Zohran's run one of the smartest, most focused campaigns Ive ever seen. Honestly at this point his competition is in a race to the bottom, I'd say most NY'ers, even the millionaires, like him. It seems most of the people with issues with him are billionaires or people that live in the suburbs.
toomuchtodo · 1h ago
+1. Philanthropist Elizabeth Simons, the daughter of Renaissance Technologies founder James Simons, gave $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani last week. It's nice to know there are some decent wealthy people out there still.
biophysboy · 1h ago
By silicon valley, they mostly mean the usual suspects (VC loudmouth posters like Maguire), whose opinions can be dismissed as tedious noise. I found this bit telling though:
> A handful of questions focused on how a Mamdani mayoralty would affect the tech industry. Borthwick says he asked Mamdani how he would respond to the risk that artificial intelligence poses to jobs—in particular, entry-level white-collar jobs—over the next several years. “I'm kind of amazed that this has not become already a campaign issue,” Borthwick says. He says that Mamdani “admitted that this hasn't been a focus of the campaign, but would need to be a focus if he was elected.” But overall, Borthwick didn’t feel Mamdani’s answer was specific enough.
I continue to be amazed by how many tech-oriented people assume this possibility is a matter of when, not if. What evidence is there that it has displaced workers? Competence on benchmark tests does not imply competence at creating complete solutions for complex, bespoke systems. These sci-fi speculations increasingly feel like self-absorbed delusions of grandeur.
Terr_ · 1h ago
> Silicon Valley
In this case, does that mean something more like "an exclusive clique of lucky tech-bros that converge on political views in their private channels"?
As a larger region/industry, I can't see why SV would "panic" about a city mayor of a different city in another state thousands of miles away, no matter how populous the city is.
jerlam · 1h ago
The "panicking" people mentioned in the article all seem to be more politically oriented than tech. No one thinks Linda Yaccarino is a tech-bro or in Silicon Valley.
wat10000 · 1h ago
I imagine that is indeed what it means. It's probably like using "Washington" to describe the higher-ups in the US government. It doesn't really refer to the ordinary people who live there.
mlinhares · 1h ago
Its just a bunch of people that see "socialist" and panic.
code_for_monkey · 1h ago
they dont even know what it means, its just the big scary word.
lazyeye · 1h ago
Either that or they understand exactly what it means, the actual reality of it as compared to the "sounds nice in theory..."
cosmicgadget · 23m ago
What's the reality of having a mayor who is described as socialist?
lwansbrough · 1h ago
That seems like a reductive defence of a platform that is pitching rent control and socialized housing without addressing underlying demand. Which is basically the recipe the entire western world has used for half a century and has resulted in the worst housing price inflation in history.
The hard truth is that New York isn't even remotely dense enough for the demand. The entirety of lower Manhattan from Canal St. to midtown is "low" density. As is everything above 59th. And this is codified. So no wonder NYC housing prices are out of control. NYC should look like Sao Paulo based on demand.
ModernMech · 1h ago
I'll break it down for you.
For a long time, neoliberals like Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have run the Democratic party. They have enjoyed soaking up the progressive votes from the more left parts of the party, but they have done everything possible to prevent those elements from rising too high in the power structure. You saw it in 2016 when the party leadership coalesced around Hillary to nudge out Bernie, and again in 2020 when they did the same with Biden after Bernie won Nevada.
Neoliberals and the left have a lot of tension. The left believes that liberals, due to their affinity for corporations, will side with fascists over socialists when it comes time to choose sides.
To date, liberals have proven that correct. The result has been for my lifetime that no matter which party is in power, corporations are treated favorably.
But times are changing. The neoliberals are getting old, and it's time for them to retire and pass the torch. My whole life, I'm 40, Democratic leadership have been pro corporation liberal boomers: Clinton, Gore, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer... they held onto power as long as they could, but time is ticking and it's time for millennials to takeover.
And millennials are decidedly less pro corporation. We are not like our parents, we are not going to treat corporations like our parents did. For my whole adulthood, we've been told by the boomer generation that our ideas about society and governance are not good, and progressive ideals are unelectable. AOC began a wave of congressional elections that proved them wrong, at least for local congressional elections. Then we started to see rising stars like Buttigieg get top leadership positions in government. Now, Mamdani represents the next milestone -- a progressive millennial at a high executive position for a huge city like NYC.
