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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.

Politics in the US is a $11 trillion per year business. Money is inherent.

You are spot on about rich people buying influence this way but it has nothing to do with how great democracy is.

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?

I work in automation. We sell solutions to businesses such as Amazon and a number of others like them. They demanded millions in free engineering labor because they are too big not to do business with. Companies are so big in the USA that you become slave labor.

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.

"we need to get money out of politics"

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...

One person using their “free speech” to stop many others from having free speech nets out to negative free speech.

If this doesn’t change the United States will fail or become an oligarchy, or both, so I’d consider it.

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

Don’t forget celebrity.

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.

Garry doesn’t even really believe in democracy. He’s gone full CEO-king.

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.

Any action which may be done to influence political outcomes, such as elections, regulation, and enforcement, for personal or business enrichment.

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.

How coincidental that I was just reading something related [0] before seeing this post.

"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.

Every "democracy" I know, has become a plutocracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

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?

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?

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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…

Not sure that would be enough given the regime and specifically the current supreme court. Such amendments to the constitution would be met with interpretations like "ackshually this country has a long and honored tradition of protecting pedos and the major questions doctrine (a thing we kinda just made up) says that we gotta ignore the text of the constitution and instead just vibes decide that pedos are a-okay in our book" [applies to literally any subject]

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.

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

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter the previous owners engaged in different kinds of editorial control. The people who argued that editorial control of Twitter was something the owners had the right to do on their private platform and the people who argued that the government should find some legal mechanism to characterize this editorial control as some kind of crime so they could force Twitter not to do it, were flipped from what they are now.

> Before Elon Musk bought Twitter the previous owners engaged in different kinds of editorial control. The people who argued that editorial control of Twitter was something the owners had the right to do on their private platform and the people who argued that the government should find some legal mechanism to characterize this editorial control as some kind of crime so they could force Twitter not to do it, were flipped from what they are now.

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.

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.

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> 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.

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?

Tech bros just love to play devils advocate because they get paid off with 3 to 10x median wage by them to enable the Billionaires crimes

By who? Another Billionaires personal attorney and acting attorney general Pam bondi?

As a non-communist non-billionaire, I couldn't disagree more! :)

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.)

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.

States can extradite and extract anyone they want to now (if they can get away it) if they break their laws. Look no further than Maduro and the usa

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 think this is completely missing the point… are you really saying California would be improved by more rich people being able to game the system? I think CA would benefit from more visionary politicians (i.e. not paid for) and more people at the bottom end being able to have homes in the big cities and less wealth accumulation, maybe reducing the gap between power and poverty means we could have better societies. I’m not talking about crazy change btw, reducing billionaires wealth to that of the nineties would allow us to rebuild a lot of great things and employ a lot of people. Putting money into stocks, real estate and crypto does not create wealth.

What about my comment? :)

> 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.

There's simply no way to look at the governing going on in California and think this is what the tech industry or movie industry or (formerly) oil industry wants for one of its traditional homes.

The government there has suffered since it went to basically one-party rule. There's no counterbalance for any bad policy ideas.

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Less competent might be a disservice. But I've seen nothing to suggest that execs/founders are any more competent that the average employee. Execs and founders just had a few more dice rolls go their way.

Exactly.

We should tax billionaires away.

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Nah billionaires need to be punished, they have raped the Earth for profit and caused mass misery/death upon her people. In fact a good way for the US to rebuild credibility is to probably send a few billionaires to the Hague and have them tried for crimes against humanity in the ICJ.

Lots of billionaires should probably be at the hague. But we should be glad if people can become billionaires because they are generating that much value of both parties being better off, without imposing externalities on others. Yvonne Chouinard came close to this ideal, I think.

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.

No, this is truly a pathetic mindset. There is more to the world than making "value." No one dies thinking "I wish I made more value." Absolutely pathetic, much like them.

Exactly. Also it's not the "billionaires" who are "making value". They are lousy at making anything. It's the workers (engineers, farmers, factory workers) that "make".

The billionaires are just good at "capturing" value, and not giving back the rightfully owned share by the people.

They are leeches

"engineers, farmers, factory workers" can just enter a co-op and sell the goods cheaper while still enjoying a slightly higher wage if the billionaires really aren't contributing anything. Seems like if what you say is true, in a free market billionaires would be forced out of business because they could not compete.

No we shouldn't be "glad that people can become billionaire".

