I think rich people have too much influence, I probably agree with Garry Tan on a lot but we need to get money out of politics. Let’s face it we’re all meant to get one vote but rich people spend money on this stuff so that they manipulate what and who can be voted for.
I do think that if this current system is the result of democracy + the internet we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy.
Study after study shows that money doesn't really effect the results of high-information elections. If it really did, Hillary Clinton would have been president twice. It's just that candidates with a ton of support tend to raise a ton of money.
Low-information elections are where money seems to help. I think we can throw that on the pile of 'your democracy is only as good as your electorate', and we have an electorate where most people can't even name their US House rep, much less their representatives in state and local politics.
I do so by taking Jeff Bezos' money and giving him a penny. Also by not supporting restaurants that have a Wall-street ticker nor any alcohol producers that have a Wall-street ticker.
I agree with you, in spirit, but I think the true issue lies elsewhere.
Rich people can spend money to influence elections, yes, but how can they do it? through political donations, super-pacs and bribes. Bribes are already illegal. political donations and super-pacs can give politicians the juice they need to get their messaging out, but getting the message across isn't enough to win an election. The people need to vote. Billionaires can spend as much money as they want to support candidates, but a billionaire still only has one vote to cast.
My point is, billionaires can pay for all the political campaigns in the world, but the electorate gets the final say. It's up to us to A) run for office and B) vote for the best candidate (but tell that to the 64% turnout in the 2024 presidential election)
Elections are important, but they're just one part of the political system. A lot of machinations and politics occurs outside the scope of elections or even of the public eye.
Money doesn't just buy ads. It influences the decision of who is a candidate in the first place. It buys operational range. It pays salaries for the right friend of X, the right family member of Y, etc. It buys other bribes, etc.
There are great tools available that I’m sure you could use to give you a synopsis of how money is used to manipulate political outcomes and entrench wealth and power.
This is an underrated point because the U.S. failure to rein in the excesses of the ultra-wealthy is not just impacting our domestic politics but actually the politics of every country on earth. Imagine if Jack Ma had eventually personally intervened in U.S. congressional elections? That's pretty much exactly what U.S. oligarchs do to other countries regularly.
You are using a lot of obfuscated and loaded language. What, specifically, are the "excesses of the ultra-wealthy" that need to be reigned in? What do you mean by "personally intervened in U.S. congressional relations"?
s/relations/elections/ -- because Elon et. al don't just intervene in the elections of the country they live in, but actually any country he's interested in -- and uses the U.S. as a bludgeon in that effort, see U.S.-U.K. and U.S.-South Africa relations
How is Elon's editorial control of X something the government needs to (or even should have the power to) "reign in?" How is that not freedom of the press just like the owner of the New York Times having editorial control over his newspaper? Same goes for his donation to the PAC. What is the nefarious activity they are engaged in? Why are they not allowed to exercise their freedom of the press in the same way as any other company?
1. X is not, and has never been, "the press".
2. If you were to have categorized them this way previously, botting and pay-for-reach have made it definitely not that way now.
3. It is bad when any individual can shift the politics of the entire globe simply because they have enough money. Feel free to insert your most hated left-wing billionaire instead of Elon, I still believe the same thing.
Yes, it absolutely is the press. Any publication of any information is the press. I don't have any hated left wing billionaires, just ones I disagree with. But let's take the bogeyman himself, (((George Soros)))!!!!. I think he should have every right to continue to use his personal wealth to advance his political agenda, including every piece of it that I despise. I believe this because it is his fundamental right as a citizen of the republic. I think every left wing organization that I find odious should be able to raise money and show ads on TV and on the internet to publicize their political opinions. I think that if there were a communist billionaire he should be able to start newspapers, TV and radio stations, social media companies, or any other form of communication and use them to spread his message that the US should be a communist state and support communist candidates for office.
> I believe this because it is his fundamental right as a citizen of the republic.
This is kind of exactly my point though. Citizen of what republic? Soros and Elon are both wealthier than most states and affect politics globally. They literally cannot be prosecuted, they are barely accountable to any legal bodies.
Citizens of this one. And they can be prosecuted. You just are not comfortable with the fact that they haven't really committed any crimes. Epstein was a billionaire too.
What's wrong with a sovereign nation taking steps to reduce or eliminate the influence of a non-citizen who they feel is acting against the best interests of that nation?
If a nuclear capable country like France decides that someone like Elon Musk is acting against the best interests of their country they can ask him nicely to stop and if he continues they can use force to reduce the perceived threat.
This all seems completely in line with the day-to-day norms of contemporary society as well as historical norms.
He is a citizen of the US and has full political rights. There is only one legal distinction between a foreign born citizen and a natural born citizen and that is that he can't serve as president. France is absolutely capable of using force against Elon Musk up to and including their nuclear arsenal. However, they would need to decide whether it is worse for their interests to tolerate Elon or to detonate a nuke on US soil, and that's a pretty easy choice.
If rich techies had too much influence in California, the state government would not look like what it does. I mean I just don't see how you get to this opinion after any real review of the evidence.
You cherry picked California which is very much an outlier compared to the rest of the country? Are you denying the effect of money affecting political outcomes, the rich wouldn’t spend their money on media and PACs if it didn’t work would they?
> I mean I just don't see how you get to this opinion after any real review of the evidence.
Graybeard here: took me a while to get it, but, usually these are chances to elucidate what is obvious to you :)* ex. I don't really know what you mean. What does the California state government look like if rich techies had even more influence? I can construct a facile version (lower taxes**) but assuredly you mean more than that to be taken so aback.
* Good Atlas Shrugged quote on this: "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check [ED: or share, if you've moseyed yourself into a discussion] your premises."
** It's not 100% clear politicians steered by California techies would lower taxes ad infinitum.
Citizens United was the correct decision. I don't understand how you can legitimately restrict political activity. The constitution contains the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Why should certain groups of people not have this right? The constitution also contains the right to freedom of the press. Why should the government get to decide who gets to exercise this right?
Every other country on earth has spending limits, the constitution isn’t perfect and it’s being dismantled by the current regime. Maybe it could be updated to say covering up for pedo billionaires should carry extremely harsh sentences, for example…
Because democracy is "one person one vote", not "one dollar one vote".
Around the same time Citizens United was decided, we also got McCutcheon v. FEC, which invalidated campaign contribution limits basically completely. If we take the logic of Citizens United at its word - that money is speech - then letting someone drop billions of dollars to change an election is like firing a sonic weapon at a bunch of protesters to silence them. So, right off the bat, we have a situation where protecting the "speech" of the rich and powerful directly imperils the speech of everyone else.
But it gets worse. Because we got rid of campaign financing limitations, there has been an arms race with campaign funding that has made all speech completely, 100% pay-to-play. We have libre speech, but not gratis speech.
This isn't even a problem limited to merely political speech. Every large forum by which speech occurs expects you to buy advertising on their own platform now before you are heard. If you, say, sell a book on Amazon or post a video on TikTok, you're expected to buy ads for it on Amazon or TikTok. You are otherwise shut out of the system because discovery algorithms want you keep you in your own bubble and you're competing with lots and lots of spam.
But it is still one person one vote. Money doesn't allow you to buy votes, but it does make it easier to persuade them. Freedom of the press has always guaranteed you the right to print or otherwise publish what you want, but it never said everyone will have the same amount of printing presses or the same amount of ink. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you an audience.
You think you are reducing the influence of the rich, but you are actually just raising the price of entry. A millionaire can donate to a PAC and buy TV ads, but a billionaire can buy or start a newspaper, TV station, or social media network. What are you going to do then, tell the newspapers what they are allowed to print?
Are you saving that an organization should be able to put together a documentary to criticize Trump and his supporters? Because that’s what Citizen’s United allowed. If you don’t support that, then the criticism will only come from rich individuals.
Taxes exist to fund the government which exists to solve collective action problems. I despise your attitude that taxes are a tool to punish people you don't like. I find it to be morally repugnant and I will always side with the billionaires defending themselves against people like you no matter often you repeat the word "bootlicker."
Wait, are you suggesting we _shouldn't_ treat billionaires as a collective action problem to be dealt with via policy? So you're suggesting what, individual violence?
It's not, since voluntary transactions can happen as a result of said squabbling without resorting to the violence of 'power.' Maybe we need more of that and less of ramming decisions down the throats of the powerless.
Yeah I sometimes think you could have a government you select, e.g. each state could have its own rules and laws and the federal government should not have the power to overrule them. Then you could choose if you wanted immigration or lower taxes or whatever, seems like a good system who can suggest it?
