One must not be so cowardly as to deny that materials and technology can be misused or deny that their purpose is of oppression for fear of being attacked by group-thinkers.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" as Socrates put it. So, I invite you not play the usual game of narrowly looking at a single if statement and conclude "there's nothing political in this"; but rather look at the bigger picture... the asymmetry in access to information, resources, weapons, and how that impacts everyone's lives...
If we don't admit that there's a couple dozen people with immeasurable wealth and resources who have questionable intentions and opinions that affect our day-to-day lives, then we won't be able to prevent worse outcomes in a timely manner.
A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.
> There is a war between those who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't
- Leonard Cohen, 1974
Everyone usually has this stance by default until they think some batshit crazy redlines have been crossed regardless of what end of the political spectrum they reside in and decide to adopt an "us vs them, hope for peace, prepare for war" approach.
I'm sure you have some "if they actually do <xyz> then I'll adopt a more alarmed stance" line in the sand, it's just drawn at a different point probably. That's why it's best to talk specifics of the case instead of declaring an abstract high-road stance.
As a nerd running a startup, I dislike the tendency of many journalists to blanket blame “nerds” for the behavior of nutjobs like Musk. It’s pure “us vs them” thinking, blaming the group for the behavior of a few.
I think that you definitely need to count him. He's always been a massive nerd, his attempts to bulk up and become a MMA competitor notwithstanding.
The thing that seemed really inconguous to me was that he actually made the amazing tech. I don't think I have ever encountered a personality like that who actually made things. Certainly I've seen them talking about how great the thing they made is, but invariably, to them, I made means 'my employees made'
Which is not to say that there aren't toxic people who do actually make things. They exist, but it presents somewhat differently to the 'Tech bro' archetype.
If profit maximisation is the ultimate goal every smart individual chases, the current trajectory seems inevitable?
Wozniak is still alive and seemingly not in the rightwing set, although also too retired to count as "leadership".
Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or have a hard time believing it can actually be true.
Here is a list of credible persons commenting on Musk whether he understands engineering or not. With all the sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
I struggle to imagine that anyone not already sympathetic to the high school classic "nerds suck" world view is going to suddenly be swayed by this funny book title.
Lord William Rees-Mogg being the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg, of Brexit fame.
Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little.
> Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little.
Endemic problem in UK politics, and a lot of other countries.
Not sure "code" belongs here. Even less sure about "illusion".
Take those away and what is left is "dismantled... by capital". Nothing new, really.
It can bolster democracies or undermine them. The real agency lies with those who wield it. And it's rarely the coders. It's the leaders, the platforms, the systems that choose how code is deployed.
One day you're chasing terrorism, the next you're chasing ecologists, political opponents, unions, minorities, &c.
Sure, just like tank is backed by metallurgy and engineers.
>The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu (and not only him most likely) would disagree.
Soviet union had surveillance and propaganda capabilities you can't even imagine without any of LLM etc.
Surely new tech makes things easier and cheeper, but doesn't change the basic principles.
My point is exactly this: code makes things move faster for everyone, so you can really remove if from the sentence and nothing will change. In adds no meaningful context. It mostly sells.
And isn’t social media that prefers rage over information a danger to democracy?
This is the right question.
I'll quote myself here:
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just right some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
And to get this capital you should have laws that allow you to do so (tax rates, evasion etc).
Same goes for political influence.
Of course “code” belongs here.
This book appears to be available only for preorder now, not yet published. Nobody here has read it, nobody here can read it, and even if they could, this submission will disappear off the front pages before commenters have a chance to order and read the book. Thus the comments section here is going to be useless (or at least more useless than usual).
The person who submitted the link already explained the submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068363
A lot seems about Curtis Yarvin and fans thereof.
When conditions change, cracks appear..
For many reasons we appear to be in an era of slower growth, but shareholders used to growth are still demanding it. That’s sticking business leaders in a really tough place.
The incentives need to change - whether through legislation, or market demands. Until then it’ll be less leg room on flights, more “offers” when you just opened your banking app to pay a bill, and more sanctioned spam in your inbox.
I truly believe plenty of folks are fed up and a backlash is coming that’ll be a mix of legislation and companies emerging that cater to informed customers. I’m optimistic!
That's a really naive take, for you to enjoy this "ideal capitalism" there are hundred thousands of people who've been seeing and feeling these cracks for decades if not centuries, it's just slowly reaching your neck of the woods
It took me a long time to break myself out of it. I think key was getting into the deep details of passing actual policies that would have enough popular support to be sustainable, to realize its ultimately just naive/simplistic thinking, thats another impractical ideology under the hood, dressed up as something more meaningful.
