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.
> Garry’s List is structured as a 501(c)4 nonprofit, a tax designation that lets the group bankroll campaigns while affording donors a measure of secrecy they would not enjoy if giving directly. They are traditionally known as “dark-money” groups because they can spend on elections without revealing all their donors.
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
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.
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.
https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/
This is not a normal state of affairs.
So given the government will still collect taxes for every foreseeable year, I ask you, what impact would it have if we used it not to fund the government but to pay down some of the debt?
Confiscating all of the assets of the nation’s billionaires wealth would yield 6-8T, depending on what kind creative accounting is done in anticipation of a wealth tax.
So yeah it would help reduce the debt slightly but doesn’t address the bigger culprit - spending and government inefficiency and bloat
1. I see that being 14 trillion. That would in fact fund the government for a year. even for 2 years.
2. taxes aren't about achieving perfect equality. But it's in part to incentivize people to not hoard wealth and spend it in the company. Few of the busnesses in the 50's/60's paid close to the tax brackets they had back then (Which would give modern billionaires a heart attack, despite that being "the times to return to).
Even if it WAS 14 trillion, the fact that such an insane measure wouldn’t even fully fund the entire government for two years shows you can’t just confiscate your way out of things. It is spending.
And I did engage with the real point. Even if it WAS 14 trillion dollars, that wouldn't fund the government for 2 years. And then what? Why is the solution for government bloat and inefficiency always just taking more?
You did not and still are not. This isnt about making billionaires cover the entire country's budget. Its about making sure power doesn't consolidate in any one person.
Do I really need to repost the other 80% of my comment (the entire 2.point?) Which part of "high corporate taxes mean business owners invest in business" needs clarification? Are we suggesting that the tax codes in which the baby boomers boomed under did not in fact make America Great?
I’m discussing a proposed broad wealth tax on unrealized gains and assets.
The tax rates of the 50s were high, but were filled with loopholes and deductions in that the effective tax rate that was actually paid was much lower.
There are arguments to be made how much those policies contributed to the boom of that decade, but those are separate to arguments about the practical, legal, or efficiency concerns with just imposing a 5% levy across all assets and net worth
Yes, thanks for reiterating my main point.
Now if we use that same mindset and apply it to a wealth tax...
Hence my main point. Taxes aren't all about extraction of money, they also help to nudge people to do things they normally wouldn't do. So nudging them to actually help the area they are in is really powerful.
Or they can leave. If so: good. Make room for those who do want to innovate and not extract money from the people (and more beach space).
Not all billionaires are "job creators", especially given the actions taken the last few years. That's why some of the legitimate "millionaire flights" that do happen don't necessarily impact the way that's predicted on paper.
Then where will the state go to make up the revenue shortfall? Either raising taxes on other groups or cutting services.
I’m finished discussing this matter, let’s revisit this if and when this actually gets passed so we can see how much revenue was actually generated (or if it even survived legal challenges)
Should we move on to anyone with a net worth over $1M and start stealing their assets too?
They spend it, it gets injected back into the economy and the economy grows. It doesn’t sit in a hidden bank account to avoid paying taxes on it.
What are you talking about? Current administration is doing exactly that. Cutting taxes for the wealthy and adding all those loses to national debt at record level increments. No fiscal responsibility at all.
Total fantasy and essentially poor and middle-class funds the rich through their taxes (and government money printer), not to mention how mega companies like Walmart constantly underpays workers that those workers then need to survive on government subsidies, yet another funding for the rich.
This is happening with every USA government (AFAIK especially/only republican ones) since Reagan.
EDIT: also as sibling comment said - poor people spend money instantly, returning it back to economy. America was already taxing wealthy through the teeth years ago - that helped fund incredible amounts of infrastructure and let built strongest middle class (probably in history) for decades. Now all that wealth is just accumulating in someones back accounts. Trickling any day now...