Yes the 10th amendment was supposed to ensure a lot of that that but it was largely waived away during the progressive era and in acts related to the civil war. But cuz slavery for some reason it also has to apply to all sorts of other things that have nothing to do with slaves or even civil rights (in the sense of negative rights) and you are racist or love slaves or something for pointing this out.
All reactions are taking this comment seriously, but I think it can be also read as "money equals power" (which I strongly believe - there's some power without money and sometimes money without power, but mostly those two are fungible) - and then pointing to the futility of getting money out of politics, since politics is about power.
But really what people mean is "prevent paid political advertisement of all kinds", which seems about as hard as "get rid of all kinds of advertisement" - at some point, you're back to power, communication, attention.
Hard problems. Probably there's a reason all ancient democracies did not survive.
It has actually been scientifically proven otherwise in crowd theory : with the right setup, the crowd is more effective to take a good decision that the top1 best decision maker.
Exemple : a crowd playing chess may beat the top1 chess player, even though the crowd individually cannot beat him.
Yea in fact this thing has been done before multiple times as exhibitions (Kasparov vs 50k, Carlsen vs 132k, etc).
And yea, no surprise, the masses do not win. Even when in the latter case, a huge chunk of the 132k was obviously using stockfish cranked to the gills (though the did get a draw out of it?).
Hell no, California has this and it’s a catastrophe. Prop 13 is one of the worst policies enacted by a democratic polity in the 20th century, and has been wrecking the state for decades.
So do you believe in democracy or not? And I do not mean this as a loaded question because the value of democracy is a legitimately arguable point. If the majority of Californians want caps on property tax, then I do not see a good argument that they should not get it that is also compatible with democracy.
Democracy can mean a lot of things: direct, representative, etc. Voting for yourself is different from voting for your constituents. Ideally, the latter will also consider community effects.
If you put a question to the electorate like 'should we tax only people whose last name begins with an X, Y or Z?', it's liable to pass.
Nobody really advocates for Direct Democracy. It isn't viable: 'tyranny of the majority' etc.
Most Western governments are Liberal Democracies - where some issues aren't subject to a vote - partly so that the mob can't persecute outnumbered subgroups.
If majority of people in a country want to persecute an outnumbered subgroup, then what prevents the majority of delegates wanting the same as well?
You have an implicit assumption that the delegates are going to be smarter and better people that are going to lie to the majority to get elected and then will valiantly protect the subgroup.
But that have not happened anywhere. In fact in every case it is the delegates who organize persecution of various subgroups, even in situations when the share of population truly wanting to persecute subgroup is far from being a majority.
I refuse to believe that anyone reading this is incapable of remembering at least five historical examples in which the public was happy to treat an unpopular group unjustly.
There is no foolproof system that can guard against it, however declaring 'rights' and delegating the responsibility to protect them to the judiciary at least is a mitigation.
That is highly unlikely. People may seem stupid when acting as a larger group, but I think part of that is that our current democracy doesn't require much engagement. If we moved to direct democracy then imo we'd get some bad policies that would quickly be reverted once the effects become apparent, and then voters are going to be a bit more careful. For example, "only taxing people whose last name begins with X, Y, Z", I don't think voters would currently be that dumb, but if they were then how many weeks of zero tax money would it take to get that undone?
I can't muster the enthusiasm to debate this. There are centuries of literature on this topic involving people smarter and more eloquent than me. The following wikipedia entry has examples you may find more persuasive than mine:
Why do you think that similar law could not be passed without direct vote? The problem is not direct democracy but the fact that it is being done in a wrong way.
Voting should be done without anonymity, online. One should be able to either vote for everything manually, or delegate the vote to any other person.
If some change is supported by 100% of the voters it should be implemented immediately. But if smaller percent supports the change, then there needs to be a vesting time (e.g. 10 years for 60%, infinity for 50%+1).
This allows people to either trade support for policies (i'll vote yes for your initiative if you vote for mine, or give me money), or to get high level of support locally and try out various laws on local level.
The same site that manages voting should also show detailed budget of city/state/country, where people can see where their taxes are being spent and should be able to redirect the money they have paid.
Billionaire goes: get $10 off at my store, called Scamazon, for these votes (lists votes). And naturally even the $10 is manipulated to be recouped with dynamic pricing.
Prop 13 is a nothingburger. Median homeownership period in california vs nationally is only like 2 years longer. It shouldn't be affecting costs that much in other words since median property is back to market rate every 15 years or so.
And what costs are we talking about anyhow? Tax shortfalls for local government? Decades later that has been rectified through other taxes and funding mechanisms and we still get new roads and schools in california. Housing costs increasing? I would say the fact that cities today are zoned within a few percentage points of present population levels (vs zoned for 10x present population levels pre 1970) is the actual source of that sucking sound from the chest.
That's not really the point. Prop 13 is known to be a huge disincentive to efficient transfers in home ownership - people will strenuously avoid selling their homes and buying something that's closer to the kind of shelter they actually prefer, because they might have to pay a higher assessed property tax if they did that. These effects are very real and well documented.
Prop 13 wouldn't lead to those incentives if property prices didn't increase so aggressively. Once again comes back to zoning as the root cause. Is prop 13 bad? Only in the face of inappropriate zoned capacity, it seems. Which begs the question of what prop 13 removal would even do in such a situation? Zoning capacity isn't changing so prices will still go up beyond what is affordable for the median worker. The only thing changing is people won't be insulated from that rise at the end of their life when they are on a fixed income is all. Does that solve the housing crisis? No, but it does ensure more people are regularly displaced from their homes.
Prop 13 isnt bad. Its all the money pumped in to political
advertisements that turn this from "1 person, 1 vote" to "1$, 1 vote".
And that goes to the heart of the matter, that corporations aren't people, no matter what some court or law says. And they should be heavily restricted on speech. (I include spending money on political adverts and similar.)
Humans can commit crimes worthy of the death penalty. Wells Fargo shouldn't exist due to their decade long fraud. Nor should United Health Care, for actively denying humans their health coverage until the humans died. Or countless other cases.
When a company gets "killed", and all assets get assigned to the wronged, I'll start to believe they are humans. Haven't seen that yet. Likely won't ever, in the USA.
If you think you've incurred damages due to a company's illegal actions, you can go to court already. If the company is liable and its assets do not suffice to pay full compensation, it enters bankruptcy proceedings and ultimately gets dissolved, just like you're saying.
15 years ago, I worked at Walmart. Note the poverty income, no unions, no real savings. Basically average US citizen, not the HN bubble.
I got injured with a malfunctioning pallet jack. Went to ER and got Xrays.
Week later, was fired. My paperwork explicitly said I got fired for getting injured at work and costing the company money.
Went to 6 different lawyers. Had to ask for pro-bono. I couldn't afford a lawyer.
All refused. Why? None of them could deal with a Walmart lawsuit. None.
I had them dead-to-rights with a wrongful termination. Double manager signature. Even recorded their termination on my phone, on the sly (in single party state). They even admitted to forging a different manager. None of it matters.
Is it? In the US, our constitution is setup to prevent absolute democracy from occurring. The idea of an absolute democracy where the government always acts on the will of the majority as an ideal is hardly a universal value.
Yes, that is my point. You can't take power out of politics, and you can't take money (which is one form of power) out of politics. Best you can do is manage it.
They are obviously related, but it is a very loose correlation. If a billionaire (who does not pay me) gives me an order I will laugh in his face. If a traffic cop gives me an order, I will comply.
Its happened before, over labor disputes and unionization.
A LOT of people died, both in anti-union and union sides.
And thats why we have, well, had, the National Labor Relations Board. It was to make a peaceful way to negotiate worker rights.
Maybe if it did go away completely, and the violence comes back, that people in power would be reminded WHY we had union structure and law in the federal government to begin with. It wasn't for the warm fuzzies.
The civil court system is basically a way for wealthy people and corporations to use money to silence and/or coerce behavior out of less wealthy people. If Elon Musk or Larry Ellison woke up one day and decided to sue me, and defending myself would cost 100X my net worth, I'm probably just going to give up and do whatever they want me to do.
There still is something to it. You could bring your billion to Dubai and it might buy you some pardons from personal indiscretions and a cadre of quasi-slaves but the monarchs would never grant you real systemic political power.
for a lot of people in the newly rich class, a kind of virtual currency best compared to a high score in a videogame. Symbolic and representing status. It's why when they attempt to translate it into power this particular class thankfully fares fairly badly, from the article:
"TogetherSF, a similar nonprofit backed by venture capitalist Michael Moritz, crashed and burned after the 2024 elections when its $9.5 million ballot measure to reform the city charter lost to a progressive counter-measure backed by about $117,000."
