Detroit companies some benefit. (The most obvious candidate for a benefit is that the regulatory mess is a barrier to entry for competitors.) But if you simply tax carbon fuels steeply enough, then incentives will be right. And then if you redistribute those taxes back to people in direct payments, then people can afford the taxes, and are left pushed to choose efficient vehicles for economic reasons.

I don't think that tbilly said that it would be great, just that it would cruise to an easy victory amongst startup types.

That's what used to be called liberal, before that label got re-used.

You just enumerated a significant portion of the de facto Republican agenda. Also, as 2004 demonstrated, voters normally vote for what they like instead of against what they dislike.

Um. One data point does not a "normal" make.

ok fair enough. Here are a few other data points. The same holds true for 1980, 1992, 1996, 2008, and 2012.

1984: http://books.google.com/books?id=phQo8JYcjw8C&pg=PA62...

1988: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,147885,00.h...

2000: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/10/18/flash...

2004: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation...

Not to mention that there's a line of reasoning for 1%ers to support the democratic party's centrist economic policies in the name of self-interest -- richer consumers to buy stuff means more sales for those selling it, better infrastructure is good for business, etc.

Some might disagree with that reasoning but it's really missing the mark to consider rich democrats as some sort of 'self hating rich' or 'culture voters ignoring economic policy'.

Or even that the Democratic party isn't a creature of finance. Since Wall Street has largely captured both parties, a plutocrat can vote on social issues without worrying overmuch about their pocketbook.

The fundamental error of the New Yorker piece would seem to be as described.

The fundamental thing that this piece fails to discuss is that just because you support the Democrats doesn't mean that you're a stereotypical liberal Democrat.

> But they're all billionaires, so issues that don't affect billionaires personally... just don't get included in the debate.

I recently came across this fascinating statistical study[1] of U.S. Senators responsiveness to the political positions of their constituents, which found that both Republicans and (to a slightly lesser extent) Democrats were overwhelmingly responsive to the positions of the wealthiest 1/3 of their constituents, and entirely unresponsive to the positions of the lowest 1/3. Well worth a read.

[1] http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/economic.pdf

Can the lower 1/3 be expected engage on the political front when they are a bit preoccupied with finding the income to pay rent and put food on the table? Perhaps pursuing austerity policies on government programs that increase income to the lower 1/3 helps check the revolution. Case in point, the Republicans -supposedly mortally opposed to taxes - did nothing to prevent the payroll tax increase at the end of 2012 from taking effect. An overwhelmingly regressive tax.

The fundamental error of this piece is that it assumes that if you vote Democratic, you're by definition not an engineer. (not really, but to me it makes as much sense as your statement)

How does being a part of the evil "one percent" make you any less qualified to have or hold a variety of political views? If anything, I've found that having more money makes me more aware of issues like unemployment, health care, etc because many of my friends and family are not as well off, and now I'm in a position where I feel obligated to do something about it.

Overall, I find the whole left/right political divide to be frustratingly counter-productive. Both sides are wrong, and we waste much time and energy arguing about which side is more wrong.

Well feel better - there is no right/left divide in America. By the standards of anywhere else there is only very right / slightly less right.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled off was convincing Americans that anyone to the left of Attila the Hun was a Communist...

What I find odd is that the article equates libertarianism with Rand and the Koch brothers, as if no other type exists. There's also a hint of conflating liberalism and libertarianism.

Libertarianism is basically a fundamentalist version of liberalism. It's essentially "liberalism has gotten too complicated and the complexity is producing errors; here are the most important bits and they're what Really Matter", which is what fundamentalism is.

It's a fundamentalist version of economic liberalism certainly, but not of political liberalism in the sense of vaguely leftist centrism.

Political liberalism is and always has been nonsense. It's a propaganda label and is as meaningful as having a Libertarian Party with a platform half the libertarians in the country disagree (all of whom contend that those who do agree aren't True libertarians).

> By the standards of anywhere else there is only very right / slightly less right.

Depends. Germansy is rather social democratic, but to a German government subsidised housing (via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and universal minumum wage sound vaguely socialist.

And describing Obama/Dems as a liberal when hes/they are centre right.

There's a wonderful short story by Orson Scott Card titled God Plays Fair Once Too Often concerning this.

The Democratic Party is trying to gobble up more of the economy to spend through the federal government, the Republican Party is trying to make it eat less. How are they not left and right?

And under George W. Bush the Republican party created the Department of Homeland Security, the purpose of which is arguably to "gobble up more of the economy to spend through the federal government." And engaged in new excesses of deficit spending (since exceeded by Obama, true).

The broader point is that politics is multidimensional. It's not just one axis. The history of tech policy votes in Congress is a good example that's close to HN home.

You can't map being right and left wing to a scale measured by "desired percentage of GDP to be spent by the government." Consider: Bush or Clinton? Huckabee or Romney? FDR or Hitler? Ukrainian anarchists or Stalin? French monarchists or Jacobins? Southern segregationists or Northern industrialists?

> How does being a part of the evil "one percent" make you any less qualified to have or hold a variety of political views?

I don't think this is what he's saying. It's that one percenters have an inherently greater voice on political issues (if they so choose) and that as a result, the national debate has been warped to focus on the issues and perspectives they consider important.

That was my point, yes. I don't object to the 1% having a voice in politics; of course they should! I just object to having a system that defers reflexively to their needs and interests over those of everybody else.

I've never heard the term "Limousine liberal," but I'm fond of the french expression: La Gauche Caviar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauche_caviar

Or the British term: "Champagne Socialist".