Except they weren’t. Those lovely 90% tax rates from the 1950s everyone on Reddit loves to bring up weren’t really paid by anyone. The effective tax rate paid after the loopholes and deductions was much lower, closer to 40%
why? The federal government is taking around 22% from me this year and I'm in a low bracket. If I had the money from my last full time job in tech it'd be 24%. You're saying billionaires shouldn't pay the state they reside in 5% more?
Tanentially, that's only one bracket despite it being triple the salary. gotta love that part time minimum wage work in CA still pushes me that close to my financial peaks.
HNW don’t have their net worth sitting in a pool of cash like Donald Duck as much as Reddit would like to believe. Its property, company stock, any unrealized gains in different equities, etc.
to have to go through the administrative burden of valuing all that, and then attempting to liquidate at some reasonable market value just to pay one time levy (allegedly lol) is insane, and will rightfully be challenged in court
it is only “unrealized” when they have to pay taxes. but walk into a bank and ask for a loan (which is of course what they do) and all of a sudden that shit is all “realized” and here’s millions of dollars to ya…
I think there should be some sort of tax penalty to borrowing against assets as a sort of infinite money glitch.
I do not support wealth taxes or taxing unrealized gains (unless you get rebates for unrealized losses lol)
There SHOULD be some mechanism (idk what) to close the loophole of HNW individuals borrowing against an asset you have not sold to minimize actual income, but that doesn't mean its right, effective, or even legal to just mass tax all unrealized gains, just because this specific loophole exists currently.
So yeah, it is a separate discussion.
Cool, let's do it. We know the IRS, especially when auditing the rich tend to be one of the highest value employees of government they will sue no matter how cut and clear the tax code is anyway.
Its really weird we're on HN and we're using an excuse of "but it's hard, so let's not do it". I didn't choose tech because it was easy. Why should the government we fund be just as defeatist?
Fortunately for sanity and common sense, this proposal, if it even passes, will surely be challenged on Federal and State constitutional grounds.
Yes. Because they did not take their fair share. I'm all for proper audits (not whatever Elon Musk pretended was "fraud waste and abuse" last year).
If nothing truly comes out of it, cool. Maybe we need more laws for that. And apparently wealth taxes are popular.
https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2025/11/new-poll-shows...
>if it even passes, will surely be challenged on Federal and State constitutional grounds.
Will it be sanity if they lose and the tax is upheld?
I already said that they will file lawsuits no matter how they legislate, so nothing in my comment was actually addressed.
Insteas you're just trying to make me emphathize with a billionaire for some reason. Meanwhile, I'm almost 3 years out of my last W-2 job that I was laid off of because of these billionaires. My sympathy is gone. Tax the rich.
- PR firms that can get their policy mouthpieces on cable TV news
- Police unions to get their endorsement (a favorite of "law and order" candidates)
- TV and radio ads for preferred candidates
- Online influencers and podcasters
- Telemarketing campaigns
- and of course, "campaign contributions"
For example: https://nypost.com/2026/02/01/us-news/stunning-number-of-cal...
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.
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
Edit and I'm not referring to prostitution, you know this as well
I would love to see that discussed
The goal of a borrowing tax would be to prevent someone with a a $200 mil stock portfolio living off the "buy, borrow, die" strategy and not home equity loans on mere middle class millionaires.
Capital gains, for example, on a primary residence already have an exclusion of a certain amount. There's no reason a borrowing tax can't kick in only after one has let's say 10mil in assets or securities.
Heck, you could even exempt primary residences regardless of value, so you should be fine
edit: here's an explanation of the buy, borrow, die strategy for those who are interested https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...
Why do you think that?
I'm voting for it if it passes. Big if, though. Almost like the 1% opposed have inordinate power in politics.
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.
One reason a wealth tax is controversial and less precedented is that it taxes unrealized gains.
Another alternative would be to raise taxes on high income rather than wealth. In the 1950s people were taxed at something like 90% for every dollar over $400,000. We could go back to something like that but adjust that $400,000 to something like a couple of million, to match inflation.