Not really possible. There's at least 40 more years of citizens united before any practical ability to restrict money in politics becomes constitutional again.
> we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy
Not true. The plurality that voted in the current administration are generally pleased with the state of things. Democracy is working as expected. It was close, but this is what more people wanted.
I don't think the elite think all voters are dumb more like they think they're easy to manipulate to vote for something (which is largely true). Anecdotally I easily get manipulated by the type of information I consume. I occassionally catch it after the fact or a conversation with others but there's no telling how much I've just accepted that's manipulated.
From that angle it's a game of who has the money, power, and diatribution to enact this manipulation.
Twitter being a prime example. Is Elon "right"? Maybe but the main point is it doesn't matter as he has the distribution.
If you have money but low to no distribution -> you do what gary is doing. Maybe he'd be interested in removing rights to vote but someone like Zuck would NOT because he has outsized ability to influence as he sees fit.
Praying for Garry's downfall used to be a hobby of mine but these days it seems like it will take up less of my time as he has become aligned with my other enemies, reducing my number of enemy agents at play at any given time, or at least the number of attack vectors they have on me.
Such a group is not a PAC or a Super PAC, but anonymizes donors. It can be used as a vehicle to transfer money to a Super PAC while only naming the dark money group and keeping the donors secret.
A wealth tax is a great idea if your goal is to make everyone a whole lot poorer especially in the longer term, and not very much otherwise. It's pretty much saying that you want pure populist envy to be the priority, over and to the detriment of long-term prosperity.
Which would be hilarious if it weren’t so infuriating.
All they can talk about is how they’re all going to leave the state if it happens, but then are more than willing to try to spend more stopping it than they would just contributing their fair share in taxes.
Don’t like it? Great, leave - but stop trying to buy elections.
YC is always talking about how important SF is (due to hand waiving reasons like "innovation environment," I would find it highly ironic if a wealth tax was all it took to get top YC people to abandon the state.
Everyone loves deciding what their "fair share" of other people's net worth (not even income!) is.
Sorry, but the state just confiscating 5% of someone's net worth (unrealized or not) is absolute madness, and rightfully opens up questions about slippery slope, how "temporary" they claim this to be, and so on.
It's not surprising they are leaving the state or using their resources to try to stop it.
Your statement is ignoring the systematic growing inequality in the US between the ultra wealthy and everyone else. And the use of those funds to influence politics (because of Citizens United, etc) to create polices that benefit themselves - it is for the ultra wealthy a virtuous circle:
You could confiscate 100% of the wealth of every billionaire in this country and it wouldn’t fund the government for an entire year. It is and always will be a government spending issue, the government can’t help itself but to just steal more from the taxpayers to support their bloat.
I bet Garry Tan will find that going after him for the wealth tax won’t poll well so he will find a different angle. Thus it won’t be a debate about a wealth tax, it will just be the standard make your opponent look bad in order to unseat him.
Ok, so what is the problem here? Why can't Gary Tan engage in standard political activity like anybody else? This is his fundamental right as a citizen of a democracy.
The issue is unlimited spending. Rich people can tilt the political system to benefit themselves by their ability to spend unlimited and then push for things that enrich themselves like lower taxes that doesn’t benefit society at large.
The biggest example of this in the US is the health system that is more expensive and has worse outcomes than other countries. There is a huge and growing gap in the us between ultra wealthy and the rest of the population and it is a virtuous circle for the ultra wealthy with their ability to spend unlimited in politics.
So what? The constitution guarantees you equal rights under the law and an equal vote in each election. It does not guarantee you equal political influence. Same as you have the right to freedom of speech and of the press, but you are not guaranteed an audience.
So some people might feel slightly annoyed by this.
I don't know if you don't find this absurd, but a bunch of pedophile protecting people have shaped the actual presidency and are continuing to do so. Feeling slightly annoyed is the least offensive way I could put it
And you have every right to express that annoyance without fear of prosecution. I find the Epstein affair to be very underwhelming. Running a prostitution ring is criminal, and rich men (or poor men) fucking a 17 year old (or 18 year old) prostitute is gross, but not particularly surprising, and isn't even pedophilia. If Epstein had been in Nevada and not the US Virgin Islands and his youngest girls were a year older, it wouldn't even be illegal.
No one is stopping him, but they would be if the people in this comment section had their way. You are absolutely not required to cheer him on, and in fact you have the right to oppose him. But that isn't happening here. Nobody in these comments is exercising their first amendment rights to argue against any of his political opinions. They are using their first amendment rights to argue that the government should use its monopoly to restrict Gary Tan's right to make his argument at all.
I want to do some improvements on my house. So I take out a home equity loan. Oops! Actually since my house is worth $500K more than when I bought it, now I have to pay $100K to the government since the gain is now realized by using the asset as collateral!
The only reasonable argument I can think of is that the fantastic wealth accumulated at the top was substantially driven by the $37 trillion of debt the USA finds itself in. And it needs to be clawed back somehow.
It's actually much simpler than that. We need to pay down the debt, and because the rich have most of the money they are going to need to do most of the paying down whether or not they directly are responsible for it or benefited from it. It's simple math. But what does this have to do with a wealth tax? The entire concept is stupid. Income an capital gains rates can be increased.
Well on the bright side it's a complete mask off moment for the tech community. I think it is good for these people to expose themselves to the public. They will show you who they really are if you let them.
“If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects”. -- Louis Brandeis
Hot take: what has democracy done for us lately? Besides re-electing Donald Trump?
If something can't go on forever, it will eventually stop. That applies to any system that gives stupid people the same political voice as the rest of the electorate. I mean, it seems kind of obvious, doesn't it?
And why did they give up their agency to these shadowy media oligarchs...?
Answer: because they're stupid.
The ones who weren't stupid were impossible to herd to the polls, or at least a lot more difficult. As a result they were outnumbered. Any system that removes the influences you cite will leave the same stupid voters in place, ready to fall for the next con man who comes along.
The problem isn't the money. The problem is the power. I'm tired of giving stupid people so much power over my life.
People extracting value from labor to enrich themselves at the expense of society and then using those riches to further corrupt society, to the point where a few dudes own most of the country does not align with my politics.
That's why I'm a socialist and I would invite anyone who thinks things might not be going in the right direction to consider that as well.
I'd prefer to see more of them do so, personally. That said, to watch Tan wading into a local fistfight about school curriculum and housing zoning and whatnot in the age of ICE abduction, targetted political prosecution and wanton macroeconomic regulatory chaos seems... frustrating.
I mean, I kinda agree with him about most of the centrist stuff. But really, Gary? This is what you need to be spending your money and time on?
I dunno about "demand". But sure, I think most of us would prefer people prioritize like we do. And in particular many of us would view this kind of hobby project as tone deaf and tell people about that in public.
My freedom to tell Tan (or you) that he's being an idiot stems from the same place as his freedom to spend his own money on what he wants.
> The privacy absolutists will tell you that license plate cameras are “Orwellian.” But here’s what I know: unsolved crime means more innocent people get hurt and maimed and killed. Flock has audit trails. There’s accountability. The people who benefit from keeping murders unsolved aren’t victims—they’re criminals.
jesus christ. assuming he's not going to start syndicating this, who is this even pandering to?
At this point it's just boring to have another rich asshole using government to protect their own interests. There's no substance or principle to it, it's just whatever policies makes CA more favorable to other rich assholes.
"Garry's List" is just straight up AI slop. This is a window into the coming AI-enabled era of astroturfing from wealthy individuals for their pet causes.
To me, tech entrepreneurship looks more like some form of "lemon socialism." It feels more centrally planned than ever, and a company's success has much more to do with your relationships with capital than anything else. It's why we're seeing so much money invested into a bunch of similar takes on AI. Founders with a real vision of the future aren't really accepted into VC that has almost wholly accepted the FOMO strategy of investment.
I used to hold a lot of respect for Paul Graham and his essays, but I've realized his stances on things are pretty elementary, and largely come back to his ego or wealth management. People like Graham and Tan don't seem to really care about human flourishing, and they certainly don't seem to have any coherent vision of the future. Graham, like Andreessen, was technically good enough during a veritable tech gold rush, and Graham's lieutenants like Tan and Altman were lucky more than anything--just in the right place at the right time versus having started anything of value.
I am *absolutely* cynical and jaded when it comes to tech nowadays, so no need to call me out there. These people remind me of the high modernists, that tech will solve all problems, and we don't have to care too much as to how we solve those problems. Just handwave, and AI will solve all problems. But I think how we solve problems matters, and the entrepreneurship meritocracy that Tan and Graham allude to does not exist, and it never did.