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

I'm not glad they can become billionaires for their sake. I'm glad they can become billionaires for your and my sake, under the ideal I proposed, which is that billionaires can become that way only by entering into transactions where all sides are better off for doing so.

Because you fail to understand how economy and the world works. No, they don't "only do so by entering into transactions where all sides are better off", that's just a convenient fiction for people like you who never thought about the economic realities

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

Oh I understand how it works. That's why I agreed many of them deserve to be at the Hague.

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.

You cannot have a functioning economy or political system when there are billionaires because they no longer are accountable to the market or the people

> 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.

Billionaires are a parasitic class, in the sense that they can wield enough power to sway elections, and do very concrete damage to society.

Taxing away billionaires is not "to punish them", it's to PROTECT society.

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?

You do not appear to have a solid grasp on how the world functions.

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

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> 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.

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?).

The crowd elected Donald Trump -- twice.

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.

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

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.

Direct voting does not replace judiciary or even senate, it only augments the house of congress.

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?

  Direct voting does not replace judiciary or even senate, it only augments the house of congress.

What I originally commented on was this:

  So do you believe in democracy or not?

I hope you will agree that the overall goal is maximizing freedom and autonomy, that is allowing every person or group to pursue happiness the way they want make mistakes or good choices and bear the consequences.

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.

  No one in this thread have suggested to completely replace everything with direct voting

  the only way to improve situation is adding some elements of direct voting that would improve efficiency of communication between people and the government.

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.

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.

"Voting should be done without anonymity..."

This is a spectacularly bad idea.

Why is it a bad idea? Can you describe one bad consequence of it, if it is implemented in combination with the other ideas above?

First, how about if you show that you've spent more than five seconds thinking about why every democratic country on earth uses secret ballots? Why are secret ballots codified in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights?

There are other parts of your scheme that are also spectacularly bad ideas, but let's just deal with this one for now.

That's a very good question, for instance for most of its republican period Rome did not have secret ballot, and voting was open. That have changed in 138BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_laws_of_the_Roman_Repub... and have caused major instability, political violence and eventually demise of the republic.

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.

Gosh, you make it sound like the near-universal use of secret ballots is all just some sort of misunderstanding that could be rectified if only everyone would listen to you. Tilt away if that's your favorite windmill, I guess.

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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.

What we have now is a politician saying vote for me and i'll pass laws that will give you 10k in next 4 years, people vote for the politician who then takes money from scamazon gives 10 to voters and takes 10mln to get elected again.

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.

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.

No they are increasing because of job growth and restrictive zoning.

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.

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.

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.

This doesn't mean money has no power over you.

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.

> (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.

If you bring a billion anywhere you won't get systemic political power unless you seek it. Political power isn't about having money, but money gives you the operational range you need to seek political power.

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.

>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."

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.

Once you figure that out, get to work on the flying pig.

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.

> Study after study shows that money doesn't really effect the results of high-information elections.

Politics does not start and end with elections.

Yeah if money didn't matter what's up with the $2billion price tags

Obviously campaigns need money to operate. The question is whether a random firehose of money will win an election, or if the reason we see that money is because the campaign already has a lot of supporters who want to contribute.

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.

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...

From 1994: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138764

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.

“Study after study shows that money doesn't really effect the results of high-information elections“

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”.

>Our finding is in line with existing results in the literature regarding the US House elections that incumbent candidates gain less from spending, compared to their contender counterparts. This is due to diminishing returns that occur at a certain point, after which incumbent candidates can increase the winning probability only marginally (Green & Krasno, 1988). However, this finding is in contrast with other studies considering electoral systems in Brazil, Japan, or India, where spending effectiveness is equally applicable for both incumbents and contenders (Johnson, 2013; Lee, 2020; Samuels, 2001).

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.

It's not enough to only look at elections. The topics that the media discusses, and therefore the options that people are aware of and the issues people base their vote on are decided by mostly privately owned and increasingly consolidated media companies. Nobody will know about candidates that are not approved by some part of the elite in this media landscape. Any opinions that go against the interests of the media owning elite will not see much coverage. Sure, maybe money during elections does not matter that much, but elections are the very last step of the process of picking leaders, and the preceding steps matter as well.

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.

These studies fail to consider the nature of US politics the last 30 years or so. We had a breakneck election tie broken by the Supreme court in 2000 for some reason. We've had 2 out of 3 times in the hist of the US where the electoral college defied the popular vote.

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.

> 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.

> but this is what more people wanted.

You haven't even tried checking 2026 approval ratings, have you?