This essentially puts a cap on wages. The money you make below the cap would be taxed at the same rates we pay today. Once you get above that amount, you keep most of what falls below, but the government would take almost all of what's above the cap.
I think if you do it that way you would also have to tax interest and capital gains similarly to wages. That's another loophole that's very commonly exploited in the last few decades, investment income gets taxed lower.
- government lobbying for tax codes and loopholes, made specifically to benefit them
- abuse of various systems like H1B's and even SNAP (e.g. Wal-Mart) to subsidize their lack of payment to american taxpayers
- extracting value from public research (funded by taxpayers) and creating private products for sale. Sometimes they may even try to patent such breakthroughs for themelves despite public invention
- engaging in dark patterns and anti-competitive, anti-union behavior to extract wealth in ways that would potentially be proven illegal... had they not paid off the judges
- Performing untold of, actually illegal grifts (cases like SBF are only the tip of the iceberg)
And at this rate we may have to throw in "abusing funds to protect against the most heinous criminals imaginable".
Need I go on? There's pratically no such thing as a billionaire who earned their net worth.
“If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects”. -- Louis Brandeis
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?
https://finviz.com/news/277038/y-combinators-garry-tan-warns...
What an absolute pathetic hill to die on. You have the riches to fund entire industries, explore the whole world or even beyond, to please any hedonistic pleasure you have... but many chose to do one of the 3 unthinkable things in modern humanity.
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.
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?
(it's not the working class)
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.
decades tearing down education is paying its dues. Once again, from the people who are making you feel like democracy isn't working.
>I'm tired of giving stupid people so much power over my life.
If power is money, boomers still have a lot of power. And they leveraged politics their whole lives to benefit them (even if destruction of the younger generation is a side effect)
If power is votes, then millenials should be the bloc in charge now... but we still had worse turnout than boomers. That really says something.
You can fix ignorance with education, but you can't fix stupidity.
Well the "real" cause is economy. Trump had a strong economy in term 1 until COVID. If you weren't affected by the China trade war (and many in the red states arent), you could ignore the day to day politics and think "yeah Trump is great!"
But "economy" is too generic, and I feel that phenomenon is more attributed to "ignorance".And the comfortability to remain ignorant and fall for the spin telling you "things are good". That all feels to stem from education.
Is ignorance stupidity? Sometimes. They go hand in hand.
Thinking that you won't be affected by a trade war with China, or that you will somehow come out ahead in the bargain, is as good a symptom of stupidity as any.
Either the tariffs were going to be an act of economic suicide, if implemented as originally promised by Trump, or they were going to be yet another shameless grift, designed to bring industry leaders to his door bowing and scraping and bearing gifts. Regardless, the people who voted for him won't get what they were promised, and the rest of us will be stuck with the long-term costs.
You have the order backwards. This is their exact strategy; spend decades breaking government then have the breakers say "see? government is broken!". Lack of functioning democracy got us Donald Trump.
Why do you think this year they are so gung ho on trying to disenfranchise voters for a midterm? Because they know they are cooked if democracy starts to work again. If nothing else, Mamdami's 6 weeks show exactly how a "government that works for its people" can work. Let's keep pushing for that.
We're not getting better healthcare, more and better jobs, more efficient transportation, better city infrastructure, nor more houses. We aren't even getting the cool things shown in cyberpunk dystopias. Hell, we can't even ask for them to follow the law these days.
Why would I want to support them getting into politics? There's a difference betweeen them having different thoughts on how fund, say, self drving cars (which I'm not a fan of) and then all of that above.
how about not protecting child diddlers as a bare bones start? That's not even the "on the ground" bare minimum; we're still stuck in the hole.
But let's try to meet 1% of the way first and take baby steps, okay?
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.