I just find it abhorrent that while 15% of American households are food insecure, a company like Anthropic spent millions on a superbowl ad just lamenting OpenAI's ad strategy. Or that the Trump administration dropped a FTC case against Pepsi and Walmart for colluding to price out grocery competition. Or that Facebook and Google have been shown to have pushed for apps to addict people to their slop content. Or that tech capex this year alone rivals the Louisiana Purchase or the amount America spent on building out the railroads[1].
We're not solving the right problems because capital is entirely disconnected from the every day reality of Americans in this country. But by all means, let's aim to replace 50% of white collar workers with AI and handwave that prices will come down.
It's pretty simple: you don't get to that kind of wealth without having a few screws loose in the ethics department. There are some exceptions but they are just there to confirm the rule.
It won't work. The Trump admin has so thoroughly betrayed its voters that independent voters no longer want anything to do with billionaires like the all-in people lying to them for 4 years before an election.
It's way too early to fix California. The average California voter, which HN is a good sampling of by the way, really believes that California is fine, and that there's no corruption or grift, and that they can tax billionaires more without them simply leaving the state (because CA is magical and unique (it's the 4th largest economy in the world, don't you know!) and they'll come crawling back to be a part of it). It's going to take awhile for people to change. As the saying goes "science progresses one funeral at a time". People put ideology above the evidence in front of their eyes. (That "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command" Orwell quote is making the rounds, which is ironic because most people don't need a party to tell them to disbelieve uncomfortable facts!) We have to wait for a new generation to grow up with the visible corruption to fully internalize it. Then it can be fixed. I can't help but think that Tan's efforts would be better spent trying to get a startup scene going somewhere where you can park your car without getting the windows smashed.
Among the many weird things that the U.S. have but real democratic countries don't, the most promiscuous of them is this flow of private money into politics.
Campaign financing, U.S. style, is just legalized bribing. In any healthy democracy it would be illegal. In the U.S. is just the way things are.
Watching things from outside, it feels like the US is a pay-to-win democracy. It's hard to say where exactly the line between lobbying vs. corruption is drawn.
I don't know if I agree or not with his views, but the fact that he's moving from complaining about something, to doing something about his beliefs, has convinced me to move from a negative to a significantly positive view of him, as a person; to reiterate, regardless of whether I agree with said views.
The will to fight for what one believes in - I think we can all agree that is an admirable human trait that would result, for those who do follow his views, in him being labeled as a hero and defender of people's rights.
The Mission Local is a good source for hyperlocal Bay Area news, but it does have a strong SF leftist/progressive political tilt in most of its articles, and Gary Tan is a favorite boogieman for these types. Here's what they have to say about his malign influence in the article:
> But the operation is also a media venture: Garry’s List started with a blog pillorying public-sector unions as “special interests,” attacking the ongoing teachers’ strike, and denouncing the proposed billionaire tax.
- Public sector unions are special interests. This is a plain fact.
- The current teacher's strike in San Francisco, even if it succeeds, will only push the district into insolvency, prompting a state takeover. The state will then cut much more aggressively. Maybe this would be a good thing though, although probably not what the union intended. Advocates of the strike are literally demanding the district spend its reserves on a couple years of raises.
- I'm certainly no billionaire, but the proposed tax will do nothing more than push the extremely small and mobile group of billionaires to take their business elsewhere. It's unlikely to raise tax revenues over the long run.
> the proposed tax will do nothing more than push the extremely small and mobile group of billionaires to take their business elsewhere
This is often claimed but has yet to be shown to actually be true. Billionaires want to live in the nicest places with the best amenities just like everyone else.
But let's pretend for the moment that it is true. Good. Billionaires are not a net positive influence anywhere.
I think rich people have too much influence, I probably agree with Garry Tan on a lot but we need to get money out of politics. Let’s face it we’re all meant to get one vote but rich people spend money on this stuff so that they manipulate what and who can be voted for.
I do think that if this current system is the result of democracy + the internet we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy.
Study after study shows that money doesn't really effect the results of high-information elections. If it really did, Hillary Clinton would have been president twice. It's just that candidates with a ton of support tend to raise a ton of money.
Low-information elections are where money seems to help. I think we can throw that on the pile of 'your democracy is only as good as your electorate', and we have an electorate where most people can't even name their US House rep, much less their representatives in state and local politics.
Yeah if money didn't matter what's up with the $2billion price tags
This is total bullshit.
Or maybe a statement of just how much the US population is uninformed/misinformed.
If the later is true, the US 'electorate' really is dumb as dirt...
Eat the rich.
I do so by taking Jeff Bezos' money and giving him a penny. Also by not supporting restaurants that have a Wall-street ticker nor any alcohol producers that have a Wall-street ticker.
What does this mean? are you employed by Amazon and phoning it in, or how are you extracting money from Bezos?
You are spot on about rich people buying influence this way but it has nothing to do with how great democracy is.
I agree with you, in spirit, but I think the true issue lies elsewhere.
Rich people can spend money to influence elections, yes, but how can they do it? through political donations, super-pacs and bribes. Bribes are already illegal. political donations and super-pacs can give politicians the juice they need to get their messaging out, but getting the message across isn't enough to win an election. The people need to vote. Billionaires can spend as much money as they want to support candidates, but a billionaire still only has one vote to cast.
My point is, billionaires can pay for all the political campaigns in the world, but the electorate gets the final say. It's up to us to A) run for office and B) vote for the best candidate (but tell that to the 64% turnout in the 2024 presidential election)
Elections are important, but they're just one part of the political system. A lot of machinations and politics occurs outside the scope of elections or even of the public eye.
Money doesn't just buy ads. It influences the decision of who is a candidate in the first place. It buys operational range. It pays salaries for the right friend of X, the right family member of Y, etc. It buys other bribes, etc.
Consider watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnOmUWd-OII
Every "democracy" I know, has become a plutocracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy
How do you define "manipulate" here?
There are great tools available that I’m sure you could use to give you a synopsis of how money is used to manipulate political outcomes and entrench wealth and power.
This is an underrated point because the U.S. failure to rein in the excesses of the ultra-wealthy is not just impacting our domestic politics but actually the politics of every country on earth. Imagine if Jack Ma had eventually personally intervened in U.S. congressional elections? That's pretty much exactly what U.S. oligarchs do to other countries regularly.
You are using a lot of obfuscated and loaded language. What, specifically, are the "excesses of the ultra-wealthy" that need to be reigned in? What do you mean by "personally intervened in U.S. congressional relations"?
I'm commenting on one such excess. Here is another: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/31/elon-musk-2026-elec.... The Nazification of X and federal subsidies for Elon's companies are another. There are many more examples.
s/relations/elections/ -- because Elon et. al don't just intervene in the elections of the country they live in, but actually any country he's interested in -- and uses the U.S. as a bludgeon in that effort, see U.S.-U.K. and U.S.-South Africa relations
How is Elon's editorial control of X something the government needs to (or even should have the power to) "reign in?" How is that not freedom of the press just like the owner of the New York Times having editorial control over his newspaper? Same goes for his donation to the PAC. What is the nefarious activity they are engaged in? Why are they not allowed to exercise their freedom of the press in the same way as any other company?
He allowed child porn to proliferate for days on the platform
1. X is not, and has never been, "the press". 2. If you were to have categorized them this way previously, botting and pay-for-reach have made it definitely not that way now. 3. It is bad when any individual can shift the politics of the entire globe simply because they have enough money. Feel free to insert your most hated left-wing billionaire instead of Elon, I still believe the same thing.
Yes, it absolutely is the press. Any publication of any information is the press. I don't have any hated left wing billionaires, just ones I disagree with. But let's take the bogeyman himself, (((George Soros)))!!!!. I think he should have every right to continue to use his personal wealth to advance his political agenda, including every piece of it that I despise. I believe this because it is his fundamental right as a citizen of the republic. I think every left wing organization that I find odious should be able to raise money and show ads on TV and on the internet to publicize their political opinions. I think that if there were a communist billionaire he should be able to start newspapers, TV and radio stations, social media companies, or any other form of communication and use them to spread his message that the US should be a communist state and support communist candidates for office.
> I believe this because it is his fundamental right as a citizen of the republic.
This is kind of exactly my point though. Citizen of what republic? Soros and Elon are both wealthier than most states and affect politics globally. They literally cannot be prosecuted, they are barely accountable to any legal bodies.
Citizens of this one. And they can be prosecuted. You just are not comfortable with the fact that they haven't really committed any crimes. Epstein was a billionaire too.
By who? Another Billionaires personal attorney and acting attorney general Pam bondi?
It's far easier for a billionaire to get away with a crime than to prosecute it. You would think that would be common sense, but I guess not.
