Silicon Valley’s billionaire Elegy and Donald Trump
Silicon Valley CEOs: Why they’ve changed sides in Silicon Valley – and why they’re not completely self-involved
What could possibly be a national disaster that would destroy the United States? For some it might be the climate crisis, as record heat and storms show us that the clock is approaching midnight on saving the Earth. The precarious state of our democracy is causing distress to others. Other citizens are worried about issues like race relations, immigration, and income inequality.
But if you are billionaire venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, apocalypse looms in another form: a proposed tax on unrealized capital gains that affects households worth more than $100 million.
I’ll explain in a second why the cofounders of Silicon Valley’s preeminent VC firm insist that their opposition to this idea isn’t totally self-interested, and why their analysis on how it would destroy the country is alarmist twaddle. This part of Joe Biden’s budget proposal is what leads them to support Donald Trump for president in the tone-deaf 90-minute podcasts they released this week. Far from a clinical analysis of the issues that separate the two leading candidates for America’s top job, their take on Biden’s policies actually provides a useful window to explain why certain wealthy Silicon Valley luminaries previously known as Democrats are suddenly leaning Trump. (That list also includes Chamath Palihapitiya, a 2020 Biden donor who recently cohosted a huge fundraiser for the former president.)
The purpose of their podcasts is to explain why they changed sides, especially when they know alienating some friends, employees and even their liberal mom is one of the consequences. The longtime partners seem to strive for relatable candor as they detail their disenchantment with Biden. They don’t seem to know that they are a Gen-X version of two soulless billionaires in the movie Trading Places.
A political science professor at Temple University says we can begin to understand what is going on in the moment because of the loyalties of Big Tech. I try to not be hysterical about it. I know that’s really hard because you turn on the TV and it seems like the world is always falling apart,” he tells me. That didn’t happen overnight.
There’s a problem with this argument: No one has seemed to inform founders. 50,000 companies are applying to Y Combinator this year, and 500 are available. And while the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank made 2023 a down year for investment, VCs still managed to invest $170 billion in over 15,000 deals. A $7.2 billion fund was raised in April. Where is the crisis?
#Poli-Side-Eye: A Personal Analysis of a Democratic Party Candidate, J.D. Vance, and the Future of the United States
Several points of disagreement with Biden, which were considered to be a part of the reason why they went to Trump. They are angry that the administration is policing theBlockchain, an area in which they have big investments. He calls the regulation lawless and “un-American”. There are provisions in Biden’s order that attempt to reduce negative effects of artificial intelligence foundation models. But the “final straw,” they say, is a budget proposal that would tax unrealized capital gains at 25 percent, affecting only citizens worth over $100 million. Biden wants to prevent non tax payers from working it, so they can monetize their earnings and not realize their investments.
It is true just about everywhere, but especially in America: Real power is having control over the flow of resources. Property. Money. Information. If you command the levers of production—who gets what, when, and how—you dictate what the future holds, and who gets a say in it. Or in this case, you get to decide the future of the United States. On the verge of another presidential election, no one knows that better than Silicon Valley CEOs and investors, some of whom publicly announced their support for Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, this week.
He says he doesn’t identify as a conspiratorial way of being socialist. Republicans and Democrats are unwilling to let go of the vestiges of a capitalist past that is what he believes is the best path forward. He wants people to realize that bureaucratic governance is not the way to go. On his series, #Poli-Side-Eye, Clemons unpacks complex issues.
I think the danger in looking backward and saying, ‘Oh, there’s this point in which we had this thing’, is that it makes you reactionary to me. He says it reduces your imagination because you are not thinking about what could be. “You’re focusing on trying to recover something in the past. You’re never going to get that back.” We have to be willing to fail, but better futures are possible.
Redheaded mammal named Jerry Clos: The best way to understand the economy is through production—what we are producing, what we are circulating, how is what we are producing getting to people. What do we buy, essentially. If you analyze politics through that lens, I think it becomes a lot easier to understand, especially the incentives and the motives of the very wealthy.
Source: The Inevitability of Big Tech Backing Trump
What Was Trump Really Doing When he Got elected in 2016 and Why Did He Become a Majorana During His First Presidential Campaign?
What’s one of the first things Trump did when he got elected in 2016? Really, the only big policy platform he had were sweeping tax cuts, which was a huge giveaway to corporations and very wealthy people, particularly people who had a lot of their wealth in the stock market. The tax cuts are going to go away in less than a decade, which is one of the reasons why you are supporting him now.
