Hacker News Reader

Comment by api | Hacker News Reader

"Welcome to the delightful world of Washington, D.C. realpolitik!"

I don't understand how the people who play these games can motivate themselves to get up in the morning.

Forget morality. I'm just talking about a sense that you're doing something worth doing at all.

I just couldn't do it. No matter how hard I tried, eventually the realization that what I was doing was meaningless backbiting bullshit would sink in and I'd blow my brains out.

Maybe it's the "secret to success in New York" joke. The joke goes that the secret is to be smart enough to play the game but not smart enough to figure the game out. My guess would be that applies to DC far more than NY.

View on HN

>I don't understand how the people who play these games can motivate themselves to get up in the morning.

That's one reason I decamped to the SF bay area. I have friends still living in DC (or one of its inner 'burbs) who have been saying for over a decade that they want to escape the games and backbiting bullshit, but have never managed to do so. One reason is the compensation can be high: the DC area is home to the highest-income county in the nation[1]. Stewart is a senior partner at Steptoe, where the average partner income is approx. $1M[2]; as a very senior one he might be taking home $2M a year.

Plus housing prices are cheaper than SF or the peninsula, and if you're trained as a political fixer/policy wonk, where else do you go?

On a more HN-relevant point, working in DC means trying to get a bigger slice of a fixed pie. Silicon Valley companies and other startups around the world can make the pie bigger. For more realpolitik, check out this provocative essay on DC-Silicon Valley by San Jose-based Cypress Semiconductor cofounder/CEO TJ Rodgers (it's worth a read even if you disagree, I think): http://www.cypress.com/?rID=34975

[1] "The Washington region dominates the list of the most affluent places in the United States..." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/12/th...

[2] http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/02/steptoe-johnson-ll...

I agree with at least some of what TJ Rodgers has to say, though it's a tad too Randian for my taste.

Using cigarette taxes as an example highlights an intrinsic problem with libertarianism: sometimes government is our only defense against "softer" forms of power. Cigarettes are chemically addictive, so selling them means essentially using mind control to generate repeat customers.

Some libertarians want to be free to create value, but others want to be free to con people. Typical Randians like TJ Rodgers don't see the difference, or they grossly overestimate the ability of free human beings to defend themselves against determined and clever con artistry. Much con artistry, such as financial swindling, is very sophisticated when compared with something as ham-fisted as addictive drug pushing. If humans were good enough to resist that kind of thing, there'd be no jobs for stage magicians. Everyone would spot their tricks.

If I were in government and were doing government's proper job, I'd feel good about my work. My feeling though is that quite a bit of government and its related business orbit isn't doing anything like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com