Traitor to the idealistic notion of an egalitarian America: yes.
To be fair, there are many, many traitors to American ideals these days. Pointing one out individually seems to omit all of the others.
It's unreasonable to expect or demand famous, sheltered, isolated billionaires to be on the side of ordinary people because of how far removed they are from concerns ordinary, non-famous Americans who are relatively, nominally poorer than even during the imbalance in the the Gilded Age.
Sometime about ~2002, I cannot prove it but I predicted (to myself), that because of long-standing economic and demographic trends were most like to:
- -purchasing power of ordinary people
- +inequality
- +corruption
- +poverty
- +misery
- +war, including large-scale, mostly conventional wars over resources
- +large-scale movements of billions of people across continents to escape climate-change caused famines
The last one hasn't yet happened, but is likely to happen within 20 years. Furthermore, first-world famines are now possible because of improper, unwise government regimes sabotaging themselves.
ggm · 10h ago
look if you take a random sample of views in the populus at large you get some interesting outliers. This is normal. What's a problem here is that money is a giant magnifying glass and for some reason, this outlier's views get magnified because of his money reach.
I don't think mechanistic approaches to limiting his money are on the table. I might argue for them, tax being the obvious ones, but it's clear for the current political cycle in the USA this won't happen.
So the best thing, is to limit reach by not participating in magnifying it
Do not feed the troll.
cranberryturkey · 11h ago
I try to live by one simple rule....don't be a dick. I don't always get there.
burnt-resistor · 6h ago
Wheaton's Law is a superset of the golden rule. Perhaps it could be called the "platinum rule".
Beyond tolerance and absence of worsening suffering is perhaps another rule: "do unto others as they wish." "Iridium rule" perhaps?
_rm · 10h ago
Classic leftist narcissist projection, "he objects to our kind of racism, so he's racist".
I think other countries will breeze past the US as west generally as time goes by, just by doing one thing: suppressing these types and keeping them miles away from the slightest sliver of power.
bigyabai · 9h ago
Well now you're the one projecting! Marc's got more power than ever right now, if the US can't compete abroad then he is broadly to blame.
It's worth noting that there's no guarantee his strategy will work, either. A16Z can't butter their bread treating military contracts the way they treat B2C startups. And hell, looking at their track record it doesn't seem like he wants to spend much money on anything that doesn't hedge a bet against authority. No wonder the guy who invested in Web3 is now whining that the US has no manufacturing capacity. If I spent all my money propping up a digital ape market I'd also be pissed at my nation's industrial sector.
Traitor to the idealistic notion of an egalitarian America: yes.
To be fair, there are many, many traitors to American ideals these days. Pointing one out individually seems to omit all of the others.
It's unreasonable to expect or demand famous, sheltered, isolated billionaires to be on the side of ordinary people because of how far removed they are from concerns ordinary, non-famous Americans who are relatively, nominally poorer than even during the imbalance in the the Gilded Age.
Sometime about ~2002, I cannot prove it but I predicted (to myself), that because of long-standing economic and demographic trends were most like to:
- -purchasing power of ordinary people
- +inequality
- +corruption
- +poverty
- +misery
- +war, including large-scale, mostly conventional wars over resources
- +large-scale movements of billions of people across continents to escape climate-change caused famines
The last one hasn't yet happened, but is likely to happen within 20 years. Furthermore, first-world famines are now possible because of improper, unwise government regimes sabotaging themselves.
I don't think mechanistic approaches to limiting his money are on the table. I might argue for them, tax being the obvious ones, but it's clear for the current political cycle in the USA this won't happen.
So the best thing, is to limit reach by not participating in magnifying it
Do not feed the troll.
Beyond tolerance and absence of worsening suffering is perhaps another rule: "do unto others as they wish." "Iridium rule" perhaps?
I think other countries will breeze past the US as west generally as time goes by, just by doing one thing: suppressing these types and keeping them miles away from the slightest sliver of power.
It's worth noting that there's no guarantee his strategy will work, either. A16Z can't butter their bread treating military contracts the way they treat B2C startups. And hell, looking at their track record it doesn't seem like he wants to spend much money on anything that doesn't hedge a bet against authority. No wonder the guy who invested in Web3 is now whining that the US has no manufacturing capacity. If I spent all my money propping up a digital ape market I'd also be pissed at my nation's industrial sector.