The Tech Bros and their funders have proven themselves to be fascists. Their agenda is to create second Gilded Age in which they are the oligarchs. Let's be honest, we don't need these people. They can be replaced. We had tech before them, the internet existed and will continue to exist without them. They are not that smart, they are scammers.
Underlying their whining is their belief to the contrary and that they have earned their wealth and as they are more industrious are more deserving of it; Their wealth is a sign of their brilliance and industriousness. They're wrong. They didn't earn the vast portion of their wealth, they skimmed it from the economy because if wealth isn't controlled it aggregates and takes control. We need to bring back the tax rates of the 1960s, high upper marginal rates that prevent that skimming and flow it back into workers pockets.
Re: my comment highlighting an article about Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and their enthusiastic embrace of Trump and MAGA, I just read the NYT article on the death of David Horowitz (age 86), who went from being a Marxist/communist baby to an adult member of the New Left to a Reagan Republican to a MAGA Trump supporter. David Horowitz is Ben Horowitz’s father, and…….the mentor of Stephen Miller, whom he discovered when Miller was in high school ranting about multiculturalism ruining America. Horowitz mentored Miller through to college graduation and getting Miller a job with Jeff Sessions in Congress, and ultimately a job in the Trump 1.0 WH. The rest is history.
Fwiw, I was looking to see of Marc Andreessen was one of the authors of P2025 (he was), and I found a very informative article about him and his alliance with Trump/Vance from 2024. You need to read the whole thing, but here’s the end of it:
“ has been inveighing against “woke” capital, engaging in Twitter culture wars, and complaining about what he views as the media’s hostility to free speech for a while now. In Andreessen’s 2023 “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” he lists what he terms “patron saints” of the movement. They include Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist who was also the co-author of The Fascist Manifesto; Nick Land, whose writing is a foundational text for the so-called alt-right; Neven Sesardic, a philosopher who argues that race is biologically real and not socially constructed; and Vilfredo Pareto, who argued that democracy is an illusion.
And this talk about democracy brings me to Curtis Yarvin, personal friend of vice presidential candidate Vance. Yarvin, a software developer, is openly anti-democracy. (Yarvin’s recent newsletter, in response to Biden dropping out, enthusiastically advocates for a return to monarchy. Freak shit.) One of Yarvin’s ideas, called “retire all government employees” or RAGE, is part of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation proposal for what Trump should do if he wins. This rhetoric was echoed by Vance in 2021, who called out Yarvin by name.
So this VC cabal is trading against the basic principles of America — not merely against personal freedom, but democracy itself — in the hopes of profit. It’s not the first time tech has made the trade against freedom; IBM made it during the Holocaust.
In venture capital, you are what you fund. Andreessen and Horowitz understand this, even embody it. But they aren’t just funding the issues they discuss on their podcast; they are funding Trump and Vance. That means those donations are anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and possibly even anti-democracy because that is what the Trump / Vance ticket stands for. These are not subsidiary issues: these are now what two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures now stand for, too. Is that a good investment?”
“ The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz”
Humans evolved the power of speech, unique in its sophistication in the animal kingdom, and now they just cannot stop speaking. If there were an antisocial network I’d join that. The internet provides the greatest means of finding out about other opinions we’ve ever had, and all many people want to do is to snuggle up in corners with those who agree with them. Worse, if you do learn something new from good evidence in favour of that new fact, and you sensibly change your mind therefore, based on that evidence, you’re accused of flip-flopping or u-turning. Speech is one thing, but we need to learn the power of listening; that would at least stop some of the chatter while some of us stop talking in order to listen. People need to acquaint themselves with the mechanisms of debate rather than resort to the ranting and mud-slinging that seems ubiquitous. It’s all so ugly. Call me old fashioned, but whatever happened to courtesy? Even in disagreement?
Marc Andreeson is a big baby and MAGA is his violent tantrum. If you listen to Ross Douthat’s interview with him, you can hear his shock and rage about being told what to do (i.e., regulated). He was such a good liberal and then the liberals tried to tell him what to do, so he had no choice but to turn MAGA. These selfish babies are now truly the masters of the world
Mostly a waste of hydrocarbons. Could have been reduced to 3 minutes. Not especially happy to know that i am actually paying for these narcissists to gab & gossip & giggle.
Yes, i am an old curmudgeon. True. But...
Seriously, most unremarkable and nothing added for insight from lots of these off-the-cuff slapdash videos/podcasts. Merely mediocre entertainment, i guess.
I've been bitching about the tech guys for over 20 years after I saw them absolutely ruin Sunnyvale, San Jose, Los Gatos, Saratoga and all the other cities that make up Silicon Valley. I know people roll their eyes at: "When I was a kid . . . " and I realize that every place has changed over the years but FFS, my friends in my 400 strong graduating class all moved from the area as soon as they could in the 1990s and early 2000s. I remember my old boyfriend warning me not to go visit Sunnyvale, that it would break my heart. He was right, it did. I have nothing but contempt for the Bay Area Bros.
