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

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

#331

> 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…

> even if, from first principles this is a non-starter in a democratic society. This is a strange phrase - initially you had to either own land (therefore pay tax) or else if you lived in a city and didn't own land but paid sufficient tax[1], to vote in the early United States. Only taxpayers voting was our first principles! We only changed it later. [1] I'm simplifying slightly because different states handled this…

Early democracies didn't allow everyone to vote - slaves typically had no voting rights (or any rights at all). However, we've progressed to understand that if you don't provide people with voting rights, they then have to resort to violence instead either through rebellion or insurrection etc. which is why it's considered a very good idea to let women or even people with different coloured skin to vote.

The end-game to stripping voting rights from people is to surely enslave them or kill them as otherwise they will end up using violence to effect change. Personally, I don't understand how most people don't see how evil and twisted some of these "industry leaders" are.

I think it'd be interesting to only allow people a vote if they are jobless and/or poor i.e. the bottom rung of society. That would tilt society so that we would put much more attention on raising the living standards at the bottom rather than aiming to give more power to sociopathic CEOs.

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

#332

> 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…

> Democracy is an engineering exercise, just like any other system.

God, tech people should have stayed in basements.

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

#333

> 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…

I don't think "crazy" is the best word, but maybe "malicious", "evil", "megalomaniac" or something similar would be more appropriate.

However, I would describe the idea itself as being "crazy" as it seems like something that could very easily be abused. There's a long history of voting laws being twisted to deny certain groups of people (e.g. slaves, women) and of course, there's the old U.S. intelligence tests that they used to give to black people to validate whether they would be allowed to vote (spoiler: the tests were ambiguous enough to invalidate everyone subjected to them).

Imagine if this was implemented and then some bright spark announces that Starbucks workers no longer have to pay income tax. Then, following the election, an immediate decree is made that Starbucks workers are now the property of Starbucks and are not considered to have individual rights.

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

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The difference is that you can prove with math and physics that building bridge out of popsicle sticks is crazy. Whereas your point here is based on emotional appeals (“bones of poor people”) and religious dogma. Poor people are the ones who suffer the most from dysfunctional government. Every unit of inefficiency or dysfunction in public services—every late bus or bad teacher—is a tax on the people who can least aff…

You seem to imply that allowing poor people to vote leads to a dysfunctional government, whereas it seems clear to me that allowing corporations to influence politics is far, far worse.

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

#335
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!

Because there's literally only one comment by one rich dude! No need to look at any further evidence, case closed!

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

#336

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…

Rather than a fixed amount of net worth, I'd rather it was linked to something like the minimum wage (e.g. minimum wage x 10 million) or the net worth of the poorest 10%. There should be some mechanism to prevent runaway wealth hoarders from stealing power and resources from the rest of us.

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

#337
post #175

Tax the rich. And by that I mean people who "earn" their wealth through mechanisms that aren't direct income. Heck, give an exception to the tax on the first million of non-income based wealth. But something has to change because their money is their power and they deserve less of it.

My biggest problem with “tax the rich” is: then what? Build another “high-speed train”? Spend the money on some fake nonprofit run by the same rich people?

Are these really the only ways of spending tax income you're aware of?

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

#338
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because there's literally only one comment by one rich dude! No need to look at any further evidence, case closed!

Yeah ignore the Oracle CEO saying everyone will be on their best behavior because AI surveillance will keep people in check [0].

Or Thiel saying that "democracy and freedom are no longer compatible". I wonder who's freedom to do what he's talking about? Surely he's concerned about the little man? [1]

Or Elon Musk cutting USAID and causing all sorts of death and destruction around the world [2] while enriching himself from government coffers. [3]

Or Marc Andreessen calling the concept of "social responsibility" an "enemy of progress". [4] Sure wonder what his idea of progress is! I'm sure it's great for everyone given that it's opposed to even the notion of social responsibility!

And that's just in our little tech world! If you venture out a bit further, you'll find many more gems, like Tim Gurner complaining that workers have gotten "arrogant" and continuing to say: "We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around." [5]

Sure, it's all just one rich dude making an offhand comment. Or maybe all of them making offhand comments all the time?

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/16/oracle-ceo-larry-ellison-s...

[1] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/07/elon-musk...

[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/13/business/musk-trillionair...

[4] https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/

[5] https://x.com/kenklippenstein/status/1701658625280704599

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

#339

> 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…

> First off all, what percent of people do not pay any taxes on income?

Most corporates, for starters.

Seen in that light, it might not be such a bad idea.

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

#340
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Love to get absurd strawman arguments from the billionaire bootlickers.

"Creating value" only means something if you can eat a spreadsheet.

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