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Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

fortune.com

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Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#31

Money is power. That is the problem with extreme wealth. It provides unaccountable power outside the democratic process. It is not surprising that an already powerful man wants even more power, but I do not understand why anyone else would go along with this.

I don’t understand what there is to gain for anyone by making the implicit system we have today explicit?

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#32

Money is power. That is the problem with extreme wealth. It provides unaccountable power outside the democratic process. It is not surprising that an already powerful man wants even more power, but I do not understand why anyone else would go along with this.

> I do not understand why anyone else would go along with this.

Aspirations.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#33
post #15
post #6

Why did a billionaire propose biasing the voting system towards the rich? Gee I wonder.

Maybe if they made it on effective tax rate. Your vote is weighed based on the percentage of INCOME that is taxed, but everyone gets a vote regardless.

I think I'd just like it done on percentage of overall wealth handed to the government or charity each year.

Handy side effect would be that if Jeff wants to buy some influence for Amazon, he could do it by paying all his warehouse and delivery employees better.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#34

[flagged]

It's both. Getting into the multi-billionaire levels of wealth takes a certain mindset that can probably be easily associated with some neurological disorders and personality traits that one could describe as 'monstrous'. But becoming that rich also disconnects you from the reality of the average person. Your time by necessity to maintain and grow such levels of wealth is going to be spent among other people who are either in a similar position, or want to be in a similar position and are trying to ride the coattails up the wealth ladder. And try as you might to avoid it, it will skew your mental state towards that disconnect unless you take significant effort to avoid the benefits that being at that level of wealth brings to you. Most people who would be willing to eschew said benefits are also probably not the ones trying to seek out such positions of wealth in the first place, so they're going to be severely underrepresented in the wealthy circles.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#36

Money is power. That is the problem with extreme wealth. It provides unaccountable power outside the democratic process. It is not surprising that an already powerful man wants even more power, but I do not understand why anyone else would go along with this.

It's a structural problem in our socio-technical system. You can't separate money and government, because "corruption" to some degree is the default state. Yes there are exceptions, but the opposite if the bad apple concept. You have to get lucky to find the good apples. Which means there is some structural insufficiency in the concept of money and government.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#37

Fascinating to see how many tech people, as soon as they get rich, turn to extreme. Name them all - they mostly all are very active on X, and each new tweet pushes the limits of what was previously deemed unacceptable. I'm rich, so my opinion must be more important, right?

They were always capable of these thoughts, money just gave them access to actions as well. Money didn’t turn them extreme IMO, maybe more fearful about losing it.

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#39

Fascinating to see how many tech people, as soon as they get rich, turn to extreme. Name them all - they mostly all are very active on X, and each new tweet pushes the limits of what was previously deemed unacceptable. I'm rich, so my opinion must be more important, right?

Well, they did /something/ right ...

Re: Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights

#40

Fascinating to see how many tech people, as soon as they get rich, turn to extreme. Name them all - they mostly all are very active on X, and each new tweet pushes the limits of what was previously deemed unacceptable. I'm rich, so my opinion must be more important, right?

Honestly just my experience, but I've found it ironic that finance bros in my circle have gone the other way i.e. the effective altruism, philosophizing, podcasting route. While tech bros are now turning openly elitist, and in some cases, racist.

And before anyone claims it's selection bias from within my left-leaning circle, I was well involved within the Tory circus until recently (a couple of years back).

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