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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

#311

Post by Hikikomori »

DaedalusII wrote: post #46
mikestew wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sociopath part is what allows one to do what it takes to get ultra rich in the first place. Other than Gates, not one comes to mind who gives anything to charity, for example (yes, I’m sure one or two exists).

basal take, completely incorrect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_charitabl... the US is the most charitable country on earth as a percentage of GDP. There is so much philanthropy that the finance industry is building new businesses just to serve it https://fintech.global/2026/04/29/the-philtech-revolution-wh...

Does this include giving money to churches in USA?

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

#312

Post by 4d4m »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #136
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 sorta the reasoning behind statements like "billionaires shouldn't exist". It's not a statement that people shouldn't see fruits of their labor, but that past a certain point, its no longer about the fruits or even the tree, but the power that comes with it. In a democracy, those who get lucky in business are not owed power. So yeah, billionaires and trillionaires shouldn't exist, because their existence is a…

Why don't we just cap every dev at 75k like Europe? Not sure how this argument helps society have the drive to be an outlier and create value.

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

#314

Post by rainsford »

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…

Like any engineering exercise, there are ideas within the bounds of reasonable debate and ideas that are so bad they should be immediately dismissed and those advocating for them excluded from further discussion until they can participate like intelligent adults.

If I'm a civil engineer designing a bridge, I think it's perfectly reasonable to call someone crazy if their plan is to build it out of Popsicle sticks and unicorn tears. Or more appropriate for this discussion, from the bones of poor people. Wasting time on their nonsense not only makes it harder to reach our actual goal of building a bridge, but reinforces the nonsense notion that all ideas are equally valid or worthy of consideration just because someone voiced them.

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

#316

Post by senordevnyc »

vrganj wrote: post #69

How much more evidence do we need that there is in fact a class war going on and the rich are winning? The biggest con they ever pulled off is making working class people (and yes, that includes you, fellow tech workers!) hate unions. Unions are the only way workers can fight back - they may be able to tell individuals what to do, but they can't control the collective. This is also why they're so feverishly trying to…

Yeah, this one rich dude made an offhand comment! If that’s not concrete evidence of a massive conspiracy, nothing is!

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

#317

Post by senordevnyc »

mothballed wrote: post #220
Maxatar wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only 900 billionaires in the U.S. Do you think if they lost their voting rights it would affect the outcome of even a single election whatsoever?

If it includes ability to vote via campaign donations that cause votes, then yes absolutely. Note for instance in the Massie primary, rich donors literally turned money into new votes by prodding a bunch of demented elderly people who never vote in primaries to believe Massie was banging AOC and Ilhan Omar and secretly a democrat (the vote from regular primary voters remained almost unchanged, the delta was almost en…

It’s always other people who are brainwashed by the propaganda, huh?

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

#318

Post by consumer451 »

senordevnyc wrote: post #313
consumer451 wrote: post #310

The eventual flagging of this post makes me so sad for our civilization, of which this website is a HUGE part. I believe there was a very interesting conversation happening here.

[flagged]

I appreciate the reply. However, there is a lot more than blah blah happening here, in the hundreds of comments. Here was my best effort, which I believe is entirely fair:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49091321

I believe that many people understood the subtext of TFA, and contributed to a genuinely interesting thread, given our increasingly low-trust political and business environment.

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

#319

Post by mothballed »

senordevnyc wrote: post #317
mothballed wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it includes ability to vote via campaign donations that cause votes, then yes absolutely. Note for instance in the Massie primary, rich donors literally turned money into new votes by prodding a bunch of demented elderly people who never vote in primaries to believe Massie was banging AOC and Ilhan Omar and secretly a democrat (the vote from regular primary voters remained almost unchanged, the delta was almost en…

It’s always other people who are brainwashed by the propaganda, huh?

I mean if all the people that voted last primary voted basically the same you have some sort of control group, the only significant delta in that primary was a huge group of very elderly people that don't vote in the primaries except this time that showed up after they were targeted for a hilariously false campaign with Isreali AIPAC money.

If the control group changed as well I'd agree with you, but the delta here was basically a huge group of demented people that were specifically targeted to show up in a one-off. It's hardly just disingenuously brushed away as some "other people" that just changed their mind after labeling the other guy's opinion as propaganda because they disagreed.

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

#320

Post by rainsford »

rayiner wrote: post #137

The article criticizes “taking us back to the 19th century,” but ironically dropping property qualifications for voting was an innovation of the Jacksonian era of the 1820s-1850s. There is a tendency to all efforts to generalize the franchise together, but that’s illogical. Just because race and sex are illegitimate qualifiers for voting doesn’t mean that all qualifiers for voting are necessarily illegitimate. Are we…

The fundamental problem is that almost any qualifiers you add that dictate voting rights gives those with voting rights a powerful incentive to run the country according to their own interests while ensuring those qualifiers continue to only apply to their in-group.

Would I rather live in a country run by scientists than deadbeats? Probably. But that's based on the idea that we live in a reasonably free society with social mobility where the difference between scientist and deadbeat is at least partially down to intelligence and work ethic. Hand all the power to the "scientists" though and it's not obvious that distinction would continue to be true past a few generations, because later generations of "scientist" didn't come up through the same free and equal society. I buy that the first generation of all-powerful scientists legitimately will want to turn the grocery store bagger into a future scientist. History suggests later generations will have no such interest.

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