So that's what this race is about and why it has national implications. It's progressive versus neoliberal, and if the progressive wins, it's going to be harder in the future to claim that progressives are unelectable. If he (god forbid) ends up doing a good job, then it's going to be harder to claim progressive policies are wrongheaded.
It's also millennial versus boomer. Cuomo and Adams are both boomers. It's probably not lost on a lot of people that if they lose, it might be the last time a boomer will ever be elected as Mayor in NYC. Mamdani's election would really be the end of the post 9/11 era for New York and the start of something new for the city.
So why is SV anxious? Mamdani is a harbinger for a new age. It means the neoliberal boomers are going to the wayside, and the progressive millennials are coming to power. Which, if you listen to what they have to say about billionaires, might make you nervous if you're a billionaire.
lwansbrough · 1h ago
Too bad most of this is meaningless, and the actual policy is the only thing standing between America and another 50 years of housing crises. When the so called progressive millennial is pitching rent control as the solution to housing in the largest city in the US you already know it's fucking Joever.
Social policy is popular among millennials, that doesn't make it good. Mamdani and his followers are wilfully ignorant to the root causes of the issues NYC is facing.
toomuchtodo · 1h ago
Great comment, regret I only have one upvote. Won't be appreciated here unfortunately.
bestouff · 1h ago
> Gemini cofounders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, former X CEO Linda Yaccarino, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and Y Combinator president and CEO Garry Tan have also posted about Mamdani with some combination of anger, fear, and dread since his primary win.
I for one am shocked that the man responsible for one of the more visible apparatus for neoliberal capital allocation, one responsible for such luminaries as doordash, with which you can rent a poor person to bring you treats, has some shitty opinions about someone who actually wants to improve his community.
linotype · 1h ago
I don’t think it’s possible to be more insufferable than the All-In gang (David Sachs, etc), even Friedberg has gone anti-science (Natural gas? Really) and MAGA. Calicanis moved to Texas. These aren’t Silicon Valley people.
__loam · 1h ago
It's all well and good to deny that this group represents SV, but I do think they're more representative of the leadership class than most would like to admit. They were among the first people to call out that layoffs were coming. Even if their reasoning was bad, they're well connected enough to understand the vibe among the wealthiest people in the area. Within two years of that prediction, and after Musk had laid off 80% of Twitter, hundreds of thousands of tech workers had lost their jobs.
Even if the podcast makes it obvious that these men are clueless dilettantes, they were still lucky enough to have invested money into the right companies at the right time. They are well connected and rich. They're part of the private group chats that people like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreesen are using to shape the vibe, and like it or not, people like this have a lot of influence over the business culture in the valley.
davidivadavid · 40m ago
What's most puzzling to me is how at this point a larger part of SV hasn't distanced itself with All-in Podcast-adjacent people a lot more vocally. I think the lasting power of that region hinges on some important voices doing that sooner rather than later, because they're actively damaging the whole brand of SV at this point.
mattnewton · 1h ago
I think that this is actually separate classes of people. This article is using "silicon valley" to talk about a small (but very influential) group of very wealthy investor types, and "new york tech scene" to mostly talk about NYC founders and not investors. Plenty of finance guys in NYC are very upset about Mamdani's primary win.
I'm a silicon valley founder but definitely not investor and I'm quite optimistic about Mamdani's approach to measuring where problems are and then pitch complicated fixes in a way that can be understood by average voters. The "socialism" label doesn't bother me. I know a lot of people in silicon valley rank and file engineers and technical founders who think similarly privately.
techpineapple · 1h ago
It's a funny ideology that's like "We're going to end scarcity and implement UBI, but also, be scared of socialism."
lenerdenator · 1h ago
> We're going to end scarcity and implement UBI,
I don't think that I've ever heard anyone in SV, at least not anyone with any real power, honestly suggest that. They don't want to pay people more than they absolutely have to now, and that's with most labor being done by humans. When humans stop being the engine of economic growth, why would those people suddenly want to implement UBI and end scarcity?