There are a huge number of threats to democracy and the biggest one is probably the total lack of principles and common sense possessed by the median voter. It is a real problem and a bigger one than some billionaire or even the consensus of the billionaires. Sometimes voters and capital come into actual conflict and generally the voters tend to win Pyrrhic victories when that happens.
Hard disagree.
The biggest problem is a misinformed electorate.
An accurate, honest and truthful press is vital for democracy; how else do people know whom to vote for! The fact this is being dismantled (often supplying deliberate misinformation) is truly worrying.
After all, the electorate is entitled to have a lack of principles and no common sense; nobody ever said democracy was perfect. However the electorate needs to be provided with an honest set facts on which they can base their decisions without cries of "fake news". Whatever their political leanings.
I agree with GP that a primary missing feature is a principled public - without principles people swing wildly in opinion depending on the topic and popular rhetoric.
I see this with much of my own family. They mostly consider themselves conservatives and Republicans of the small government and balanced budget era. Those presumed values go out the window though and when a particular political topic of the day comes up they seem to completely contradict it. The most egregious example in my family is a Ron Paul libertarian that somehow still holds those opinions while supporting virtually everything Trump does.
2. Regarding the power of billionaires vs the power of the median voter, consider that each lever in a system deserves attention before pulling on it or reconfiguring it. How can one determine "the biggest threat to democracy" without digging into the details?
It just so happens, tech is were the real money is now. If this was 40+ years ago, they would have ended up on Wall Street or Madison Avenue.
Silicon valley just happened to reside next to the hippies in the first decades
When you have too much money, it's kinda boring to keep making more of them. You want self-expression to the max extent the society will allow you.
I'm not disagreeing with you completely, but I would like to know more about what other factors you would consider to have been more impactful. I don't know that you really need hippies around to get that kind of 'california capitalist' mentality either tbf.
Recent events prove that there was nothing ideological about it. Once a positive feedback loop is established, it's difficult to break
So which one is it? Oh wait, it's a modern progressive, "calling everything I don't like every bad name I remember from high school history"! Are they also nativist globalists and authoritarian libertarians? I bet they are!
It doesn't, although they would like you to believe so, so you avoid obtaining it.
But it definitely attracts those corrupted.
Power is obtained through meeting people, gaining their favor, entering deals, providing them services, eventually joining their ranks and advancing to the next level on the ordinal scale. Especially in politics, "power corrupts" by definition; by the time you gain any, you're so thoroughly entangled in mutual deals and friendships with other players you're no longer an autonomous entity - and if you're not willing to do that, you will never be given the opportunity to advance.
--
[0] - Yes, there are caveats and strategems one can use to hold on to power - usually by playing people against each other to coerce ongoing support; every history period and every movie with a villain has plenty of examples. It's another discussion; my focus here is on what power is, and where it comes from.
Like it's more a force than a destiny. Gravity pulls the moon down every day yet it doesn't fall on our heads.
It's less wildly successful as a political entity than Christianity or Islam.
I don’t know that I would position the USA in this way.
Different metrics lead to different “winners”:
Longevity: Imperial China
Institutional legacy: Rome
Global reach: British Empire
Scientific/cultural transmission: Islamic Caliphates
Modern dominance: United States
Another lens:
* Rome & China = stability, governance, internal cohesion.
* Britain & the US = networks, capital markets, technology leverage.
* Caliphates = knowledge platforms, cosmopolitan integration.
Weren't the 'rules' of the United States of America written by wealthy white males who excluded women, non-whites, and the non-wealthy (eg non-land owning) from participating in the new nation?
As much as the worldwide turn to fascism worries me, I don't see the lives of most people in the world changing very drastically from any other time in history. Maybe the openness by which the privileged exercise their power is a bit higher on the historical scale, but the lives of the non-privileged, world wide, really don't change much over history. Sure, the invention of fire, electricity, etc benefitted all of mankind, but the distinctions of 'how life is lived' between the privileged and the non-privileged has always been dramatic.
The excesses of the Weimar Republic did not justify the subsequent events. Not even close.
What's the endgame of a movement that seeks to discredit, overturn, and functionally control elections?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_ele...
Meaning: if you think the majority of people will be coerced to normalize this all insanity being pushed by a bunch of mindless Marxists living under the prosperity of capitalism, you will be sorely disappointed.
The USA just elected 2 communists for mayors (they don’t even hide it anymore) but here people are trying to tell us the real issue with present society is fascism.
I’ve seen how that game plays out: and it’s not pretty.
