Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 378 posts

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

#281

Post by archagon »

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…

A sample of some, uh, politically incorrect stuff Musk said recently:

* "Anyone who opposes remigration is a traitor"

* "She is a traitor to the West, plain and simple" (in reference to his recent interviewer)

* "Deal with traitors before invaders. They are committing high treason."

* "First the traitors, then the invaders" (screenshot from Citizen Vigilante pointing gun at camera)

We’re at the point where Musk (and others) are regurgitating literal Klansman rhetoric, in addition to the usual anti-democratic stuff. This is extremely far from normal.

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

#282

Post by nostrademons »

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?

It's because you don't see any of the ones that didn't turn to extreme. They're just extremely forgettable, by design.

When was the last time you saw Craig Silverstein or Steve Wozniak or Urs Hoelzle or David Cheriton or Jan Koum or Jawed Karim in the news? You don't, because they don't seek fame. At most you might see them on the donor list of local museums or cultural attractions (which they are, abundantly). Even Marissa Mayer, who was very much seeking the spotlight until she got the Yahoo CEO job, has basically fucked off to the sunset and now just runs some extravagant haunted houses in Palo Alto and helps fund the Junior Museum.

There's plenty of tech wealth that's very quiet, basically keeps to itself, and limits itself to some quiet local philanthropy. But by definition, you don't hear about quiet wealth.

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

#284

Post by tavavex »

geremiiah wrote: post #224
masfuerte wrote: post #16

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.

To be fair, this is only true in western countries. It's not true, in for example Russia or China. Or to be more accurate, in Russia and China, no matter how many hundreds of billions you own, you won't be able to bend the party to your will.

I don't think you know Russia that well. The overlap between the oligarch class and the government itself is massive. It's speculated that Putin himself may be one of the richest people on Earth, because he and his allies have placed themselves at the peak of their government and their economy.

Now, it's not a complete overlap between the government and the rich, and there are points where the two sides may disagree - some oligarchs have been imprisoned and killed before. But if you as an oligarch know how to say the right things and associate with the right people, you'll be allowed to do almost anything you want with impunity. It's an incredibly corrupt might-makes-right society where the hierarchies of political and economic power have already settled and aligned with one another. Most oligarchs don't get to dictate what happens in the government, but their arguments are basically the only ones that they even listen to.

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

#286

Post by sleight42 »

pc86 wrote: post #107
throw2ih020 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most "normal" people would hit $5-30 million, realize they have enough money for themselves and their descendants to be comfortable in perpetuity with some decent wealth management, and either retire or change careers to a passion project. Going to 100s, 1,000s, or 100,000s of millions inherently filters for people who have either absurd greediness (seeing wealth as a scoreboard) or a desire for power.

This is it, it's absolutely a filter beyond a certain point. I have a family member, far enough removed I'll never see any of it, that sold a business in his early 30s for something like $35-40M. Set his kids up for life with trusts, bought some toys and a second home, and been just sort of hanging out ever since (this was 15-20 years ago). He's happy, has a ton of hobbies, and if you ever suggested he start another…

Whereas I have an uncle, a retired CEO, with perhaps the same amount of money. The man is a monster. However, per my cousin, I can't say for sure just when that nature revealed itself but certainly no later than 20 years into his career.

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

#287

Post by fakedang »

dandellion wrote: post #212
fakedang wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money would've allowed them to act any time. But no, this is because of the shifting tide, enabled by an openly elitist government that doesn't give a shit about the layman. Remember how a few years back, all these billionaires and corporations were all talking about DEI and taking the knee and George Floyd, and (insincerely) shoving it all down everyone's throats? It just became socially more acceptable for them to…

I don't see why these colors would be any more truer than the ones before. I bet they would change again just as quick if winds went back to blowing the other way. The only color they care about is the green of money. And if you asked them why they supported it they'd get all forgetful and not remember ever supporting any of that.

It will be very difficult for them to backtrack on their crap now without losing face, since many of them have gone off the far end. Elon was once a darling of the left, with sizeable donations to Obama and Clinton, and even Biden.

It seems for Elon, the point he went right happened as follows:

> On August 5, 2021, Biden signed an Executive Order targeting that half of cars sold in 2030 should be electric.[254] General Motors CEO Mary Barra was in attendance.[254] Musk commented, "seems odd that Tesla wasn't invited."[255] Barra said in 2024 Musk never forgave not being invited.[256][257] In 2025, former vice president Kamala Harris said that she believed that not inviting Musk was a "big mistake."[258][259] In September 2021, Musk criticized Biden as "not the friendliest administration."[258] In December 2021, Musk publicly expressed opposition to the Build Back Better Act.

He literally switched sides for something so trivial, but went deeper and deeper till he went full retard.

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

#288

Post by vivekd »

otterley wrote: post #102
vivekd wrote: post #41

I think the title is inaccurate and a bit inflammatory. He's not advocating stripping most Americans of their voting rights. He's advocating stripping a tiny minority of Americans of their voting rights - specifically the minority of Americans that pay no income tax

The suggestion is inflammatory in and of itself. The right to vote is core to democracy. One should expect even the slightest suggestion of abrogating this right, even to a tiny minority, to be met with a vociferous allergic reaction. Stripping voting rights is a historical leading indicator of a trend to totalitarianism so it has to be nipped in the bud immediately.

I disagree. I don't think there's any historical data showing a correlation between loss of voting rights of a % of the population with totalitarianism. I think among the few countries where it has been tried would be Canada stripping Japanese of voting rights in WWII. Of course this was bad, but at the same time it doesn't seem to have, at least not in most people's view, turned Canada into a totalitarian states.

In my opinion the real trend towards totalitarianism is inability to talk freely about ideas

It's easy and popular to talk about how important democracy or voting rights are. And that makes it a bit annoying because it deprives the possibility of freely exploring other ideas. There's no possibility of free speech or free exchange of ideas so long as portion of the population thinks we have to immediately nip dangerous ideas in the bud without exploration.

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

#289

Post by JKCalhoun »

Jenk wrote: post #32
masfuerte wrote: post #16

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.

I don't buy that. You can't convince me someone shopping at Dollar General has aspirations of becoming Elon-Musk-wealthy.

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

#290

Post by ajross »

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.

You're still misunderstanding what a "vote" is in your laser focus on "taxes". Take "taxes" out of the mix. What's the point of voting at all, in your view? Why bother with it as a concept vs. whatever governmental form you prefer? It's so that the government does what the people want instead of what the leaders want, right?

So why does that principle change when some people are poor or when the tax structure is progressive?

Post reply on HN