It's a fugazi meant to make you think that the people doing things have considered all of the angles, but they haven't.
techpineapple · 1h ago
Sam Altman says it all the time. If Sam Altman "doesn't have any real power" than the phrase doesn't mean anything.
codyb · 1h ago
It seems like as soon as any particular set of ideas starts to attract a dedicated following said group abandons reason in favor of dogmatism, lack of consistency be damned.
mattnewton · 1h ago
Two separate sets of people maybe; I think this article is using "silicon valley" to talk about a small (but very influential) group of very wealthy investor types, and "new york tech scene" to mostly talk about NYC founders.
next_xibalba · 1h ago
A more honest way of writing this might be ”we’re going to test UBI because it’s untested, but Mamdani is scary bc rent control has been shown over and over again to be bad for cities.”
code_for_monkey · 1h ago
rent control is a huge part of New York City, and has been around for ages. Hasn't been so bad for it, last I checked city is still doing pretty good.
fragmede · 1h ago
Finding an apartment in NYC is still terrible but we don't have a way to duplicate the Earth and remove rent control and re do the last 50 years. If there were no rent control, who's to say how things would look like today? $500/month studio apartments in mega highrises because we also deregulated zoning and housing regulations in this hypothetical.
the_gastropod · 1h ago
I think you're right that this is what people believe. But as far as I've been able to tell, Mamdani's platform does not include anything about rent control.
The closest position he's advocating for is to freeze the rent stabilization rate for 5 years while massively ramping up the construction of new apartments to bring rental costs down.
Much of the pushback about Mamdani seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference betwene "rent control" and "rent stabilization". I think it's extremely rare to see a politician understand the supply/demand aspect of housing costs so well. He really seems to understand these dynamics, certainly better than anyone he's running against.
wat10000 · 1h ago
Is that difference relevant here? I'm not familiar with the difference, but looking it up real quick, they seem to be extremely similar. They both act as price controls, which implies the same sorts of economic consequences.
the_gastropod · 45m ago
Yes. Rent control is what most people are familiar with (grandma living in a beautiful 3 bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village paying $200 / month, locked in since the 1970's). Rent stabilization is just a regulation that puts some type of reasonable cap on how much landlords can increase the rent every year, usually around 3-5% per year.
This is especially relevant in this election, as Cuomo is attacking Mamdani for living in a rent stabilized apartment, suggesting it's hypocritical because he can afford a more expensive apartment. This is deliberately trying to muddy the distinction between "rent stabilized" and "rent controlled" (about half of NY apartments are rent stabilized, and there is absolutely no cultural expectation that people move out when they get a raise, or whatever nonsense Cuomo's suggesting).
wat10000 · 35m ago
I'm still not sure what the important distinction is. Are you saying it's that rent control freezes the price entirely, while rent stabilization allows it to increase? That doesn't seem to be right from what I'm seeing; "rent control" includes systems where the rent can increase. NYC apparently has both and NYC rent control does allow for (capped) rent increases, according to the NYC government: https://hcr.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2024/01/fact-sheet...
the_gastropod · 22m ago
While rent controlled apartments can increase the rent, it's extremely limited, usually based on the landlord's expenses and not market conditions.
Rent stabilization is roughly based on the inflation rate, so, while tenants who've lived in one place for a while might be getting something approximately considered a "sweet deal", it's not the ridiculous scenario rent control can produce. One other relevant distinction, rent controlled units can be passed down to family, keeping the same rent rate. Rent stabilized apartments can also be passed down, but it's the same as if a new tenant was taking over—the price can be reset back to market rate.
techpineapple · 1h ago
I don't think that Silicon Valley's / NY Tech's primary concern about Mamdani is rent control. You think NY Tech CEO's are pro rent control for a reason Silicon Valley CEO's aren't?
jurking_hoff · 47m ago
Amphetamine induced psychosis
tj-teej · 1h ago
It's actually very straight-forward. UBI still means that most people's money eventually flows to the rent-seekers (Billionaires). Socialism (and I know this is not the Socialism Mamdani is proposing), means that most people own the means of production and rent-seeking isn't possible.
cbeach · 1h ago
Ending scarcity and funding UBI is uniquely possible in a capitalist society, where there is excess wealth generation. In the UK we use our capitalist excess wealth to fund socialised healthcare.
But don't mistake socialised service provision for socialism
Socialism implies state control of the means of production.
The results of socialism, we witnessed in Eastern Europe and elsewhere during the 20th century: scarcity of goods and services
Eventually a socialist state runs out of private wealth to seize, and it becomes completely corrupt and totalitarian due to its monopoly over the means of production. And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
wat10000 · 1h ago
In all the actual examples I can think of, the totalitarianism came first. Eastern Europe mostly had socialism imposed by an occupying force, and that same force also imposed totalitarian governments. In other places, Communists took over, set up a totalitarian government, and then proceeded to implement whatever they thought socialism/communism entails.
krapp · 1h ago
>Socialism implies state control of the means of production.