How many crimes do you think Putin has done? I mean Trump has 33 or 34 felonies on record, does it matter? What about Saudi princes?
What's wrong with a sovereign nation taking steps to reduce or eliminate the influence of a non-citizen who they feel is acting against the best interests of that nation?
If a nuclear capable country like France decides that someone like Elon Musk is acting against the best interests of their country they can ask him nicely to stop and if he continues they can use force to reduce the perceived threat.
This all seems completely in line with the day-to-day norms of contemporary society as well as historical norms.
He is a citizen of the US and has full political rights. There is only one legal distinction between a foreign born citizen and a natural born citizen and that is that he can't serve as president. France is absolutely capable of using force against Elon Musk up to and including their nuclear arsenal. However, they would need to decide whether it is worse for their interests to tolerate Elon or to detonate a nuke on US soil, and that's a pretty easy choice.
If rich techies had too much influence in California, the state government would not look like what it does. I mean I just don't see how you get to this opinion after any real review of the evidence.
You cherry picked California which is very much an outlier compared to the rest of the country? Are you denying the effect of money affecting political outcomes, the rich wouldn’t spend their money on media and PACs if it didn’t work would they?
> Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches group to influence CA politics
I'm talking about the actual issue being discussed! Garry Tan isn't launching a group to influence Wyoming politics.
> I mean I just don't see how you get to this opinion after any real review of the evidence.
Graybeard here: took me a while to get it, but, usually these are chances to elucidate what is obvious to you :)* ex. I don't really know what you mean. What does the California state government look like if rich techies had even more influence? I can construct a facile version (lower taxes**) but assuredly you mean more than that to be taken so aback.
* Good Atlas Shrugged quote on this: "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check [ED: or share, if you've moseyed yourself into a discussion] your premises."
** It's not 100% clear politicians steered by California techies would lower taxes ad infinitum.
System is broken af. Politicians don’t want to reign in on campaign financing because it will hurt their own re-election and campaign fundraising.
Republicans have bought/installed the SCOTUS which allowed for favorable decision in Citizens United v FEC.
This corporation dominated landscape is quite awful. Corporations have more rights than woman right now.
Citizens United was the correct decision. I don't understand how you can legitimately restrict political activity. The constitution contains the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Why should certain groups of people not have this right? The constitution also contains the right to freedom of the press. Why should the government get to decide who gets to exercise this right?
Every other country on earth has spending limits, the constitution isn’t perfect and it’s being dismantled by the current regime. Maybe it could be updated to say covering up for pedo billionaires should carry extremely harsh sentences, for example…
Because democracy is "one person one vote", not "one dollar one vote".
Around the same time Citizens United was decided, we also got McCutcheon v. FEC, which invalidated campaign contribution limits basically completely. If we take the logic of Citizens United at its word - that money is speech - then letting someone drop billions of dollars to change an election is like firing a sonic weapon at a bunch of protesters to silence them. So, right off the bat, we have a situation where protecting the "speech" of the rich and powerful directly imperils the speech of everyone else.
But it gets worse. Because we got rid of campaign financing limitations, there has been an arms race with campaign funding that has made all speech completely, 100% pay-to-play. We have libre speech, but not gratis speech.
This isn't even a problem limited to merely political speech. Every large forum by which speech occurs expects you to buy advertising on their own platform now before you are heard. If you, say, sell a book on Amazon or post a video on TikTok, you're expected to buy ads for it on Amazon or TikTok. You are otherwise shut out of the system because discovery algorithms want you keep you in your own bubble and you're competing with lots and lots of spam.
But it is still one person one vote. Money doesn't allow you to buy votes, but it does make it easier to persuade them. Freedom of the press has always guaranteed you the right to print or otherwise publish what you want, but it never said everyone will have the same amount of printing presses or the same amount of ink. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you an audience.
You think you are reducing the influence of the rich, but you are actually just raising the price of entry. A millionaire can donate to a PAC and buy TV ads, but a billionaire can buy or start a newspaper, TV station, or social media network. What are you going to do then, tell the newspapers what they are allowed to print?
Are you saving that an organization should be able to put together a documentary to criticize Trump and his supporters? Because that’s what Citizen’s United allowed. If you don’t support that, then the criticism will only come from rich individuals.
Exactly.
We should tax billionaires away.
Taxes exist to fund the government which exists to solve collective action problems. I despise your attitude that taxes are a tool to punish people you don't like. I find it to be morally repugnant and I will always side with the billionaires defending themselves against people like you no matter often you repeat the word "bootlicker."
> Taxes exist to fund the government which exists to solve collective action problems.
Wealth inequality, billionaires trying to skew politics… kind of a problem that needs collective action.
Wait, are you suggesting we _shouldn't_ treat billionaires as a collective action problem to be dealt with via policy? So you're suggesting what, individual violence?
> we need to get money out of politics.
We need to get the power out of politics.
Politics is about deciding who gets to exercise power and what they get to do with it. Politics detached from power is just pointless squabbling.
So how about exercising less power?
i dont see how that would change the ultimate "money grants too much power"
if the government exerts less democratic power, money will still exert too much capitalist power
It's not, since voluntary transactions can happen as a result of said squabbling without resorting to the violence of 'power.' Maybe we need more of that and less of ramming decisions down the throats of the powerless.
Yeah I sometimes think you could have a government you select, e.g. each state could have its own rules and laws and the federal government should not have the power to overrule them. Then you could choose if you wanted immigration or lower taxes or whatever, seems like a good system who can suggest it?
Yes the 10th amendment was supposed to ensure a lot of that that but it was largely waived away during the progressive era and in acts related to the civil war. But cuz slavery for some reason it also has to apply to all sorts of other things that have nothing to do with slaves or even civil rights (in the sense of negative rights) and you are racist or love slaves or something for pointing this out.
Not really a solution for large-scale collective action problems.
All reactions are taking this comment seriously, but I think it can be also read as "money equals power" (which I strongly believe - there's some power without money and sometimes money without power, but mostly those two are fungible) - and then pointing to the futility of getting money out of politics, since politics is about power.
But really what people mean is "prevent paid political advertisement of all kinds", which seems about as hard as "get rid of all kinds of advertisement" - at some point, you're back to power, communication, attention.
Hard problems. Probably there's a reason all ancient democracies did not survive.
I wish we had direct voting on important decisions
This has proven to be a disaster in practice. See also: California.
It’s working fantastic here in Switzerland.
Wrong.
It has actually been scientifically proven otherwise in crowd theory : with the right setup, the crowd is more effective to take a good decision that the top1 best decision maker.
Exemple : a crowd playing chess may beat the top1 chess player, even though the crowd individually cannot beat him.
A crowd playing chess can absolutely not beat a top chess player.
Yea in fact this thing has been done before multiple times as exhibitions (Kasparov vs 50k, Carlsen vs 132k, etc).
And yea, no surprise, the masses do not win. Even when in the latter case, a huge chunk of the 132k was obviously using stockfish cranked to the gills (though the did get a draw out of it?).
Brexit.
Hell no, California has this and it’s a catastrophe. Prop 13 is one of the worst policies enacted by a democratic polity in the 20th century, and has been wrecking the state for decades.
So do you believe in democracy or not? And I do not mean this as a loaded question because the value of democracy is a legitimately arguable point. If the majority of Californians want caps on property tax, then I do not see a good argument that they should not get it that is also compatible with democracy.
Democracy can mean a lot of things: direct, representative, etc. Voting for yourself is different from voting for your constituents. Ideally, the latter will also consider community effects.
If you put a question to the electorate like 'should we tax only people whose last name begins with an X, Y or Z?', it's liable to pass.
Nobody really advocates for Direct Democracy. It isn't viable: 'tyranny of the majority' etc.
Most Western governments are Liberal Democracies - where some issues aren't subject to a vote - partly so that the mob can't persecute outnumbered subgroups.
If majority of people in a country want to persecute an outnumbered subgroup, then what prevents the majority of delegates wanting the same as well?
You have an implicit assumption that the delegates are going to be smarter and better people that are going to lie to the majority to get elected and then will valiantly protect the subgroup.
But that have not happened anywhere. In fact in every case it is the delegates who organize persecution of various subgroups, even in situations when the share of population truly wanting to persecute subgroup is far from being a majority.
I refuse to believe that anyone reading this is incapable of remembering at least five historical examples in which the public was happy to treat an unpopular group unjustly.
There is no foolproof system that can guard against it, however declaring 'rights' and delegating the responsibility to protect them to the judiciary at least is a mitigation.
