The New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia • Hacker News Board

Re: The New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia

#91

Post by jjj123 » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 3:47 PM UTC

nis0s wrote: post #86

jjj123 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ownership class will 1) have to pay more in taxes and 2) will lose power over their employees who under the current system are pressured to keep their jobs or lose healthcare. As for lesser outcomes, I’m not sure how it works practically, you’re probably correct. My understanding is the current system trades based on who can pay, and m4a works triage based on need. So given the same healthcare bandwidth, I assume…

Medicare is funded by making everyone pay for it. So, I think it follows that Medicare for All could be funded by making everyone pay for it. It’s likely that changing the calculus of the healthcare industry will result in job losses, but I guess it depends on how MFA is implemented. If taxes are increased on all earners to pay for universal healthcare, then the employer burden on providing payments towards health in…

“Medicare is funded by making everyone pay for it. So, I think it follows that Medicare for All could be funded by making everyone pay for it“

I’m unsure of your point on this one. Both recent fleshed-out m4a policy proposals (Bernie and Warren’s from 2020) pay for m4a with increased taxes. Are you disputing the point that taxes to pay for m4a will not disproportionately come from the wealthiest Americans? My understanding is lower income Americans would pay a little more in taxes but would make it back (and more) in healthcare savings. Extremely high income Americans would pay a lot more in taxes and would absolutely not make it back in healthcare savings. That is effectively a savings for lower income people and a cost for rich people.

This entire thread feels like a pedantic tangent to my original point: policy decisions result in benefits to some groups and costs to others. Do you disagree with that? We’re so deep in the weeds I cannot tell your high-level point here.

Re: The New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia

#92

Post by myvoiceismypass » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 4:15 PM UTC

mikkupikku wrote: post #20

nyeah wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Genuine monarchists are pretty rare in America. That was true once. Today Yarvin is massively influential. (I'm not explaining it, just reporting it.)

I think you're massively overselling "Moldbug"'s influence. Most on the right today dismiss him for being jewish. Older right-leaning people are mostly stuck on the Facebook/Fox News reservation and don't read essays or blogs, ever, and probably aren't even literate enough to understand Yarvin let alone get talking into monarchism by him. I will grant that he has influence, but definitely not "massive". Maybe he has…

> Most on the right today

"Most" on the right will play dumb when you bring up Project 2025 too, which he architected, and which is getting played out in front of our very own eyes, day in and day out.

Re: The New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia

#93

Post by nis0s » Sat, Dec 20, 2025, 11:53 PM UTC

jjj123 wrote: post #91

nis0s wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicare is funded by making everyone pay for it. So, I think it follows that Medicare for All could be funded by making everyone pay for it. It’s likely that changing the calculus of the healthcare industry will result in job losses, but I guess it depends on how MFA is implemented. If taxes are increased on all earners to pay for universal healthcare, then the employer burden on providing payments towards health in…

“Medicare is funded by making everyone pay for it. So, I think it follows that Medicare for All could be funded by making everyone pay for it“ I’m unsure of your point on this one. Both recent fleshed-out m4a policy proposals (Bernie and Warren’s from 2020) pay for m4a with increased taxes. Are you disputing the point that taxes to pay for m4a will not disproportionately come from the wealthiest Americans? My underst…

It’s funny to me that because Sanders and Warren said that’s the way it might be done, then you think that’s the only way it could be done. You’re stuck in a zero-sum way of thinking, or you just want to take from people who’ve aggrieved you. That’s the problem, I think, that instead of reflecting on how you could possibly be biased in your thinking, by using words like owner class, you think me pointing out that bias is a pedantic tangent. There’s not much else to say here then.

Re: The New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia

#94

Post by insane_dreamer » Mon, Dec 22, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #90

insane_dreamer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not inherently immoral but it's inherently dangerous because it can be so easily weaponized almost all wars are fueled by nationalism

> almost all wars are fueled by nationalism Many wars, especially modern ones, are fueled in part by nationalism, but almost none are caused by nationalism alone or mostly caused by nationalism alone. Instead, they're driven primarily by other factos: power & security, economic interests, religion or ideology, contorl and authority. Nationalism is often a tool rather than the root cause.

I didn't say "caused". I said "fueled".

Re: The New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia

#95

Post by nis0s » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 9:11 PM UTC

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #89

analog31 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are racism, misogyny, and superstition useful or useless? Now one could argue that those things are not right or left wing. There is no epistemology for what any given ideology -- political or religious -- consists of. An apologist can simply deny that "negative" things are part of their ideology.

> Are racism, misogyny, and superstition useful or useless? Obviously, they're useless and counter-productive. There's no rational reason to think that there is a significant difference between people with different skin/eye/hair colour or between genders, but it's obviously a simplistic tribal belief. What we end up getting is a huge amount of wasted talent because of tribal politics - imagine how many Einstein-like…

> Even the idea of "races" is itself flawed and has no meaningful basis apart from "they look different".

Agreed. There are genetic differences between families (think: extended blood relatives, but even those differences change after enough generations), but they’re hardly along racial lines.

Re: The New Right-Wing Tech Intelligentsia

#96

Post by ThrowawayR2 » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 10:29 PM UTC

pcrh wrote: post #55

This reflects an interesting development in Bay Area politics, which has global impact through tech companies. A few decades ago, tech, science and liberalism were bedfellows in the Bay Area. Apple was famous for its anti-authoritarian "1984" ad, directed by Ridley Scott. Google proclaimed "Don't be evil". I'm not sure quite what to make of the current trend of the dominant "technocrats", and their employees, from be…

> "A few decades ago, tech, science and liberalism were bedfellows in the Bay Area."

A few decades ago was before the meteoric internet and mobile web boom and the deluge of non-hackers with CS degrees and MBA types with dollar signs in their eyes that flooded into the tech industry. The hacker ethos turned from "information wants to be free" into "f--- you, pay me" in only a few short years simply because the old guard was diluted away to nothingness by so many newcomers.