Oh, and raise your hand if your mouth dropped open at the "20,000 laid off at UPS" news this morning. The willful ignorance at MAGA and anyone who voted for Trump ever will piss me off until the day I die.
I've been a tech CEO for the last five years, and while I don't swim in the same circles as those mentioned, I'm not too far removed. Here is my number one takeaway from being in the tech VC Silicon Valley space: these so-called tech leaders are cowards at their core. Truly.
Literally the richest people in the world are afraid. They are afraid of their employees. They are afraid of being judged by the public. They are afraid of losing a few points on their high score. They are afraid of another company eating their lunch. They're afraid of anyone else changing the rules they've benefited from or abused. They're like dragons hoarding their wealth, suspicious and afraid of everyone around them.
So they surround themselves with other like-minded people to whine about how unfair it is that Biden didn't take their call or how their employees want a BLM logo on a website or about how someone said something mean to them on Twitter or, gasp, a journalist exposed something grotesque they did.
Nothing about this story surprises me. Thank you for the excellent reporting.
Not sure this is germane but here goes. I had occasion recently to read the wikipedia entry on the discredited political/social movement of the 30s and afterward, Technocracy, and had read of it many years ago in an uncomplimentary Science Fiction piece. As I am the least technically inclined person ever, I hesitate to opine on this excellent writing in Semafor (and Mr. Stein's fine interview) but here goes: What killed technocracy was in large part hubris and descent into fascism. Also they were flat wrong, and not nearly as smart as they thought they were. These group chat people seem to have some of the same issues. Again, I liken my relationship to IT to faceblindness, and consider myself fortunate. Stunned incomprehension.----- I found it telling that one of the fellows quoted a chatter as saying something like : "we've spent 10 years building Ad tech, time to move on", He may think so, I wouldn't dare comment.
They are not nearly as smart as they think they are; that’s the point, isn’t it. Domain-specific ‘smartness’ doesn’t necessarily mean capable of being smart in any other arena.
Max and Ben, can't wait to check out your pod, Mixed Signals. Thank you, Sam! I really love how you are building a community of independent media journalists. And bringing it to us on a daily basis.
The Tech Bros and their funders have proven themselves to be fascists. Their agenda is to create second Gilded Age in which they are the oligarchs. Let's be honest, we don't need these people. They can be replaced. We had tech before them, the internet existed and will continue to exist without them. They are not that smart, they are scammers.
Underlying their whining is their belief to the contrary and that they have earned their wealth and as they are more industrious are more deserving of it; Their wealth is a sign of their brilliance and industriousness. They're wrong. They didn't earn the vast portion of their wealth, they skimmed it from the economy because if wealth isn't controlled it aggregates and takes control. We need to bring back the tax rates of the 1960s, high upper marginal rates that prevent that skimming and flow it back into workers pockets.
Why are they gathering all of everyone’s private information in one place
Re: my comment highlighting an article about Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and their enthusiastic embrace of Trump and MAGA, I just read the NYT article on the death of David Horowitz (age 86), who went from being a Marxist/communist baby to an adult member of the New Left to a Reagan Republican to a MAGA Trump supporter. David Horowitz is Ben Horowitz’s father, and…….the mentor of Stephen Miller, whom he discovered when Miller was in high school ranting about multiculturalism ruining America. Horowitz mentored Miller through to college graduation and getting Miller a job with Jeff Sessions in Congress, and ultimately a job in the Trump 1.0 WH. The rest is history.
Fwiw, I was looking to see of Marc Andreessen was one of the authors of P2025 (he was), and I found a very informative article about him and his alliance with Trump/Vance from 2024. You need to read the whole thing, but here’s the end of it:
“ has been inveighing against “woke” capital, engaging in Twitter culture wars, and complaining about what he views as the media’s hostility to free speech for a while now. In Andreessen’s 2023 “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” he lists what he terms “patron saints” of the movement. They include Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist who was also the co-author of The Fascist Manifesto; Nick Land, whose writing is a foundational text for the so-called alt-right; Neven Sesardic, a philosopher who argues that race is biologically real and not socially constructed; and Vilfredo Pareto, who argued that democracy is an illusion.
And this talk about democracy brings me to Curtis Yarvin, personal friend of vice presidential candidate Vance. Yarvin, a software developer, is openly anti-democracy. (Yarvin’s recent newsletter, in response to Biden dropping out, enthusiastically advocates for a return to monarchy. Freak shit.) One of Yarvin’s ideas, called “retire all government employees” or RAGE, is part of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation proposal for what Trump should do if he wins. This rhetoric was echoed by Vance in 2021, who called out Yarvin by name.
So this VC cabal is trading against the basic principles of America — not merely against personal freedom, but democracy itself — in the hopes of profit. It’s not the first time tech has made the trade against freedom; IBM made it during the Holocaust.