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
That tells you all you need to know about how trustworthy the site is.
jesus christ. assuming he's not going to start syndicating this, who is this even pandering to?
The only question is whether your city has the courage to use it.
Take Action
Share this with your city officials—demand they adopt Flock Safety
Weird tangent, but anyways: tax the rich.
Tan isn't exactly non-violet either, so more confused on the tangent:
>He once tweeted that seven of the city’s supervisors — all progressives — should “die slow, motherfuckers” in a late-night polemic. The tweet, which Tan said was a joke, prompted hateful mail and police reports.
“Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew,” he wrote in a since-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter, to his 408,000 followers during the early morning hours of Saturday. “Die slow motherfuckers.”
Tupac must have been rolling over in his grave, drunk or not this was absolute cringe and unacceptable from a public figure.
> 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.
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.
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.
I really, really hate that our future has ended up in the hands of people like him, Andreessen, Thiel, Musk, etc.
I know a dog whistle when i see one, didn't have to read much further but did anyway.
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.
Now I can refer to this list to let me know who, and what, to vote against...
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.
Yeah, my benefit of the doubt (which was already zero for a rich person in politics) is negative.
You had your chance, it is gone now.
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...
more like because data from other wealth taxes has shown that millionaires don't leave that easily. If they are, they are replaced by others
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXZMXZCY0I
>People put ideology above the evidence in front of their eyes.
It's funny that you're saying this while providing no proof that rich people leave from wealth taxes.
Individuals with a net worth of $54B left the country, led to a $594M loss in tax revenue.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...
It fell, like much of the post COVID world. But somehow, I don't think that 600m tax opportunity cost contributed to 112 billion dollar drop in GDP. And then after that it basically stayed flat (rose by 1 billion, or.2% rise)
So, not too convinced this is a net loss for society. Studies in New York (pre Mamdmi) show that more people will come in than leave if the area is desired enough.
>https://www.governing.com/finance/taxing-millionaires-will-s...
Spoilers: turns out COVID causing impact to social life impacted emigration more than any wealth tax. Then after COVID things bounced back.
I love how this goes from “there’s no evidence wealthy move” to, when presented with evidence wealthy move, “well, ok, I’m not convinced this is a net loss for society”
Keep moving those goalposts
You mean Garry, who has protested the dumbing down of schools?
Garry, who protests removing math from the curriculum?
He's "railed against progressive politicians" by supporting education and high achievement?
You know China and Asia are laughing at us, right? They do schooling right. We are so backwards.
I was bullied, beaten, sexually assaulted, name called, told to commit suicide, told I was a parentless bastard (I was adopted) in elementary and middle school by my peers. Yet the system did nothing to help me.
I was the only one in my class that tested into early algebra, I led the theater team, I won my elementary school's geography bee, and very nearly won the spelling bee (except for a teacher that unfairly disqualified me) - yet I was the problem for being smart and over-performing. The system catered to my abusers.
Do you know the amount of energy that was required to save me from the stupid public education system? It almost killed me, and it absolutely smothered my growth.
I weep for what my younger ten year old self went through. Because I know there are thousands of kids going through the same experience. It's probably worse now.
Any "progressive" that is pro-bully, anti-education is a problem.
Garry's stance:
https://x.com/garrytan/status/1650607982991011846
https://x.com/garrytan/status/1978187709169401956
https://fortune.com/2025/07/10/tech-ceo-garry-tan-y-combinat...
Garry is a stand-up guy. This is a hit piece.
Edit: -2 within minutes of posting this. I don't even understand nerds anymore. You shouldn't embrace anti-education.
From the article you linked:
“I think the value of a college education is somewhat overweighted,” Musk said in a video he later reposted on X. “Too many people spend four years, accumulate a ton of debt, and often don’t have useful skills that they can apply afterwards.”
And because some young people have already caught on—and begun exploring alternative education pathways—many companies like JPMorgan Chase and IBM have scaled back their degree requirements on job postings. Michael Bush, the CEO of Great Place to Work, predicts this trend will only continue to grow.