That is highly unlikely. People may seem stupid when acting as a larger group, but I think part of that is that our current democracy doesn't require much engagement. If we moved to direct democracy then imo we'd get some bad policies that would quickly be reverted once the effects become apparent, and then voters are going to be a bit more careful. For example, "only taxing people whose last name begins with X, Y, Z", I don't think voters would currently be that dumb, but if they were then how many weeks of zero tax money would it take to get that undone?
I can't muster the enthusiasm to debate this. There are centuries of literature on this topic involving people smarter and more eloquent than me. The following wikipedia entry has examples you may find more persuasive than mine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
Democracy != Direct voting.
It’s never meant that.
So people can “believe” in Democracy just fine and still think direct voting is bad.
Also, Democracy doesn’t even mean “if a majority of people believe X, therefore X”.
False, cf. ancient Athens.
Why do you think that similar law could not be passed without direct vote? The problem is not direct democracy but the fact that it is being done in a wrong way.
Voting should be done without anonymity, online. One should be able to either vote for everything manually, or delegate the vote to any other person.
If some change is supported by 100% of the voters it should be implemented immediately. But if smaller percent supports the change, then there needs to be a vesting time (e.g. 10 years for 60%, infinity for 50%+1).
This allows people to either trade support for policies (i'll vote yes for your initiative if you vote for mine, or give me money), or to get high level of support locally and try out various laws on local level.
The same site that manages voting should also show detailed budget of city/state/country, where people can see where their taxes are being spent and should be able to redirect the money they have paid.
Dumbest idea ever.
Billionaire goes: get $10 off at my store, called Scamazon, for these votes (lists votes). And naturally even the $10 is manipulated to be recouped with dynamic pricing.
Having some random vote is hardly direct democracy, though.
Parts of the US is mature enough to implement a similar system as Switzerland, which has a superior form of democracy.
Prop 13 is a nothingburger. Median homeownership period in california vs nationally is only like 2 years longer. It shouldn't be affecting costs that much in other words since median property is back to market rate every 15 years or so.
And what costs are we talking about anyhow? Tax shortfalls for local government? Decades later that has been rectified through other taxes and funding mechanisms and we still get new roads and schools in california. Housing costs increasing? I would say the fact that cities today are zoned within a few percentage points of present population levels (vs zoned for 10x present population levels pre 1970) is the actual source of that sucking sound from the chest.
That's not really the point. Prop 13 is known to be a huge disincentive to efficient transfers in home ownership - people will strenuously avoid selling their homes and buying something that's closer to the kind of shelter they actually prefer, because they might have to pay a higher assessed property tax if they did that. These effects are very real and well documented.
Prop 13 wouldn't lead to those incentives if property prices didn't increase so aggressively. Once again comes back to zoning as the root cause. Is prop 13 bad? Only in the face of inappropriate zoned capacity, it seems. Which begs the question of what prop 13 removal would even do in such a situation? Zoning capacity isn't changing so prices will still go up beyond what is affordable for the median worker. The only thing changing is people won't be insulated from that rise at the end of their life when they are on a fixed income is all. Does that solve the housing crisis? No, but it does ensure more people are regularly displaced from their homes.
Property prices are increasing so aggressively because assessed property taxes are low and people are significantly deterred from selling.
Prop 13 isnt bad. Its all the money pumped in to political advertisements that turn this from "1 person, 1 vote" to "1$, 1 vote".
And that goes to the heart of the matter, that corporations aren't people, no matter what some court or law says. And they should be heavily restricted on speech. (I include spending money on political adverts and similar.)
Humans can commit crimes worthy of the death penalty. Wells Fargo shouldn't exist due to their decade long fraud. Nor should United Health Care, for actively denying humans their health coverage until the humans died. Or countless other cases.
When a company gets "killed", and all assets get assigned to the wronged, I'll start to believe they are humans. Haven't seen that yet. Likely won't ever, in the USA.
If you think you've incurred damages due to a company's illegal actions, you can go to court already. If the company is liable and its assets do not suffice to pay full compensation, it enters bankruptcy proceedings and ultimately gets dissolved, just like you're saying.
15 years ago, I worked at Walmart. Note the poverty income, no unions, no real savings. Basically average US citizen, not the HN bubble.
I got injured with a malfunctioning pallet jack. Went to ER and got Xrays.
Week later, was fired. My paperwork explicitly said I got fired for getting injured at work and costing the company money.
Went to 6 different lawyers. Had to ask for pro-bono. I couldn't afford a lawyer.
All refused. Why? None of them could deal with a Walmart lawsuit. None.
I had them dead-to-rights with a wrongful termination. Double manager signature. Even recorded their termination on my phone, on the sly (in single party state). They even admitted to forging a different manager. None of it matters.
Courts can just overturn direct vote anyway like they did prop 8.
Power exists whether you like it or not and when power gets away from decisionmaking you just generate a power vacuum.
Power needs to be placed in the hands of better decision-makers. That starts from getting money out of politics.
What is money if not a proxy of power? If money didn't buy power, no one would be interested in attaining billions in wealth.
What is politics if not a means of exercising power? If there were no power in politics, no one would be interested in politics.
That power is supposed to be exercised to enact the will of the people, for the good of the people.
Is it? In the US, our constitution is setup to prevent absolute democracy from occurring. The idea of an absolute democracy where the government always acts on the will of the majority as an ideal is hardly a universal value.
How does a government without power work? How do you take power out of the process of governing?
Yes, that is my point. You can't take power out of politics, and you can't take money (which is one form of power) out of politics. Best you can do is manage it.
"no one would be interested in attaining billions in wealth"
Sounds good to me.
They are obviously related, but it is a very loose correlation. If a billionaire (who does not pay me) gives me an order I will laugh in his face. If a traffic cop gives me an order, I will comply.
> (who does not pay me)
You're answering a comment saying money is power by saying that it isn't if it's not used?
Even if the billionaire doesn't pay you, they can pay someone else to force you to do what they want.
Who is he going to pay an how is that person going to force me to comply?
Pinkertons. And the US national guard.
Its happened before, over labor disputes and unionization.
A LOT of people died, both in anti-union and union sides.
And thats why we have, well, had, the National Labor Relations Board. It was to make a peaceful way to negotiate worker rights.
Maybe if it did go away completely, and the violence comes back, that people in power would be reminded WHY we had union structure and law in the federal government to begin with. It wasn't for the warm fuzzies.
Not to mention Lawyers.
The civil court system is basically a way for wealthy people and corporations to use money to silence and/or coerce behavior out of less wealthy people. If Elon Musk or Larry Ellison woke up one day and decided to sue me, and defending myself would cost 100X my net worth, I'm probably just going to give up and do whatever they want me to do.
There still is something to it. You could bring your billion to Dubai and it might buy you some pardons from personal indiscretions and a cadre of quasi-slaves but the monarchs would never grant you real systemic political power.
>What is money if not a proxy of power?
for a lot of people in the newly rich class, a kind of virtual currency best compared to a high score in a videogame. Symbolic and representing status. It's why when they attempt to translate it into power this particular class thankfully fares fairly badly, from the article:
"TogetherSF, a similar nonprofit backed by venture capitalist Michael Moritz, crashed and burned after the 2024 elections when its $9.5 million ballot measure to reform the city charter lost to a progressive counter-measure backed by about $117,000."
Once you figure that out, get to work on the flying pig.
> we need to get money out of politics
Not really possible. There's at least 40 more years of citizens united before any practical ability to restrict money in politics becomes constitutional again.
> we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy
Not true. The plurality that voted in the current administration are generally pleased with the state of things. Democracy is working as expected. It was close, but this is what more people wanted.
This is one of the guys that thinks we should eliminate voting because he thinks him, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos all know "better" than the people.
I don't think the elite think all voters are dumb more like they think they're easy to manipulate to vote for something (which is largely true). Anecdotally I easily get manipulated by the type of information I consume. I occassionally catch it after the fact or a conversation with others but there's no telling how much I've just accepted that's manipulated.
From that angle it's a game of who has the money, power, and diatribution to enact this manipulation.
Twitter being a prime example. Is Elon "right"? Maybe but the main point is it doesn't matter as he has the distribution.
If you have money but low to no distribution -> you do what gary is doing. Maybe he'd be interested in removing rights to vote but someone like Zuck would NOT because he has outsized ability to influence as he sees fit.
Praying for Garry's downfall used to be a hobby of mine but these days it seems like it will take up less of my time as he has become aligned with my other enemies, reducing my number of enemy agents at play at any given time, or at least the number of attack vectors they have on me.
This reads as completely schizophrenic
There is a certain type of person whose brain is completely broken by the internet. Hope OP finds help.
I thought it was hilarious, a tongue in cheek
You must know nothing about Garry Tan. Actually OPs, rant is quite reasonable.
