Even if the podcast makes it obvious that these men are clueless dilettantes, they were still lucky enough to have invested money into the right companies at the right time. They are well connected and rich. They're part of the private group chats that people like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreesen are using to shape the vibe, and like it or not, people like this have a lot of influence over the business culture in the valley.
> A handful of questions focused on how a Mamdani mayoralty would affect the tech industry. Borthwick says he asked Mamdani how he would respond to the risk that artificial intelligence poses to jobs—in particular, entry-level white-collar jobs—over the next several years. “I'm kind of amazed that this has not become already a campaign issue,” Borthwick says. He says that Mamdani “admitted that this hasn't been a focus of the campaign, but would need to be a focus if he was elected.” But overall, Borthwick didn’t feel Mamdani’s answer was specific enough.
I continue to be amazed by how many tech-oriented people assume this possibility is a matter of when, not if. What evidence is there that it has displaced workers? Competence on benchmark tests does not imply competence at creating complete solutions for complex, bespoke systems. These sci-fi speculations increasingly feel like self-absorbed delusions of grandeur.
Yes, Garry Tan's message is disappointing: https://archive.ph/o/mTmBP/https://x.com/garrytan/status/193...
In this case, does that mean something more like "an exclusive clique of lucky tech-bros that converge on political views in their private channels"?
As a larger region/industry, I can't see why SV would "panic" about a city mayor of a different city in another state thousands of miles away, no matter how populous the city is.
The hard truth is that New York isn't even remotely dense enough for the demand. The entirety of lower Manhattan from Canal St. to midtown is "low" density. As is everything above 59th. And this is codified. So no wonder NYC housing prices are out of control. NYC should look like Sao Paulo based on demand.
For a long time, neoliberals like Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have run the Democratic party. They have enjoyed soaking up the progressive votes from the more left parts of the party, but they have done everything possible to prevent those elements from rising too high in the power structure. You saw it in 2016 when the party leadership coalesced around Hillary to nudge out Bernie, and again in 2020 when they did the same with Biden after Bernie won Nevada.
Neoliberals and the left have a lot of tension. The left believes that liberals, due to their affinity for corporations, will side with fascists over socialists when it comes time to choose sides.
To date, liberals have proven that correct. The result has been for my lifetime that no matter which party is in power, corporations are treated favorably.
But times are changing. The neoliberals are getting old, and it's time for them to retire and pass the torch. My whole life, I'm 40, Democratic leadership have been pro corporation liberal boomers: Clinton, Gore, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer... they held onto power as long as they could, but time is ticking and it's time for millennials to takeover.
And millennials are decidedly less pro corporation. We are not like our parents, we are not going to treat corporations like our parents did. For my whole adulthood, we've been told by the boomer generation that our ideas about society and governance are not good, and progressive ideals are unelectable. AOC began a wave of congressional elections that proved them wrong, at least for local congressional elections. Then we started to see rising stars like Buttigieg get top leadership positions in government. Now, Mamdani represents the next milestone -- a progressive millennial at a high executive position for a huge city like NYC.
So that's what this race is about and why it has national implications. It's progressive versus neoliberal, and if the progressive wins, it's going to be harder in the future to claim that progressives are unelectable. If he (god forbid) ends up doing a good job, then it's going to be harder to claim progressive policies are wrongheaded.
It's also millennial versus boomer. Cuomo and Adams are both boomers. It's probably not lost on a lot of people that if they lose, it might be the last time a boomer will ever be elected as Mayor in NYC. Mamdani's election would really be the end of the post 9/11 era for New York and the start of something new for the city.
So why is SV anxious? Mamdani is a harbinger for a new age. It means the neoliberal boomers are going to the wayside, and the progressive millennials are coming to power. Which, if you listen to what they have to say about billionaires, might make you nervous if you're a billionaire.
Social policy is popular among millennials, that doesn't make it good. Mamdani and his followers are wilfully ignorant to the root causes of the issues NYC is facing.
I'm a silicon valley founder but definitely not investor and I'm quite optimistic about Mamdani's approach to measuring where problems are and then pitch complicated fixes in a way that can be understood by average voters. The "socialism" label doesn't bother me. I know a lot of people in silicon valley rank and file engineers and technical founders who think similarly privately.
Their assets continue to generate generational wealth and once that concept is taken away, they lost the only leverage for power: wealth.
I don't think that I've ever heard anyone in SV, at least not anyone with any real power, honestly suggest that. They don't want to pay people more than they absolutely have to now, and that's with most labor being done by humans. When humans stop being the engine of economic growth, why would those people suddenly want to implement UBI and end scarcity?
It's a fugazi meant to make you think that the people doing things have considered all of the angles, but they haven't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect
I was aware of that one, but this one, while being entirely obvious, is quite thought-provoking:
The closest position he's advocating for is to freeze the rent stabilization rate for 5 years while massively ramping up the construction of new apartments to bring rental costs down.
Much of the pushback about Mamdani seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference betwene "rent control" and "rent stabilization". I think it's extremely rare to see a politician understand the supply/demand aspect of housing costs so well. He really seems to understand these dynamics, certainly better than anyone he's running against.
But don't mistake socialised service provision for socialism
Socialism implies state control of the means of production.
The results of socialism, we witnessed in Eastern Europe and elsewhere during the 20th century: scarcity of goods and services
Eventually a socialist state runs out of private wealth to seize, and it becomes completely corrupt and totalitarian due to its monopoly over the means of production. And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
Socialism literally implies the opposite. That's why it's called socialism. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production. Under fascism, the government and the state collaborate to own the means of production. Under socialism, the means of production are socially (collectively) owned. In the most extreme interpretation of socialism, communism, the goal is the elimination of the state entirely.
Granted, historically, communist states tended to centralize power rather than work towards their own elimination because that's the inherent evil of governments, particularly revolutionary governments. But to claim that socialism presupposes authoritarianism is to expose the fact that everything you know about socialism comes from capitalist propaganda.
>And then the people rise up and demand a the restoration of a free society where people can own the fruits of their labour.
(╯°□°)╯ ┻━┻ That's socialism!
He's terrible though. Is that "panic".