“Almost everyone is realizing that they’re missing out on great talent by having a degree requirement,” he previously told Fortune. “That snowball is just growing.”
And as you say, somewhat comical to lob that accusation given the current crop of tech oligarchs are firmly aligned with a overtly intellectual/anti-education movement on the right and are systematically working to dismantle higher education at this very moment.
As an aside, there has been a crazy amount of (brigaded?) flagging/downvoting of comments critical of Tan in this thread. Each time I check back I see fairly anodyne comments go back and forth from grey, with a few eventually nuked by flagging). Can't think of a similar recent example of an HN thread with the same patterns even with highly charged/controversial topics.
I’m no fan of Garry’s, but this doesn’t seem like a hit piece to me.
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.
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 rarely support business that have Wall-street tickers. I have not personally financially supported Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, ... for years.
I also do not buy any beverages from a Wall-street provider. No Coca-Cola, Pepsi, ...
Ultra wealth are just terrible humans that do not deserve respect for how they treat everyone below them in the economic ladder. I no longer want to help fund the CEO of McDonald's with his golden parachute while they support non-living wages.
Then Congress will need to pass legislation to that extent that would also survive a challenge based on the precedent established by the Citizens United case. Or a Constitutional Amendment that would weaken the 1st Amendment.
IOW, it is unlikely to happen in your lifetime. Focus your efforts elsewhere...
If this doesn’t change the United States will fail or become an oligarchy, or both, so I’d consider it.
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)
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.
Celebrities can take minutes of time stolen from an audience to make a one-sided argument for their pet political issues. It’s intolerable.
One person, one vote. Equal platform.
For example, lobbying. Or, posting on social media. Or, creating a social media. Or, controlling a social media algorithm. Or, in the Trump administration, signalling loyalty via donations with the intention of less-strict enforcement (see: every tech company right now).
You'll notice most new regulations like tariffs have specific exemptions carved out for tech companies. The reason that exists is because tech companies have quid-pro gave Trump hundreds of millions of dollars and, in exchange, they have written the laws to get themselves out of jail.
This is sort of just what happens when you allow money to buy decisions. This sucks morally, obviously, but it also sucks economically. Our economy is on the verge of imploding. The only reason it hasn't is because it's being artificially propped up by the regulatory landscape, i.e. the oligarchy is writing the laws such that they will survive, and their competition will not. This also goes hand-in-hand with protectionist policy which, surprise surprise, is the name of the game for this administration.
"Silicon Valley is bad at politics. If nothing else during Trump 2.0, I think we’ve learned that Silicon Valley doesn’t exactly have its finger on the pulse of the American public. It’s insular, it’s very, very, very, very rich. [...] I expect it to play its hand in a way that any rich 'degen' on a poker winning streak would: overconfidently and badly."
And...
“People don’t take guillotines seriously. But historically, when a tiny group gains a huge amount of power and makes life-altering decisions for a vast number of people, the minority gets actually, for real, killed.”
[0] https://substack.com/home/post/p-187592016
Nate Silver often annoys the hell out of me, but I think he's right about some of the possible political impacts of AI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy
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.
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.
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?
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
Well I've been against this regardless of owners. Honestly, this stuff is really concerning. I spent a bunch of years working in social media, and back then I was sceptical that algorithmic content selection should be regarded as publication, but given how easy it is to shift the Overton window with changes here, I think that it probably needs to happen.
I do think that this will cause lots of downstream impacts that I like, but this much power is bad in anyone's hands, regardless of how much I agree with them.
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.
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?
The abuse of absurd levels of wealth to advance one's own agenda is little more than bribery. When targeted towards those poor enough to worry about basic needs, it is effectively coercion, equally unethical as violence. (Not to mention such wealth is inevitably built on top of a a violent, exploitative system.)
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.