Garry Tan aligns himself with Genociders and genocide supporters.
The title was changed, but "dark money" has a specific meaning in US politics that is now lost:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_money
Such a group is not a PAC or a Super PAC, but anonymizes donors. It can be used as a vehicle to transfer money to a Super PAC while only naming the dark money group and keeping the donors secret.
He is probably going after Ro Khanna, who comes across as a pretty decent rep (he and Massie got the Epstein files released):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro_Khanna
Based on this warning from Garry to Ro re: wealth tax
https://finviz.com/news/277038/y-combinators-garry-tan-warns...
So this appears to be all about the wealth tax and taken down anyone who supports it.
AIPAC is also mad at Ro so it seems that Garry Tan can find common cause with them:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GRXZqcQiU/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Ironically Ro Khanna was the tech backed candidate a decade ago when he ran against Mike Honda.
A wealth tax is a great idea if your goal is to make everyone a whole lot poorer especially in the longer term, and not very much otherwise. It's pretty much saying that you want pure populist envy to be the priority, over and to the detriment of long-term prosperity.
Where does the money go? Facebook and Google ads?
A lot of it does. And it also goes to companies making inauthentic social media content. This is what modern election campaigns are.
How many AI deepfake companies has y-combinator invested in?
Which would be hilarious if it weren’t so infuriating.
All they can talk about is how they’re all going to leave the state if it happens, but then are more than willing to try to spend more stopping it than they would just contributing their fair share in taxes.
Don’t like it? Great, leave - but stop trying to buy elections.
YC is always talking about how important SF is (due to hand waiving reasons like "innovation environment," I would find it highly ironic if a wealth tax was all it took to get top YC people to abandon the state.
Everyone loves deciding what their "fair share" of other people's net worth (not even income!) is.
Sorry, but the state just confiscating 5% of someone's net worth (unrealized or not) is absolute madness, and rightfully opens up questions about slippery slope, how "temporary" they claim this to be, and so on.
It's not surprising they are leaving the state or using their resources to try to stop it.
Your statement is ignoring the systematic growing inequality in the US between the ultra wealthy and everyone else. And the use of those funds to influence politics (because of Citizens United, etc) to create polices that benefit themselves - it is for the ultra wealthy a virtuous circle:
https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/
This is not a normal state of affairs.
This tax would do effectively nothing to address growing inequality between billionaires and everyone else.
I see, so you're suggesting 5% is not enough? I'm listening...
You could confiscate 100% of the wealth of every billionaire in this country and it wouldn’t fund the government for an entire year. It is and always will be a government spending issue, the government can’t help itself but to just steal more from the taxpayers to support their bloat.
Has anyone checked the Epstein files for his name?
oof, that incidentally also means he's about hiding the epstein files and avoiding accountability for its villains
A wealth tax is not an obviously great idea. It’s worth having a better public debate on that topic.
I bet Garry Tan will find that going after him for the wealth tax won’t poll well so he will find a different angle. Thus it won’t be a debate about a wealth tax, it will just be the standard make your opponent look bad in order to unseat him.
For example: https://nypost.com/2026/02/01/us-news/stunning-number-of-cal...
Ok, so what is the problem here? Why can't Gary Tan engage in standard political activity like anybody else? This is his fundamental right as a citizen of a democracy.
The issue is unlimited spending. Rich people can tilt the political system to benefit themselves by their ability to spend unlimited and then push for things that enrich themselves like lower taxes that doesn’t benefit society at large.
The biggest example of this in the US is the health system that is more expensive and has worse outcomes than other countries. There is a huge and growing gap in the us between ultra wealthy and the rest of the population and it is a virtuous circle for the ultra wealthy with their ability to spend unlimited in politics.
The more money you have, the more means you have to engage in political activity not like anybody else but with a weight which far exceeds one
So what? The constitution guarantees you equal rights under the law and an equal vote in each election. It does not guarantee you equal political influence. Same as you have the right to freedom of speech and of the press, but you are not guaranteed an audience.
So some people might feel slightly annoyed by this.
I don't know if you don't find this absurd, but a bunch of pedophile protecting people have shaped the actual presidency and are continuing to do so. Feeling slightly annoyed is the least offensive way I could put it
And you have every right to express that annoyance without fear of prosecution. I find the Epstein affair to be very underwhelming. Running a prostitution ring is criminal, and rich men (or poor men) fucking a 17 year old (or 18 year old) prostitute is gross, but not particularly surprising, and isn't even pedophilia. If Epstein had been in Nevada and not the US Virgin Islands and his youngest girls were a year older, it wouldn't even be illegal.
The files I'm referring to aren't talking about 17yo people, and you know this very well
Who's stopping him? Are we all required to be cheering him on for it too?
No one is stopping him, but they would be if the people in this comment section had their way. You are absolutely not required to cheer him on, and in fact you have the right to oppose him. But that isn't happening here. Nobody in these comments is exercising their first amendment rights to argue against any of his political opinions. They are using their first amendment rights to argue that the government should use its monopoly to restrict Gary Tan's right to make his argument at all.
I am not seeing that anywhere from the OP in the chain of comments you replied to.
I’ve heard about a borrowing tax as an alternative, because that’s when paper money becomes spending money
I would love to see that discussed
I want to do some improvements on my house. So I take out a home equity loan. Oops! Actually since my house is worth $500K more than when I bought it, now I have to pay $100K to the government since the gain is now realized by using the asset as collateral!
The only reasonable argument I can think of is that the fantastic wealth accumulated at the top was substantially driven by the $37 trillion of debt the USA finds itself in. And it needs to be clawed back somehow.
It's actually much simpler than that. We need to pay down the debt, and because the rich have most of the money they are going to need to do most of the paying down whether or not they directly are responsible for it or benefited from it. It's simple math. But what does this have to do with a wealth tax? The entire concept is stupid. Income an capital gains rates can be increased.
I feel like public discussion of this has been outgoing since around 12 years ago when Thomas Piketty's book came out.
I don't really see any other solution, can you explain it?
The ultra-rich are taking too great a share of every nations wealth. And they keep taking more.
Taxes are the only option to redistribute wealth.
Or are you talking about enabling strong unions and anti-monopoly laws with teeth to reverse the growth?
As I doubt Garry's in favour of that either.
Taking? From who? They got this money by appropriation and not by mutually agreed upon transactions?
> dark-money group to influence California politics
Does this mean what I think it means: basically legalized bribery?
US: %country% has corrupt political system
Also US: it’s not bribes if we call it PACs, lobbying, and what have you
hate to see that tech leaders getting into politics
Well on the bright side it's a complete mask off moment for the tech community. I think it is good for these people to expose themselves to the public. They will show you who they really are if you let them.
“If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects”. -- Louis Brandeis
For one person in the tech community. And apparently he was already "out?" (The article goes into his history in supporting political causes.)
Or do you hate that their politics don't align with yours?
Everyone should hate people that believe in undemocratic principles.
Hot take: what has democracy done for us lately? Besides re-electing Donald Trump?
If something can't go on forever, it will eventually stop. That applies to any system that gives stupid people the same political voice as the rest of the electorate. I mean, it seems kind of obvious, doesn't it?
Ask yourself which class can gain something by having trump as president rather than any other democrat
(it's not the working class)
Exactly. So why'd the "working class" vote for him?
Because the ones owning social medias, newspapers (and whatnot) pushed heavily for it
And why did they give up their agency to these shadowy media oligarchs...?
Answer: because they're stupid.
The ones who weren't stupid were impossible to herd to the polls, or at least a lot more difficult. As a result they were outnumbered. Any system that removes the influences you cite will leave the same stupid voters in place, ready to fall for the next con man who comes along.
The problem isn't the money. The problem is the power. I'm tired of giving stupid people so much power over my life.
Nah, I don't even know what Garry's politics are. I hate that there's so much money in politics in general.
Fair enough.
Their very existence doesn't align with my politics, or any decent person's politics for that matter.
Smart, successful people offering products and services that lots of people want does not align with your politics? What are your politics?
People extracting value from labor to enrich themselves at the expense of society and then using those riches to further corrupt society, to the point where a few dudes own most of the country does not align with my politics.
That's why I'm a socialist and I would invite anyone who thinks things might not be going in the right direction to consider that as well.
it's that their money buys outsized influence and erodes the concept of democracy
Why is that?
I'd prefer to see more of them do so, personally. That said, to watch Tan wading into a local fistfight about school curriculum and housing zoning and whatnot in the age of ICE abduction, targetted political prosecution and wanton macroeconomic regulatory chaos seems... frustrating.
I mean, I kinda agree with him about most of the centrist stuff. But really, Gary? This is what you need to be spending your money and time on?
