There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest (opens in new tab)

Why limit the comment to modern philanthropy? I doubt anyone, in meaningful numbers, has ever sought to undermine their own position in society. That would include anyone nominally seeking to “change things for the better.”

> This Chomsky quote comes to mind “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”. The sad part is that a lot of people seem to be addicted to the right vs left thinking.

What this is more broadly is the Overton Window. There is "acceptable" topics that can be broached.

As for Right versus Left, well that is 1 dimension politically. There is for example authoritarian / libertarian scale. So many political tests have the "Quad" or "Compass". Most people normally score around the middle.

However there are 4 dimensional tests such as this.

https://8values.github.io/

I have no idea how accurate these are, or whether they are biased. But there is certainly much more than left vs right.

> A while ago I listened to a radio interview with an author whose thesis was that modern philanthropists allow change only in a way that doesn’t threaten their own wealth and power. This definitely rings true.

Well what you are talking about is the idea of hyper-normalisation. The idea is that you finance both sides e.g. pro fascist, anti-fascist etc. This creates a state of confusion where people don't really know what is going on and become apathetic to it.

Adam Curtis made a documentary about it, however here is a snippet from it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=31&v=wcy8uLjRHPM

'to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion' which is certainly now a widespread phenomenon cheered on by a seeming majority. In the UK these days, having the 'wrong opinions' albeit politely expressed can now land you with a criminal conviction or at the least, apprehension in the cells.

Was the interviewee Anand Giridharadas? I have been finding his takes particularly enlightening.

Most development aid is also philanthropy of that kind. Supporting countries in ways that keeps them from getting up and standing on their own legs, distorting the economy in the disfavor of local merchants and industries.

The Chomsky quote is something you hear from the Left from time to time: a political theory which implies some kind of deliberate coordination between capitalists as a class. Is there a Protocols of the Elders of Capitalism which includes this as a principle, or some Omniscient Council of Capitalist Vagueness who are defining the spectrum of currently acceptable opinion?

(Not that the Left has a monopoly on conspiracy theories of course, but it should be called out whenever it appears).

At first read of the title, I thought this was about “there’s no right or left” meaning you could substitute Republican for right and Democrat for left. Ultimately, the authors talking about tangentially and in line with your quote and OP:

“The only way to overcome the oligarchy and Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back.

That means creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans who will fight for democracy and oppose oligarchy.

White, black and Latino; union and non-union; evangelical and secular; immigrant and native-born – all focused on ending big money in politics, stopping corporate welfare and crony capitalism, busting up monopolies and stopping voter suppression.”

Edit-the point is to see beyond that possible connection and to what really needs to happen: the voters demanding and reinforcing their political powers. Practically, I think this asks people to not become jaded, “tune out”, and accept what’s going on as too big and beyond your influence.

Engage-read the news, do all the research you can muster on what politicians are doing, and come up with your own opinion. Then do your civic duties to reinforce your opinions.

All forms of government have a good form and a destructive form. Democracy is rule of the mob if it tramples individuals liberty. An incompetent, selfish king is a tyrant, a good king that serves society can be highly effective and create a great society. As with all things, it is balancing the extremes as the mean between competing needs or interests is often the best outcome.

> Soros and the Kochs are some of the biggest political donors and influencers and while they donate massive amounts to progressive causes and libertarian values, they have very little interest in helping working class Americans.

I think this reinforces the author's point more than opposes it. Who in their right mind thinks the Koch brothers are anything but pro-oligarchy?

> they have very little interest in helping working class Americans.

What you mean by "helping working class Americans"? I am definitely working (every day, many hours), does my interest count? If I would like for America to become more libertarian (or more socialist), can it be said Koch (or Soros) are helping my interests? Or only a direct ACH transfer counts? Or something in between - what? Every politician I've see has declared they'd be "helping working class Americans" - and they all have diametrically opposed ideas of what that means. One can almost conclude it doesn't mean anything but a meaningless platitude politician has to do along with shaking hands and kissing babies.

How so? Populism is by definition an ideologue of regular people against the elites. Or do you have your own definition of populism? Can I hear it?

> By focusing on how much they hate Trump, what are they not focusing on? What have they all decided has been solved off-screen that you shouldn't worry your head about?

I dunno, this almost sounds like an Alex-Jones style conspiracy theory.

That rule can be used to justify a lot of content that doesn't belong here. Reading the discussion here is like reading a forum for political scientists discussing the tradeoffs between strong and weak typing.

No true Scotsman right?

Your straw man looks very fierce and imposing, but this is argument by assertion. If self-identified progressives find the goals and actions of Bill Gates, say, to be congenial, what does it matter that you believe his heart isn't in it? -- it's "more like a fashion trend", as you say.

It is very easy to convince yourself that someone else's actions are insincere. If this -- your own belief supported by your desire to see them as horrible people -- suffices for you as evidence, why should anyone attempt to argue against you?

In other words, there isn't much value in "fashion" or "virtue signaling" accusations except in preaching to the converted.

> They are not going to be progressive in the sense of forwarding pro-social, anti-corporate policies.

Certainly not anti-corporate, but I don't see why they wouldn't be pro-social. They don't want to be the ones paying for those policies, but every American well educated and in good health would certainly profit their enterprises. It's just that it appears too expensive to be worth the profit to them.

With e-voting can keep mostly the same system we have now, but augment that with two small changes. 1) you can change your representative at any time, which changes the weight of his vote, 2) you can overrule your representatives vote on issues you care about.

In this way there won't be a situation like Brexit because after initial open ended vote people can participate in subsequent votes too, and can eventually decide that they don't want Brexit or want it even without any trade agreements.

Fake news, (or rather people not smart enough to distinguish fake news), will remain a problem, but democracy uses assumption that most people are smart enough, if this assumption is not true then oligarchs buying politicians is actually useful to the society, but i don't think this is very likely.

If you look at the author's other writings, Aubrey de Grey is precisely the kind of wealthy person he thinks is looting the country at the expense of everyone else by not paying much higher taxes, though. Framing the discussion in terms of "the oligarchy" and "puppet masters" just makes for better rhetoric than telling us that he wants to turn the rest of the populace against the top few percent whilst leaving the handful of ultra-wealthy people relatively untouched (which is what his actual policies seem to do).

Does Aubrey talk about this topic ? I only read on his work and SENS.

There are other rich people that are pretty cool and whose goals align with mine: Gates finances target malaria, Bezos works on Blue Origin, Thiel founded seasteading institute, etc. My point is not that all rich people are good, but that there is no poor people team vs rich people team. We can't team up with class of people, only with individuals.

My main goal is to increase the number of people in the world, and to increase the opportunities they have. Because that also increases my opportunities too: living longer, having better computers, learning new physics, etc. will be possible only if other people work on this problems.

I did not mean that non-rich do not share this goal, (in fact most people contribute to this merely by their existence willingly or not). What i wanted to say is that being rich or poor is not a good criterion for division.

The method Elon uses for the persuasion is building rockets and taking money in exchange of services, i'll happily buy starlink internet when it is available. I have donated money to SENS foundation https://www.sens.org/.

> there are simply not enough hours in the day

Sure, that's why i do not propose to take referendums for everything, people give their votes to representatives who work hard to have informed opinions. The difference is that the vote can be changed anytime, and that on specific issues about which voter cares, the representatives vote can be overruled. Even if this overruling doesn't happen very often, the possibility of that will help the elected individual to keep voters interests at heart.

Yes, sadly he only had 10s of millions instead of billions, and i agree it would be amazing if he had billion.

But in the context of articles proposal of "coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class" even millionaires end up outside of "good forces".