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Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

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Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#341

Post by terminalshort »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #266
terminalshort wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually much simpler than that. We need to pay down the debt, and because the rich have most of the money they are going to need to do most of the paying down whether or not they directly are responsible for it or benefited from it. It's simple math. But what does this have to do with a wealth tax? The entire concept is stupid. Income an capital gains rates can be increased.

>But what does this have to do with a wealth tax? The entire concept is stupid. Why do you think that?

Here's a good explanation from an economist: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/theres-not-that-much-wealth-in...

Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#342

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #308
terminalshort wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Elon's editorial control of X something the government needs to (or even should have the power to) "reign in?" How is that not freedom of the press just like the owner of the New York Times having editorial control over his newspaper? Same goes for his donation to the PAC. What is the nefarious activity they are engaged in? Why are they not allowed to exercise their freedom of the press in the same way as any…

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter the previous owners engaged in different kinds of editorial control. The people who argued that editorial control of Twitter was something the owners had the right to do on their private platform and the people who argued that the government should find some legal mechanism to characterize this editorial control as some kind of crime so they could force Twitter not to do it, were flipp…

> Before Elon Musk bought Twitter the previous owners engaged in different kinds of editorial control. The people who argued that editorial control of Twitter was something the owners had the right to do on their private platform and the people who argued that the government should find some legal mechanism to characterize this editorial control as some kind of crime so they could force Twitter not to do it, were flipped from what they are now.

Well I've been against this regardless of owners. Honestly, this stuff is really concerning. I spent a bunch of years working in social media, and back then I was sceptical that algorithmic content selection should be regarded as publication, but given how easy it is to shift the Overton window with changes here, I think that it probably needs to happen.

I do think that this will cause lots of downstream impacts that I like, but this much power is bad in anyone's hands, regardless of how much I agree with them.

Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#343

Post by andy_ppp »

bpodgursky wrote: post #144
andy_ppp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cherry picked California which is very much an outlier compared to the rest of the country? Are you denying the effect of money affecting political outcomes, the rich wouldn’t spend their money on media and PACs if it didn’t work would they?

> Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches group to influence CA politics I'm talking about the actual issue being discussed! Garry Tan isn't launching a group to influence Wyoming politics.

I think this is completely missing the point… are you really saying California would be improved by more rich people being able to game the system? I think CA would benefit from more visionary politicians (i.e. not paid for) and more people at the bottom end being able to have homes in the big cities and less wealth accumulation, maybe reducing the gap between power and poverty means we could have better societies. I’m not talking about crazy change btw, reducing billionaires wealth to that of the nineties would allow us to rebuild a lot of great things and employ a lot of people. Putting money into stocks, real estate and crypto does not create wealth.

Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#344

Post by CamperBob2 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #301
CamperBob2 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that education had any meaningful part to play. It's true that less-educated people were more inclined to vote for Trump, but it's also true that we got all the "education" about Trump between 2016 and 2020 that anyone should have needed. You can fix ignorance with education, but you can't fix stupidity.

>we got all the "education" about Trump between 2016 and 2020 that anyone should have needed. Well the "real" cause is economy. Trump had a strong economy in term 1 until COVID. If you weren't affected by the China trade war (and many in the red states arent), you could ignore the day to day politics and think "yeah Trump is great!" But "economy" is too generic, and I feel that phenomenon is more attributed to "ignor…

If you weren't affected by the China trade war

Thinking that you won't be affected by a trade war with China, or that you will somehow come out ahead in the bargain, is as good a symptom of stupidity as any.

Either the tariffs were going to be an act of economic suicide, if implemented as originally promised by Trump, or they were going to be yet another shameless grift, designed to bring industry leaders to his door bowing and scraping and bearing gifts. Regardless, the people who voted for him won't get what they were promised, and the rest of us will be stuck with the long-term costs.

Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#345

Post by myvoiceismypass »

diggyhole wrote: post #109

Garry has tweeted about the violence his peers have had to endure in SF so I don't blame him for putting his money where is mouth is.

Was it this tweet?

“Fuck Chan Peskin Preston Walton Melgar Ronen Safai Chan as a label and motherfucking crew,” he wrote in a since-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter, to his 408,000 followers during the early morning hours of Saturday. “Die slow motherfuckers.”

Tupac must have been rolling over in his grave, drunk or not this was absolute cringe and unacceptable from a public figure.

Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#346

Post by asveikau »

mattmanser wrote: post #79
learingsci wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A wealth tax is not an obviously great idea. It’s worth having a better public debate on that topic.