Garry seems motivated by being against a wealth tax and this is also likely the reason other ultra rich people will donate to his dark money fund:
https://finviz.com/news/277038/y-combinators-garry-tan-warns...
Garry is chummy with musk and trump. His motivation here is to protect the pedophile class.
Wow. So it's not even good enough that he agrees with you. You demand that he also prioritizes in the same order as you?
I dunno about "demand". But sure, I think most of us would prefer people prioritize like we do. And in particular many of us would view this kind of hobby project as tone deaf and tell people about that in public.
My freedom to tell Tan (or you) that he's being an idiot stems from the same place as his freedom to spend his own money on what he wants.
Garry has tweeted about the violence his peers have had to endure in SF so I don't blame him for putting his money where is mouth is.
Perhaps he should reflect on why they deserve this violence, instead of giving people more reason for violence against him.
An Indian American man deserved to be smashed in the back of the head with a hammer?
I haven't heard about this. What's the story here?
When was this??
Every single article I looked at seems to be generated from a tweet. The latest is a blatant attempt at promoting one of YC's privacy invasive investments Flock: https://garryslist.org/posts/atlanta-solved-35-homicides-wit...
That tells you all you need to know about how trustworthy the site is.
> The privacy absolutists will tell you that license plate cameras are “Orwellian.” But here’s what I know: unsolved crime means more innocent people get hurt and maimed and killed. Flock has audit trails. There’s accountability. The people who benefit from keeping murders unsolved aren’t victims—they’re criminals.
jesus christ. assuming he's not going to start syndicating this, who is this even pandering to?
Money is like poison in politics
At this point it's just boring to have another rich asshole using government to protect their own interests. There's no substance or principle to it, it's just whatever policies makes CA more favorable to other rich assholes.
shouldn't we call this bright money
Setting aside the merits of this, complaining about big money in politics while your site proudly displays a Twitter link is a bit of a face-palm.
Save us, please!
"Garry's List" is just straight up AI slop. This is a window into the coming AI-enabled era of astroturfing from wealthy individuals for their pet causes.
Guess we know where those 15KLOCs/day went.
This looks concerning but I'm withholding judgement for now so that he can clarify this first on his side instead of jumping into conclusions.
Well, this is helpful.
Now I can refer to this list to let me know who, and what, to vote against...
He's been posting extremely stilted political content lately, in addition to unchecked AI evangelism.
I really, really hate that our future has ended up in the hands of people like him, Andreessen, Thiel, Musk, etc.
> “I want to work to ensure Californians know the importance of investment and entrepreneurship to our state’s current and future economy,” Tan wrote.
I know a dog whistle when i see one, didn't have to read much further but did anyway.
Cool.
This won't end well for the oligarchs. Just ask the Ancien Regime or the Zar what happens if you keep pushing too hard.
To me, tech entrepreneurship looks more like some form of "lemon socialism." It feels more centrally planned than ever, and a company's success has much more to do with your relationships with capital than anything else. It's why we're seeing so much money invested into a bunch of similar takes on AI. Founders with a real vision of the future aren't really accepted into VC that has almost wholly accepted the FOMO strategy of investment.
I used to hold a lot of respect for Paul Graham and his essays, but I've realized his stances on things are pretty elementary, and largely come back to his ego or wealth management. People like Graham and Tan don't seem to really care about human flourishing, and they certainly don't seem to have any coherent vision of the future. Graham, like Andreessen, was technically good enough during a veritable tech gold rush, and Graham's lieutenants like Tan and Altman were lucky more than anything--just in the right place at the right time versus having started anything of value.
I am *absolutely* cynical and jaded when it comes to tech nowadays, so no need to call me out there. These people remind me of the high modernists, that tech will solve all problems, and we don't have to care too much as to how we solve those problems. Just handwave, and AI will solve all problems. But I think how we solve problems matters, and the entrepreneurship meritocracy that Tan and Graham allude to does not exist, and it never did.
I just find it abhorrent that while 15% of American households are food insecure, a company like Anthropic spent millions on a superbowl ad just lamenting OpenAI's ad strategy. Or that the Trump administration dropped a FTC case against Pepsi and Walmart for colluding to price out grocery competition. Or that Facebook and Google have been shown to have pushed for apps to addict people to their slop content. Or that tech capex this year alone rivals the Louisiana Purchase or the amount America spent on building out the railroads[1].
We're not solving the right problems because capital is entirely disconnected from the every day reality of Americans in this country. But by all means, let's aim to replace 50% of white collar workers with AI and handwave that prices will come down.
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-spending-tech-companies-compa...
It's pretty simple: you don't get to that kind of wealth without having a few screws loose in the ethics department. There are some exceptions but they are just there to confirm the rule.
It won't work. The Trump admin has so thoroughly betrayed its voters that independent voters no longer want anything to do with billionaires like the all-in people lying to them for 4 years before an election.
You had your chance, it is gone now.
Garry Tan desperately wants to become Elon Musk/Peter Thiel so badly. Quite pathetic.
The billionaire scum class really want to make guillotines great again. Keep pushing us.
It's way too early to fix California. The average California voter, which HN is a good sampling of by the way, really believes that California is fine, and that there's no corruption or grift, and that they can tax billionaires more without them simply leaving the state (because CA is magical and unique (it's the 4th largest economy in the world, don't you know!) and they'll come crawling back to be a part of it). It's going to take awhile for people to change. As the saying goes "science progresses one funeral at a time". People put ideology above the evidence in front of their eyes. (That "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command" Orwell quote is making the rounds, which is ironic because most people don't need a party to tell them to disbelieve uncomfortable facts!) We have to wait for a new generation to grow up with the visible corruption to fully internalize it. Then it can be fixed. I can't help but think that Tan's efforts would be better spent trying to get a startup scene going somewhere where you can park your car without getting the windows smashed.
Yet another terrible step toward total oligarchy. Get the fuck out of politics, tech ghouls.
Among the many weird things that the U.S. have but real democratic countries don't, the most promiscuous of them is this flow of private money into politics.
Campaign financing, U.S. style, is just legalized bribing. In any healthy democracy it would be illegal. In the U.S. is just the way things are.
Watching things from outside, it feels like the US is a pay-to-win democracy. It's hard to say where exactly the line between lobbying vs. corruption is drawn.
Back in my country, the bribes are illegal and mostly untraceable.
Money will go into politics. Nobody can stop this, and it should be out in the open and traceable.
Obviously, no bribe at all is the best, but is this happening anywhere?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying#Lobbying_by_country
I don't know if I agree or not with his views, but the fact that he's moving from complaining about something, to doing something about his beliefs, has convinced me to move from a negative to a significantly positive view of him, as a person; to reiterate, regardless of whether I agree with said views.
The will to fight for what one believes in - I think we can all agree that is an admirable human trait that would result, for those who do follow his views, in him being labeled as a hero and defender of people's rights.
Bravo, Garry.
Bravo Garry, net worth $x00m, having the integrity to go after public school teachers.
Mussolini moved to doing something different after directing the socialist journal Avanti
It just wasn't for the wellbeing of the rest of Italy what he did
You know it just polarizes, and nothing more, when bringing up fascists as a counter argument when it is not punctually relevant.
I'm not making a comparison, the opposite. Saying that "somebody doing something for its beliefs is good period" means nothing
The Mission Local is a good source for hyperlocal Bay Area news, but it does have a strong SF leftist/progressive political tilt in most of its articles, and Gary Tan is a favorite boogieman for these types. Here's what they have to say about his malign influence in the article:
> But the operation is also a media venture: Garry’s List started with a blog pillorying public-sector unions as “special interests,” attacking the ongoing teachers’ strike, and denouncing the proposed billionaire tax.
- Public sector unions are special interests. This is a plain fact.
- The current teacher's strike in San Francisco, even if it succeeds, will only push the district into insolvency, prompting a state takeover. The state will then cut much more aggressively. Maybe this would be a good thing though, although probably not what the union intended. Advocates of the strike are literally demanding the district spend its reserves on a couple years of raises.
- I'm certainly no billionaire, but the proposed tax will do nothing more than push the extremely small and mobile group of billionaires to take their business elsewhere. It's unlikely to raise tax revenues over the long run.
The last two points might happen - how do you know? I often see "it will backfire" as a counterpoint w/o any evidence.
> the proposed tax will do nothing more than push the extremely small and mobile group of billionaires to take their business elsewhere
This is often claimed but has yet to be shown to actually be true. Billionaires want to live in the nicest places with the best amenities just like everyone else.
But let's pretend for the moment that it is true. Good. Billionaires are not a net positive influence anywhere.