His approval has been hovering around 40%, which is pretty typical for him and is still higher than his lowest levels in term one. He has a lot of opposition, but most of those are people who voted against him. Those that did vote for him are generally pleased.

On the surface, pretty much any polling you can point to will have trump close to his global minima, despite only being 25% through his term. While he started his polling in the high 40's/low/50's (as usual).

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

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.

This is exactly what the linked article said:

> 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.

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.

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.

You can take your money, but you can't take the pwoerhouse institutions nor good weather California brings. The invisible hand will happily fill any vacancies.

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.

You are conflating the tax revenue from a wealth tax with "funding the government for a year" which is precisely a balance vs cash flow mistake like you rightfully pointed out to someone else in the thread.

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?

The US debt is nearly 39 trillion dollars.

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

>You could confiscate 100% of the wealth of every billionaire in this country and it wouldn’t fund the government for an entire year.

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).

Except is not 14 trillion (in the US) It is closer to 8 trillion.

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.

Okay. Can you engage with the real point instead of the Wikipedia figure I googled in 5 seconds?

I mean when you just make up a number, you should expect to be called out for it, lol.

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?

>And I did engage with the real point

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?

You’re discussing raising corporate or individual income tax rates.

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

>but were filled with loopholes and deductions in that the effective tax rate that was actually paid was much lower.

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.

If they leave (and some already have) they take their tax base with them. Not just for this one time levy, but for future tax years too.

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)

I do agree it is a spending issue, for far too long corporate welfare has flourished in America. None of these rich people would exist with out the federal teat they suckle from, truly pathetic. Remove their bloat, take their money, and fund programs that will enable REAL economic value like medicare for all, universal childcare, free school lunches, public jobs programs, and universal education.

And where will we get the money to fund this fantasy land in 8 months after the government runs out of money and we’ve already stolen all the billionaires assets?

Should we move on to anyone with a net worth over $1M and start stealing their assets too?

What do you think happens to the money when it gets distributed to low income people?

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.

Probably the same way that the republicans are able to generate funds out of thin air to pay for tax cuts. If MMT is good enough for them, it's good enough for everything else.

> And where will we get the money to fund this fantasy land ...

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...

> America was already taxing wealthy through the teeth years ago

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%

let's make _effective tax rate_ 40% then...

It's already 37% (for Federal). Add in another 14% for California and its over 50%.

But even for simplicity sake, going to 40% would be far better and more practical than confiscating 5% of total assets and net worth.

>but the state just confiscating 5% of someone's net worth (unrealized or not) is absolute madness

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.

The government is taking 22% of your INCOME. Not your entire net worth. This is vastly different.

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

> property, company stock, any unrealized gains in different equities, etc.

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…

That’s a separate discussion.

I think there should be some sort of tax penalty to borrowing against assets as a sort of infinite money glitch.

it is not separate, it is exactly the same discussion. if you currently can use “unrealized” shit to borrow against than it is perfectly fair for you to pay the taxes on that shit. it is absolutely not a “separate discussion”

I support some sort of disincentive to prevent HNW individuals from borrowing against assets for income.

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.

it is not a separate discussion because - at present - there is no such thing as “unrealized gains” - they are all realized and have always been. now we just want to tax it.

no, its not.

Articulate an alternative or deal with a non-optimal solution.

The status quo currently is leading to civil war.

I literally said there should be some sort of final penalty or taxable event associated with borrowing against illiquid assets and unrealized gains for very HNW individuals.

>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

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?

Of course its easy for you to say - its simple to just point the finger and claim you're entitled to your "fair share" of someone else's property simply because they have more than you. And my main point isn't even that "its hard" (which it is), its that governments cannot simply just tax and confiscate their way to a utopia.

Fortunately for sanity and common sense, this proposal, if it even passes, will surely be challenged on Federal and State constitutional grounds.

>its simple to just point the finger and claim you're entitled to your "fair share" of someone else's property simply because they have more than you.

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.

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?

- Pro-business think tanks to write "policy reports" with a predetermined outcome

- 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"

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.

Compared to the "prosperity" we have now?

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

Edit and I'm not referring to prostitution, you know this as well

Oh so you mean the random anonymous tips and allegations with absolutely no evidence behind them that only retards believe

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!

You get points for effective use of rhetoric, but it's more of a solvable challenge and not a deal breaker.

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...

The buy borrow die strategy is made up and absolutely laughable to anybody who knows anything about finance. It is not used by anybody.