Socialism literally implies the opposite. That's why it's called socialism. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production. Under fascism, the government and the state collaborate to own the means of production. Under socialism, the means of production are socially (collectively) owned. In the most extreme interpretation of socialism, communism, the goal is the elimination of the state entirely.
Granted, historically, communist states tended to centralize power rather than work towards their own elimination because that's the inherent evil of governments, particularly revolutionary governments. But to claim that socialism presupposes authoritarianism is to expose the fact that everything you know about socialism comes from capitalist propaganda.
>And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
(╯°□°)╯ ┻━┻ That's socialism!
stretchwithme · 1h ago
I live in Silicon Valley. I don't notice any panic.
He's terrible though. Is that "panic".
code_for_monkey · 1h ago
whats the matter californian, scared of a little wealth tax?
stretchwithme · 1h ago
No, concerned about people who think force is how problems get solved, rather than voluntary trade.
Force can only increase, hide and shift costs to others. And create shortages. All bad things.
People like him work to undermine individual rights.
karmakurtisaani · 1h ago
This is so vague that it makes me believe you know even less about him than me, and I've barely heard of the guy!
fragmede · 1h ago
Given that California's top tax rate is 13.3% to New York City's 14.8%, I'm not sure whos supposed to be scared.
wat10000 · 1h ago
You're thinking of income tax. Wealth tax is a tax on, well, wealth, rather than just on what you earn. I don't think any US jurisdiction currently has a wealth tax.
vFunct · 1h ago
Yes. That's panic.
stretchwithme · 1h ago
So assessing someone's ability to govern is "panic".
stretchwithme · 1h ago
How about the voters?
Is any negative assessment of the candidate "panic"?
> A handful of questions focused on how a Mamdani mayoralty would affect the tech industry. Borthwick says he asked Mamdani how he would respond to the risk that artificial intelligence poses to jobs—in particular, entry-level white-collar jobs—over the next several years. “I'm kind of amazed that this has not become already a campaign issue,” Borthwick says. He says that Mamdani “admitted that this hasn't been a focus of the campaign, but would need to be a focus if he was elected.” But overall, Borthwick didn’t feel Mamdani’s answer was specific enough.
I continue to be amazed by how many tech-oriented people assume this possibility is a matter of when, not if. What evidence is there that it has displaced workers? Competence on benchmark tests does not imply competence at creating complete solutions for complex, bespoke systems. These sci-fi speculations increasingly feel like self-absorbed delusions of grandeur.
In this case, does that mean something more like "an exclusive clique of lucky tech-bros that converge on political views in their private channels"?
As a larger region/industry, I can't see why SV would "panic" about a city mayor of a different city in another state thousands of miles away, no matter how populous the city is.
The hard truth is that New York isn't even remotely dense enough for the demand. The entirety of lower Manhattan from Canal St. to midtown is "low" density. As is everything above 59th. And this is codified. So no wonder NYC housing prices are out of control. NYC should look like Sao Paulo based on demand.
For a long time, neoliberals like Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have run the Democratic party. They have enjoyed soaking up the progressive votes from the more left parts of the party, but they have done everything possible to prevent those elements from rising too high in the power structure. You saw it in 2016 when the party leadership coalesced around Hillary to nudge out Bernie, and again in 2020 when they did the same with Biden after Bernie won Nevada.
Neoliberals and the left have a lot of tension. The left believes that liberals, due to their affinity for corporations, will side with fascists over socialists when it comes time to choose sides.
To date, liberals have proven that correct. The result has been for my lifetime that no matter which party is in power, corporations are treated favorably.
But times are changing. The neoliberals are getting old, and it's time for them to retire and pass the torch. My whole life, I'm 40, Democratic leadership have been pro corporation liberal boomers: Clinton, Gore, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer... they held onto power as long as they could, but time is ticking and it's time for millennials to takeover.
And millennials are decidedly less pro corporation. We are not like our parents, we are not going to treat corporations like our parents did. For my whole adulthood, we've been told by the boomer generation that our ideas about society and governance are not good, and progressive ideals are unelectable. AOC began a wave of congressional elections that proved them wrong, at least for local congressional elections. Then we started to see rising stars like Buttigieg get top leadership positions in government. Now, Mamdani represents the next milestone -- a progressive millennial at a high executive position for a huge city like NYC.