I'm talking about the actual issue being discussed! Garry Tan isn't launching a group to influence Wyoming politics.
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.
The government there has suffered since it went to basically one-party rule. There's no counterbalance for any bad policy ideas.
We should tax billionaires away.
If someone can genuinely generate billions in value, not just by imposing externalities on others that they then reallocate to themselves, I will be damn glad that they exist and be damn glad that the hope of getting richer keeps them at it.
The billionaires are just good at "capturing" value, and not giving back the rightfully owned share by the people.
They are leeches
We should be glad that people can get reasonable wealthy, say, $100M net worth would be more than plenty, and would ensure that: people who worked hard got a lot ($100M!!), but nobody alone or in very small numbers can try to destroy the fabric of society
Is that hard for you to understand?
The fact that at your age you're still mistaking "generating billions in value" (this doesn't mean anything) with "extracting money from the system and selfishly refusing to give some of it back in a meaningful way" means that you still have to learn about how the world really works
The truth is they are abusing a system and rigging the laws, in order to keep extracting as much as they can. If it was really a "better for everyone", why don't you think all Starbuck's barista would be "overjoyed" of going to work every day? Think for yourself one minute instead of repeating talking points from FoxNews that you never even considered for one minute
Remember, I said, ideal I proposed -- the ideal of the free market, where they can only become billionaires by entering voluntary transactions without externality to others. Under such ideal, if someone is a billionaire, it's because everyone is better off.
There have been varying shades of gray for how these play out in reality, the least shaded ones I'm generally grateful for and the most shaded ones are outright criminals that should have their fortune seized and put behind bars.
Wealth inequality, billionaires trying to skew politics… kind of a problem that needs collective action.
Taxing away billionaires is not "to punish them", it's to PROTECT society.
Billionaires don't reach this extreme amount of wealth by "work" (unless you believe in magic tales and "tooth fairy", but probably you're old enough to figure out that those "tales" of self-made man they give you on the TV are completely made-up?)
Billionaires reach those obscene amount of wealth by tricking the system. Putting themselves in a place where they're able to "capture" the money, and refuse to pay (through normal taxation) their fair share of what they owe the society
No billionaire does his business "on his own". They rely on an existing infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals for the workers), and the very work of their employees.
So it's perfectly normal at some point to say: you might have done a very interesting business and got rich, but beyond a certain "inequality threshold" (let's say $100M) we tax away all the rest to give it back to society. When you think about it, it's the ONLY thing that makes sense
We need to get the power out of politics.
if the government exerts less democratic power, money will still exert too much capitalist power
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.
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?).
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
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.
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.
Can you bring one example where the public wanted to treat a group unjustly and parliament elected by that same public have defended the group?
What I originally commented on was this:
I take issue with the implication that it's all or nothing. If we characterize anything less than a direct vote on every issue as anti-democratic, then the only people left standing will be kooks.The representative democracy has a problem with delegates not faithfully representing the people they are supposed to represent. It allows politician to be elected by campaigning for issue X which is popular with majority, then do Y and Z that almost no one wants, and then campaign again on other party undoing X, leaving people no way to communicate that they want X and not Y Z.
Social media have greatly increased the impact of this instability, the only way to improve situation is adding some elements of direct voting that would improve efficiency of communication between people and the government.
No one in this thread have suggested to completely replace everything with direct voting, and yet many people vehemently argue against that. Meanwhile there is a much more interesting discussion: how to make cooperation between people more efficient using the new technologies that we have.
1) What are a good set of rules for the system.
2) If the existing system can no longer self-correct, how can one implement a good set of rules.
'Direct vote' might address the second issue. It's not the only way, but it's better than a violent revolution.
I'm not opposed to all direct voting, but it does have inherent problems. The most obvious is that the world is far too complicated for a majority of citizens to research all the issues that affect them. In a well-functioning representative democracy, a politician would have the resources and time to understand the issues. Granted, that seldom is the case in reality.