I mean most taxes like this have an 'above X amount' clause. Such as the gains you get taxed on when selling your home. California it's $500K in gains if you are married so extrapolating that your scenario would be covered.

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.

>But what does this have to do with a wealth tax? The entire concept is stupid.

Why do you think that?

Here's a good explanation from an economist: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/theres-not-that-much-wealth-in...

I feel like public discussion of this has been outgoing since around 12 years ago when Thomas Piketty's book came out.

https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Initiative/2025-024

I'm voting for it if it passes. Big if, though. Almost like the 1% opposed have inordinate power in politics.

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.

> I don't really see any other solution, can you explain it?

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.

Taking? From who? They got this money by appropriation and not by mutually agreed upon transactions?

Taking via

- 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.

Has anyone checked the Epstein files for his name?

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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.)

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.

I wouldn't even be surprised at this point. Seems like the files will unironically unravel 90% of the elite class at this rate.

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.

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.

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.

>why did they give up their agency to these shadowy media oligarchs

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.

I disagree that education had any meaningful part to play. It's true that less-educated people were more inclined to vote for Trump, but it's also true that we got all the "education" about Trump between 2016 and 2020 that anyone should have needed.

You can fix ignorance with education, but you can't fix stupidity.

>we got all the "education" about Trump between 2016 and 2020 that anyone should have needed.

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.

If you weren't affected by the China trade war

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.

>what has democracy done for us lately? Besides re-electing Donald Trump?

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.

I hate that their politic's explicit goal is to make my, yours, and everyone else's lives actively worse. Government is not a business.

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.

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?

>What are your politics?

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?

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

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.

> 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

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?

  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

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?

What does this have to do with Garry Tan and CA, it happened in Georgia?

https://americanbazaaronline.com/2025/02/04/indian-american-...

I haven't heard about this. What's the story here?

https://americanbazaaronline.com/2025/02/04/indian-american-...

When was this??

https://americanbazaaronline.com/2025/02/04/indian-american-...

https://www.ndtv.com/indians-abroad/indian-student-25-killed...

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.

https://americanbazaaronline.com/2025/02/04/indian-american-...

Was it this tweet?

“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.

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.

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.

shouldn't we call this bright money

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Money is like poison in politics

"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 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.

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.

Get money out of politics.

Period.

> “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.

Good. I'll take Gary Tan and his demonstrated efforts to clean up a corrupt dysfunctional San Francisco over any opponent. Oh yes and fuck the Nimbys.

Nope. Anyone who stans for Musk should be run out of town at this point.

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

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.

he's been "clarfying his position" for a decade at this point. This isn't new behavior in the slightest, and it's only been more emboldened as of late.

Well, this is helpful.

Now I can refer to this list to let me know who, and what, to vote against...

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.

not this grifter again

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.

Fighting for what you believe in isn’t remotely something to admire if all you believe in is self-enrichment

Bravo Garry, net worth $x00m, having the integrity to go after public school teachers.

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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

> 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.

Yeah, my benefit of the doubt (which was already zero for a rich person in politics) is negative.

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.

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.

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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'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.

>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)

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.

In 2022 Norway increased wealth tax to 1.1%, expected to bring in an additional $146M tax revenue.

Individuals with a net worth of $54B left the country, led to a $594M loss in tax revenue.

https://citizenx.com/insights/norway-wealth-exodus/

Okay. And let's look at Norway'S GDP as a result

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 didn’t say the tax gap caused the drop in GDP. I did say the capital flight caused the tax to wildly underperform revenue estimates, which is objectively true.

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

Yet another terrible step toward total oligarchy. Get the fuck out of politics, tech ghouls.

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The billionaire scum class really want to make guillotines great again. Keep pushing us.

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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.

Name one reasonable figure that made the world what it is today.

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> Garry Tan, the local venture capitalist who has for years railed against progressive politicians on social media

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.

So are Elon, JPMorgan Chase and IBM "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.”

It's certainly ... convenient that any criticism of a wealthy tech oligarch can be dismissed as "anti-education" as a rhetorical cudgel. It's not like others may actually have problems with say, his actual beliefs, the specific methods Tan uses to "promote" education (attacking school teachers/etc), further concentration of power to SV billionaires, etc.

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 can appreciate you defending his character. The parent comment was not constructive.

I’m no fan of Garry’s, but this doesn’t seem like a hit piece to me.

He seems like a great guy https://missionlocal.org/2024/01/y-combinator-ceo-garry-tans...

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