I don't really see any other solution, can you explain it? The ultra-rich are taking too great a share of every nations wealth. And they keep taking more. Taxes are the only option to redistribute wealth. Or are you talking about enabling strong unions and anti-monopoly laws with teeth to reverse the growth? As I doubt Garry's in favour of that either.

> I don't really see any other solution, can you explain it?

One reason a wealth tax is controversial and less precedented is that it taxes unrealized gains.

Another alternative would be to raise taxes on high income rather than wealth. In the 1950s people were taxed at something like 90% for every dollar over $400,000. We could go back to something like that but adjust that $400,000 to something like a couple of million, to match inflation.

This essentially puts a cap on wages. The money you make below the cap would be taxed at the same rates we pay today. Once you get above that amount, you keep most of what falls below, but the government would take almost all of what's above the cap.

I think if you do it that way you would also have to tax interest and capital gains similarly to wages. That's another loophole that's very commonly exploited in the last few decades, investment income gets taxed lower.

Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#347

Post by RickJWagner »

andy_ppp wrote: post #5

I think rich people have too much influence, I probably agree with Garry Tan on a lot but we need to get money out of politics. Let’s face it we’re all meant to get one vote but rich people spend money on this stuff so that they manipulate what and who can be voted for. I do think that if this current system is the result of democracy + the internet we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s cur…

Don’t forget celebrity.

Celebrities can take minutes of time stolen from an audience to make a one-sided argument for their pet political issues. It’s intolerable.

One person, one vote. Equal platform.

Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#348

Post by chr1 »

f30e3dfed1c9 wrote: post #335
chr1 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a bad idea? Can you describe one bad consequence of it, if it is implemented in combination with the other ideas above?

First, how about if you show that you've spent more than five seconds thinking about why every democratic country on earth uses secret ballots? Why are secret ballots codified in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights? There are other parts of your scheme that are also spectacularly bad ideas, but let's just deal with this one for now.

That's a very good question, for instance for most of its republican period Rome did not have secret ballot, and voting was open. That have changed in 138BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_laws_of_the_Roman_Repub... and have caused major instability, political violence and eventually demise of the republic.

The issue was that the poor people could vote for Gracchi brothers, but were too afraid to protect them, and one without the other only have brought to a worse outcome where they could not vote at all.

Even today if you are afraid of saying openly what policies or which politician you support, how can you hope to enact these policies?

Secret ballot started being introduced in US starting from 1888 and it did not bring any of positive changes that its supporters thought that it would.

In places where a group can intimidate majority of voters and force to vote one way, secret ballot does not help at all because that group can also fake the results. It even makes situation worse, by hiding the actual data from opposition.

Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#349

Post by yndoendo »

etrautmann wrote: post #175
yndoendo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eat the rich. I do so by taking Jeff Bezos' money and giving him a penny. Also by not supporting restaurants that have a Wall-street ticker nor any alcohol producers that have a Wall-street ticker.

What does this mean? are you employed by Amazon and phoning it in, or how are you extracting money from Bezos?

I work in automation. We sell solutions to businesses such as Amazon and a number of others like them. They demanded millions in free engineering labor because they are too big not to do business with. Companies are so big in the USA that you become slave labor.

I rarely support business that have Wall-street tickers. I have not personally financially supported Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, ... for years.

I also do not buy any beverages from a Wall-street provider. No Coca-Cola, Pepsi, ...

Ultra wealth are just terrible humans that do not deserve respect for how they treat everyone below them in the economic ladder. I no longer want to help fund the CEO of McDonald's with his golden parachute while they support non-living wages.

Re: Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches dark-money group to influence CA politics

#350

Post by f30e3dfed1c9 »

chr1 wrote: post #348
f30e3dfed1c9 wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, how about if you show that you've spent more than five seconds thinking about why every democratic country on earth uses secret ballots? Why are secret ballots codified in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights? There are other parts of your scheme that are also spectacularly bad ideas, but let's just deal with this one for now.

That's a very good question, for instance for most of its republican period Rome did not have secret ballot, and voting was open. That have changed in 138BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_laws_of_the_Roman_Repub... and have caused major instability, political violence and eventually demise of the republic. The issue was that the poor people could vote for Gracchi brothers, but were too afraid to protect them, a…

Gosh, you make it sound like the near-universal use of secret ballots is all just some sort of misunderstanding that could be rectified if only everyone would listen to you. Tilt away if that's your favorite windmill, I guess.
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