More direct voting allows representatives to better represent people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy so it is a part of the first issue too.
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”.
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.
This is a spectacularly bad idea.
There are other parts of your scheme that are also spectacularly bad ideas, but let's just deal with this one for now.
The issue was that the poor people could vote for Gracchi brothers, but were too afraid to protect them, and one without the other only have brought to a worse outcome where they could not vote at all.
Even today if you are afraid of saying openly what policies or which politician you support, how can you hope to enact these policies?
Secret ballot started being introduced in US starting from 1888 and it did not bring any of positive changes that its supporters thought that it would.
In places where a group can intimidate majority of voters and force to vote one way, secret ballot does not help at all because that group can also fake the results. It even makes situation worse, by hiding the actual data from opposition.
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.
Eliminating the middleman makes things better already.
But more importantly with vesting time, large number of votes, ease of reversing a decision in a new vote, take $10 and vote for something that costs you more simply won't work.
Parts of the US is mature enough to implement a similar system as Switzerland, which has a superior form of democracy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds good to me.
Perhaps the billionaire can't buy your willingness to do something, but they can very much affect the material world around you, and therefore, you.
If you rent they can probably find a way to kick you out of your apartment. If someone around you _is_ willing to take an order, influencing what people around you do very much influences you. If they want something from you, and you're not willing to sell it, there will be people willing to steal it, etc.
Money very much is proxy of power. Perhaps not everything can be bought, sure. But money gives you operational range to attempt to impose your will when it doesn't.
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.
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's a lot of money in Dubai, so if your operation is to just hope to impress and be offered power without much effort on your end, 1 billion won't be enough. Perhaps 100 or 1,000 billion could work? Hard to tell.
If you only have 1 billion though, you need to play your cards in a smarter way. Who can you become friends with? What clubs and parties do you need to attend to make it happen? Which politicians and royals can you get dirt on? Who can you bribe for information? What gifts can you give to gain someones trust? 1 billion is enough operational range for this.
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."
Power needs to be placed in the hands of better decision-makers. That starts from getting money out of politics.
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.
Politics does not start and end with elections.
The underlying effects of where the money comes from seems to matter a lot more that that the money exists. If a campaign does not have money, they likely that that campaign does not have supporters. However the opposite is not true. If a campaign has money, it is still not certain whether or not that campaign has any supporters, because that money could all be coming from narrow interest groups.
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...
From 2024: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440241279659
Consistent results indicate that, yes, money tends to matter, but it's the source of that money that tends to be doing the heavy lifting.
Your earlier statement, in which you claim that “money doesn’t effect result” followed by a useless distinction of high or low info elections. You’re really trying to dance a fine line of nonsense here.
“ We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between campaign expenditure, campaign contributions and winning probability.”
From the same article you posted and the first academic journal result if you Google “studies on how money influences elections”.
So yea, sorry for providing two scholarly journal articles from two different political eras that support my thesis.
I didn’t realize that this was a bad faith discussion. Now I know.
Also, if money did not matter during elections, I doubt we'd see so much spending on them. Studies are being funded by companies and the wealthy as well, so a study or two saying money doesn't matter is not definitive proof.
You don't need to win most states in the US, nor most people. Just target 5-6 swing states and throw billions into the most wishy-washy voters in the country.
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.
You haven't even tried checking 2026 approval ratings, have you?
Losing 10 points in a year is pretty radical change. About the same change as term 1, but it did rise after that. I'm not so certain it's rising this time between the dozen Watergate level scandals in the wild.
----
Now, under the surface, the makeup of the approval is more polarized than ever. D's started abysmally and sunk to single digit levels. R's started 90 percent and fell some 4-5 points in comparison, but is still extremely high. The real dips really come from the fallout of Independents cratering like a rock. Maybe I need to review more polling numbers, but that sort of split was truly eye opening. The Independent numbers definitely suggest that there's some voter regret at work in such a short time