In venture capital, you are what you fund. Andreessen and Horowitz understand this, even embody it. But they aren’t just funding the issues they discuss on their podcast; they are funding Trump and Vance. That means those donations are anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and possibly even anti-democracy because that is what the Trump / Vance ticket stands for. These are not subsidiary issues: these are now what two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures now stand for, too. Is that a good investment?”
“ The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz”
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations
Humans evolved the power of speech, unique in its sophistication in the animal kingdom, and now they just cannot stop speaking. If there were an antisocial network I’d join that. The internet provides the greatest means of finding out about other opinions we’ve ever had, and all many people want to do is to snuggle up in corners with those who agree with them. Worse, if you do learn something new from good evidence in favour of that new fact, and you sensibly change your mind therefore, based on that evidence, you’re accused of flip-flopping or u-turning. Speech is one thing, but we need to learn the power of listening; that would at least stop some of the chatter while some of us stop talking in order to listen. People need to acquaint themselves with the mechanisms of debate rather than resort to the ranting and mud-slinging that seems ubiquitous. It’s all so ugly. Call me old fashioned, but whatever happened to courtesy? Even in disagreement?
Marc Andreeson is a big baby and MAGA is his violent tantrum. If you listen to Ross Douthat’s interview with him, you can hear his shock and rage about being told what to do (i.e., regulated). He was such a good liberal and then the liberals tried to tell him what to do, so he had no choice but to turn MAGA. These selfish babies are now truly the masters of the world
And he and David Sacks give Bari Weiss all the money she wants to grow The Free Press.
Mostly a waste of hydrocarbons. Could have been reduced to 3 minutes. Not especially happy to know that i am actually paying for these narcissists to gab & gossip & giggle.
Yes, i am an old curmudgeon. True. But...
Seriously, most unremarkable and nothing added for insight from lots of these off-the-cuff slapdash videos/podcasts. Merely mediocre entertainment, i guess.
Jumping onto that closing comment -- what is everyone's take on the best New Haven pizza? 🧐
I feel like we’re missing the Curtis Yarvin/Peter Theil Dark Enlightenment influence among tech and its involvement in our government.
This is the least relevant comment ever, but damn, do I love Ben Smith's shirt and tie.
I've been bitching about the tech guys for over 20 years after I saw them absolutely ruin Sunnyvale, San Jose, Los Gatos, Saratoga and all the other cities that make up Silicon Valley. I know people roll their eyes at: "When I was a kid . . . " and I realize that every place has changed over the years but FFS, my friends in my 400 strong graduating class all moved from the area as soon as they could in the 1990s and early 2000s. I remember my old boyfriend warning me not to go visit Sunnyvale, that it would break my heart. He was right, it did. I have nothing but contempt for the Bay Area Bros.
Oh, and raise your hand if your mouth dropped open at the "20,000 laid off at UPS" news this morning. The willful ignorance at MAGA and anyone who voted for Trump ever will piss me off until the day I die.
this is not the way
I think these tech
guys were nerds in high school and didn’t get to do this shit then
And they still are. Look how subservient they are.
I've been a tech CEO for the last five years, and while I don't swim in the same circles as those mentioned, I'm not too far removed. Here is my number one takeaway from being in the tech VC Silicon Valley space: these so-called tech leaders are cowards at their core. Truly.
Literally the richest people in the world are afraid. They are afraid of their employees. They are afraid of being judged by the public. They are afraid of losing a few points on their high score. They are afraid of another company eating their lunch. They're afraid of anyone else changing the rules they've benefited from or abused. They're like dragons hoarding their wealth, suspicious and afraid of everyone around them.
So they surround themselves with other like-minded people to whine about how unfair it is that Biden didn't take their call or how their employees want a BLM logo on a website or about how someone said something mean to them on Twitter or, gasp, a journalist exposed something grotesque they did.
Nothing about this story surprises me. Thank you for the excellent reporting.
Not sure this is germane but here goes. I had occasion recently to read the wikipedia entry on the discredited political/social movement of the 30s and afterward, Technocracy, and had read of it many years ago in an uncomplimentary Science Fiction piece. As I am the least technically inclined person ever, I hesitate to opine on this excellent writing in Semafor (and Mr. Stein's fine interview) but here goes: What killed technocracy was in large part hubris and descent into fascism. Also they were flat wrong, and not nearly as smart as they thought they were. These group chat people seem to have some of the same issues. Again, I liken my relationship to IT to faceblindness, and consider myself fortunate. Stunned incomprehension.----- I found it telling that one of the fellows quoted a chatter as saying something like : "we've spent 10 years building Ad tech, time to move on", He may think so, I wouldn't dare comment.
This reminds of the story of the Tower of Babel.
They are not nearly as smart as they think they are; that’s the point, isn’t it. Domain-specific ‘smartness’ doesn’t necessarily mean capable of being smart in any other arena.
Max and Ben, can't wait to check out your pod, Mixed Signals. Thank you, Sam! I really love how you are building a community of independent media journalists. And bringing it to us on a daily basis.