Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by dualvariable » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:34 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #209

robinhood wrote: post #4

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?

All the stuff all these people post on X is just regurgitation of 4chan circa 2016. The lingo is literally all just /fit/ memes from 10 years ago rebranded. -maxxing, "mogging", "NGMI", I'm literally going nuts waiting for Gavin to start asking trump "DYEL"?

> All the stuff all these people post on X is just regurgitation of 4chan circa 2016.

You can trace a lot of what is wrong with 2026 back to the right-wing countercultural movement on 4chan, probably along with meme culture in general.

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

#252

Post by baseballdork » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

bad_username wrote: post #199

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #141

Oh boy! Can I play too? My system, which I call an expansion of antitrust, requires all people to keep their net worth under one billion dollars. Anyone approaching that number must give away assets to stay under. If you go over that, you must be broken up, by, say, beheading, or being drawn and quartered. I'm not married to that number, if people think it should be half a billion, or 100 million, or whatever, I'll g…

[flagged]

Hate speech applies to particular characteristics that essentially never include "having lots of money".

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

#253

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #214

marcosdumay wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascism, as established by Mussolini is very deeply related to plutarchy.

Please produce your evidence that Mussolini's ascent or style of government was a "society ruled or controlled by people of great wealth", as defined by Wikipedia. Fascist political philosophy is about racial purity, militarism, autarky, and suppression of dissent through political violence. In fact, one of their methods of enacting such worldview was by appropriating the wealth of rich people to advance their own pu…

If you read your link, you will discover it's not focused at Mussolini's fascism at all, but still talks about the merge of the government and corporations... Because it's a very important feature of that regime.

Maybe try it next time.

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

#254

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #170

ajross wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you not against this? A vote isn't a payment in exchange for taxes. It's the mechanism by which the government represents the will of the people. How do you arrange things such that the government acts in the interests of people if it doesn't need to chase their vote? Or are you actually saying that poor people don't deserve a government that acts in their interest? Even skipping the moral argument, there's a…

Vote is mechanism to decide who gets to distribute those taxes. It seems reasonable that those who contribute get to decide. If they decide to give support fine. If not well... Then again I suppose it would be fine too if voters decided to socialise absolutely everything including bodies of other voters. After all that would be democracy. And they chose that no protections are needed and everything is common now.

It's not only deciding who gets to distribute those taxes. It's who gets to decide, for example, whether we go to war, and whether you have to serve in the military and get shot at.

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

#255

Post by AnimalMuppet » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

AussieWog93 wrote: post #185

robinhood wrote: post #4

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?

I think everyone has weird ideas like this, but these rich, well-connected guys don't have to worry about their lives being ruined when they actually share them out loud. I can't imagine many aerospace manufacturers turning down a contract with SpaceX because Elon said something politically incorrect. James Damore, on the other hand... This isn't hate towards these rich guys (I think everyone should be able to say sh…

But when everyone says stuff like this, they get punched out in a bar, and only the people in the bar hear it at all. When this guy says it, it's news that the whole country hears.

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

#256

Post by dualvariable » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:39 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #249

dualvariable wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've leveraged the culture wars to the point that a good chunk of the rural, economically disadvantaged voters are cool with a northeastern elite billionaire looting the country.

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” — Lyndon B. Johnson, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-wh...

And the condescending tone of that quote only further strengthens the culture wars--liberals love it.

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

#257

Post by jmye » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:44 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #181

andsoitis wrote: post #29

> one that would strip voting rights from anyone who pays no income tax It could be an interesting thought experiment to consider the second and third order consequences, even if, from first principles this is a non-starter in a democratic society. First off all, what percent of people do not pay any taxes on income? What portion of them are poor vs. hedge fund managers or other super wealthy people who have structur…

> Regardless, if you work at Shopify, you should consider quitting. You do not have to work for a crazy person like that. Democracy is an engineering exercise, just like any other system. Every part of the system has trade-offs that must be evaluated. You can make a logical argument that any other policy is open to abuse, etc. But why do you have to accuse other people of being “crazy” for having ideas about how to e…

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

#258

Post by throw0101a » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:45 PM UTC

dualvariable wrote: post #256

throw0101a wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” — Lyndon B. Johnson, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-wh...

And the condescending tone of that quote only further strengthens the culture wars--liberals love it.

The quotation is not condescending to "the lowest white man", but rather is explaining a political/propaganda strategy that was active at the time. Up until that time the racists were inter-mixed between the two parties:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat

but it was the GOP that actively sought to recruit them:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

The quotation was describing the creation of the very culture wars we're still living with today. And the evidence shows that this is still going on:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness

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

#259

Post by cloverich » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:48 PM UTC

dualvariable wrote: post #251

Der_Einzige wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the stuff all these people post on X is just regurgitation of 4chan circa 2016. The lingo is literally all just /fit/ memes from 10 years ago rebranded. -maxxing, "mogging", "NGMI", I'm literally going nuts waiting for Gavin to start asking trump "DYEL"?

> All the stuff all these people post on X is just regurgitation of 4chan circa 2016. You can trace a lot of what is wrong with 2026 back to the right-wing countercultural movement on 4chan, probably along with meme culture in general.

it is weird how when i first heard of meme it was in the dawkins sense. then people showed me memes and i thought wtf this is just dumb jokes, what a weird transformation of the term (my understanding of it). Then i watched it become an actual vehicle for political ideology, "just jokes" when too far but real ideas the rest of the time.

The left rots from them and the right becomes more extreme and everyone is losing all the time. Meme-banning sites like HN and stackoverflow look brilliant in hindsight, to me, with them knowing what they were doing all along; and now there are so few havens from them.

I know this is also a trope, but id always hoped the human race would be consumed by something more sophisticated. But it seems like memes was all is took.

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

#260

Post by bryanlarsen » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #204

kennywinker wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t have to go farther back than 100 years in history to know what this looks like. Poll taxes, land ownership requirements, etc. were pretty common. So were goon squads to beat and murder people who tried to change that. It wasn’t good.

I wouldn't want a lot of the landscape 100 years ago, but I'd happily be disenfranchised if I could get the size of government 100+ years ago (federal government <~2% of GDP in non-wartime)

You might change your mind if you study the economy of the US in the late 1800's. Those boom and bust cycles were intense, making the great depression of the 1930's look unexceptional.

If you want to get rich, you need an healthy, educated, rich and secure customer and employee base. You don't get that with <~2% of GDP spent on health, education, roads, police, courts et cetera.