So that's what this race is about and why it has national implications. It's progressive versus neoliberal, and if the progressive wins, it's going to be harder in the future to claim that progressives are unelectable. If he (god forbid) ends up doing a good job, then it's going to be harder to claim progressive policies are wrongheaded.
It's also millennial versus boomer. Cuomo and Adams are both boomers. It's probably not lost on a lot of people that if they lose, it might be the last time a boomer will ever be elected as Mayor in NYC. Mamdani's election would really be the end of the post 9/11 era for New York and the start of something new for the city.
So why is SV anxious? Mamdani is a harbinger for a new age. It means the neoliberal boomers are going to the wayside, and the progressive millennials are coming to power. Which, if you listen to what they have to say about billionaires, might make you nervous if you're a billionaire.
Social policy is popular among millennials, that doesn't make it good. Mamdani and his followers are wilfully ignorant to the root causes of the issues NYC is facing.
Yes, Garry Tan's message is disappointing: https://archive.ph/o/mTmBP/https://x.com/garrytan/status/193...
Even if the podcast makes it obvious that these men are clueless dilettantes, they were still lucky enough to have invested money into the right companies at the right time. They are well connected and rich. They're part of the private group chats that people like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreesen are using to shape the vibe, and like it or not, people like this have a lot of influence over the business culture in the valley.
I'm a silicon valley founder but definitely not investor and I'm quite optimistic about Mamdani's approach to measuring where problems are and then pitch complicated fixes in a way that can be understood by average voters. The "socialism" label doesn't bother me. I know a lot of people in silicon valley rank and file engineers and technical founders who think similarly privately.
I don't think that I've ever heard anyone in SV, at least not anyone with any real power, honestly suggest that. They don't want to pay people more than they absolutely have to now, and that's with most labor being done by humans. When humans stop being the engine of economic growth, why would those people suddenly want to implement UBI and end scarcity?
It's a fugazi meant to make you think that the people doing things have considered all of the angles, but they haven't.
The closest position he's advocating for is to freeze the rent stabilization rate for 5 years while massively ramping up the construction of new apartments to bring rental costs down.
Much of the pushback about Mamdani seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference betwene "rent control" and "rent stabilization". I think it's extremely rare to see a politician understand the supply/demand aspect of housing costs so well. He really seems to understand these dynamics, certainly better than anyone he's running against.
This is especially relevant in this election, as Cuomo is attacking Mamdani for living in a rent stabilized apartment, suggesting it's hypocritical because he can afford a more expensive apartment. This is deliberately trying to muddy the distinction between "rent stabilized" and "rent controlled" (about half of NY apartments are rent stabilized, and there is absolutely no cultural expectation that people move out when they get a raise, or whatever nonsense Cuomo's suggesting).
Rent stabilization is roughly based on the inflation rate, so, while tenants who've lived in one place for a while might be getting something approximately considered a "sweet deal", it's not the ridiculous scenario rent control can produce. One other relevant distinction, rent controlled units can be passed down to family, keeping the same rent rate. Rent stabilized apartments can also be passed down, but it's the same as if a new tenant was taking over—the price can be reset back to market rate.
But don't mistake socialised service provision for socialism
Socialism implies state control of the means of production.
The results of socialism, we witnessed in Eastern Europe and elsewhere during the 20th century: scarcity of goods and services
Eventually a socialist state runs out of private wealth to seize, and it becomes completely corrupt and totalitarian due to its monopoly over the means of production. And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
Socialism literally implies the opposite. That's why it's called socialism. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production. Under fascism, the government and the state collaborate to own the means of production. Under socialism, the means of production are socially (collectively) owned. In the most extreme interpretation of socialism, communism, the goal is the elimination of the state entirely.
Granted, historically, communist states tended to centralize power rather than work towards their own elimination because that's the inherent evil of governments, particularly revolutionary governments. But to claim that socialism presupposes authoritarianism is to expose the fact that everything you know about socialism comes from capitalist propaganda.
>And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
(╯°□°)╯ ┻━┻ That's socialism!
He's terrible though. Is that "panic".
Force can only increase, hide and shift costs to others. And create shortages. All bad things.
People like him work to undermine individual rights.
Is any negative assessment of the candidate "panic"?