1y ago

The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right-Wing San Francisco

The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right-Wing San Francisco::A rogue’s gallery of big tech edgelords and their reactionary hangers-on have a plan to remake the city by the bay in their own weirdo image.

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1mo ago

The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right-Wing San Francisco (2024)

newrepublic.com /article/178675/garry-tan-tech-san-francisco

22 comments

It is scary to think that people with this much money and influence can be so unhinged - inciting others to make death threats to your city leaders, then proudly tweeting afterwards "I don't care".
Claiming to be interested in funding schemes to solve homelessness, drug use and crime, in addition to additional police, seems kind of nefarious. What essentially boils down to arresting and manhandling individuals that have no money to their name doesn't surprise me coming from a CEO
I pretty much agree with the article writer here:
Tech bros like Tan think they are reinventing whole systems, conjuring terms like “effective accelerationism” to describe their philosophy. But the ancient Greeks already put a name to their core ideas over 2,000 years ago. For example, there’s plutocracy, or rule by the wealthy, and autocracy, rule by dictatorship.
CEOs like this are aiming to indirectly rule/control others with their money
- CEOs like this are aiming to indirectly rule/control others with their money
  It breaks their little heads that they can have all this money and power, and yet still a random poor person has the legal right to say "no" to them.
  They don't understand why the state doesn't work 100% just for them.
  
  Such logic
- They want to seize control of society from everyone else but they don’t want to feel like the bad guys or like it’s going to go terribly so they pretend it’s a new idea.
These tech companies bring a lot of money to California but also produce some of the worst people in it lol
- These kinds of guys have been active in California since basically as soon as it was granted statehood. The Big Four (a clique or robber barons) tried to rule over the state with the wealth they built up with the Central Pacific Railroad.
  One of them, Leland Stanford (of Stanford University), actually did become governor and eventually senator.
  Another, Charles Crocker, invented Californian NIMBYism with his infamous spite fence.
  
  Interesting. It's funny because California is always depicted as full of liberals, commies, and hippies by Republicans lol. Just because there was some Beatniks in San Francisco probably, and LA is a big city and those tend to go blue.
“We’ve replaced some pieces of that political machine—specifically, we have parallel media now with Elon’s Twitter, or X,” crowed Tan during a presentation at the 2023 Network State Conference. “Getting a parallel media was a key piece, and it wasn’t through voting. It was done by building.… [...]
Got it so parallel means privatised. He's a privatisation hawk.
What a tool. A cat would not even sit on his lap.
- Parallel means propaganda news outlet
  
  Parallel means poopie
He donated $100,000 to the recall campaign against District Attorney Chesa Boudin
Least surprising donation ever..
On the other hand it's crazy that the richest city in the world is plagued with street crime - even to the extent that it disrupts delivery services, self-driving cars, etc.
I think Bukele put it best when he said that the public stuff should be the best. But that depends on enforcing the law well so that public transport and services aren't destroyed by a minority of criminals.
- If you maintain public goods for the good of the public you have a lot less crime. It's precisely because there is such extreme wealth that is not paying to maintain the public goods that we have the crime.
  The people destroying the stuff are doing that because they have been robbed of a place in society and their futures have been foreclosed to them.
  Building hostile anti-human infrastructure, housing that costs 60 hours a week to live in, and unaffordable food that the government subsidizes to make MORE expensive are all not so subtle ways to tell these people that society does not value them.
  
  I mean I live in Sweden and in my building we have problems with people damaging common areas, dumping rubbish, etc. - but nothing can be done because only the police have the right to review CCTV here.
  That's the sort of issue I mean, just the actions of a tiny minority can ruin a lot of stuff - but it doesn't need to be that way.
- Is it though? There’s no border between rural Alabama and San Francisco. You don’t have to do anything but get there. And it’s a hell of a lot better to be homeless there than in Florida or Minnesota for purely meteorological reasons. Add in that one of the consequences of its vast wealth is that poor people can’t afford shit there anymore.
  Wealth disparity creates crime. Especially crimes of protest such as the ones often plaguing self driving cars.
  
  Income disparity is a good thing though - it's how you encourage people to study, work hard and invest in themselves and the future.
  Accumulated wealth disparity is bad, and I agree with strong land value tax, inheritance tax, etc. to try to address that.
- SF is rich but def not the richest city in the world.
Say what you will. Reddit was better when it was free-for-all than it is now, with Californian HR-girls deciding who's PC enough to be allowed.
- I hear this all the time from people who are no longer allowed to post bigoted shit...🤔🤔🤔

22 comments