General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Tech Baron Seeking to "Ethnically Cleanse" San Francisco
It's rapidly becoming a game of "whack-a-mole" with fascists popping up everywhere you look...
...
Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call described a speech in which he told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become the Microsoft of nations: outdated and obsolescent.
The speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator, reported the Times. Balaji paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future in a U.S. in chaos and decline, but his prophecies sometimes fall short. Last year, he lost $1 million in a public bet after wrongly predicting a massive surge in the price of Bitcoin.
Still, his appetite for autocracy is bottomless. Last October, Balaji hosted the first-ever Network State Conference. Garry Tanthe current Y Combinator CEO whos attempting to spearhead a political takeover of San Franciscoparticipated in an interview with Balaji and cast the effort as part of the Network State movement. Tan, who made headlines in January after tweeting die slow motherfuckers at local progressive politicians, frames his campaign as an experiment in moderate politics. But in a podcast interview one month before the conference, Balaji laid out a more disturbing and extreme vision.
https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat
Shellback Squid
(8,934 posts)TheProle
(2,210 posts)Original opens fine for me in both Firefox and Chrome, but here's another link:
https://news.yahoo.com/tech/tech-baron-seeking-ethnically-cleanse-100000971.html
LauraInLA
(429 posts)Celerity
(43,633 posts)Caliman73
(11,755 posts)The problems really come to a head when those human impulses are paired with radically unequal wealth and an admiration for that wealth and the power that comes with it.
Maybe the guy has talent for developing, or marketing technology. Cool. That doesn't mean his other ideas aren't shit. His political and social views sound stupid, but because in America wealth equals competence, generally across the board, people are looking up to this clown when he is way outside his area of expertise.
We need to move to a society that values human development, empathy, compassion, and mutual aid more than wealth and power.
LuvLoogie
(7,061 posts)Did this dude not see how Tyrell met his fate? Fuck this Tech Nazi.
crickets
(25,988 posts)chowder66
(9,090 posts)Some may be highly regarded in specific areas but that doesn't make them more moral or ethical... or knowledgable outside of their expertise.