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metabagel 26 minutes ago [-]
> DURAN: In April 2009, Peter Thiel wrote an essay in which he said he no longer believed that freedom and democracy were compatible and suggested that women and other people getting the right to vote marked the end of freedom being a thing you can have with democracy. At least, of course, as we can see for white men, he was talking about. Well, this caused a lot of outcry and criticism of Thiel, who had to go back and say, I didn't mean to say - I'm not saying that women shouldn't have the vote, etc.
metabagel 25 minutes ago [-]
“How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa”
> Peter Thiel wrote an essay in which he said he no longer believed that freedom and democracy were compatible and suggested that women and other people getting the right to vote marked the end of freedom being a thing you can have with democracy.
This is true that Peter Thiel wrote ti
> At least, of course, as we can see for white men, he was talking about.
This is spin. He wasn't talking about white men. He was talking that as long as people are allowed to vote to take things from others to give to themselves they will.
And, it can be argued, that in the end that will end up with worse outcomes for everyone. (not saying this is true, I'm saying it can be argued that it's a possibility)
kevin_thibedeau 22 minutes ago [-]
Gays like him would have been forced to wear pink triangles in his utopia state.
rcpt 28 minutes ago [-]
"unmasking"?
I've been in this field for 15 years and it's about as far left as any industry can get. We were doing land acknowledgments at product demos a few years ago.
metabagel 17 minutes ago [-]
Tesla partly settles racism lawsuit as hundreds of workers press on
Lip service is certainly there but it's not like we have unions or really anything that isn't just marketing.
VCFundedGenYer 12 minutes ago [-]
No?
I don't understand how you say that with a straight face when Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are around.
watwut 12 minutes ago [-]
Thiel, Musk, Zuckenberg, Ellison, Karp, Yarwin ... like common. Among leaders, there are kind of fascists and ... no one at all, maybe Gates? Industries that are left dont have sieg heiling leaders. Or, you know, have those counteracted by other kind of leaders.
zmgsabst 6 minutes ago [-]
You’re assuming the land acknowledgements are supporting their nominal values, rather than the friendly pink sweater of modern fascism.
You can look at how, eg, “woke” values (ie, that “left wing” ideology) is directly driving the erasure of Japanese culture by self-appointed white people who Know Better (TM). When their major export is colonialist erasure of other cultures, I don’t take the performative-but-useless land acknowledgments as anything but metaphoric white hoods.
They happily burned many Asian small businesses while chanting “Black Lives Matter!” those same years.
shadowgovt 22 minutes ago [-]
I think that's why it's a bit of a shock to many to see leadership tilt so hard towards fascism.
Personally, I think the gap is between the leadership and the rank and file software engineers - the heady days of the post dotcom boom and bust where there was heavy overlap between those two categories are over, and a lot of Silicon Valley looks like traditional business now - an owner class that is setting the pace and the tone and the direction without much input and an employed class that is doing the work and lacks the raw mobility we saw at the height of the boom and bust (i.e. the perpetual capacity to walk off the job immediately into a new one).
Plus, I strongly suspect that some of it is reaction. These companies are based in the US. When the people of the United States have elected Donald Trump twice, one does start to wonder if the correct business decision is to follow the populism. Perhaps skepticism of the efficacy of democracy is justified when this is what democracy has yielded.
zmgsabst 5 minutes ago [-]
There is no gap.
The rank-and-file are just too ignorant and racist to realize they’re fascists — eg, their erasure of Japanese culture and arson attacks by masked paramilitaries against Asian small businesses in 2020.
If you think calling yourself an “anti fascist” while burning minority businesses is opposing fascism, you probably also think North Korea is a democratic republic.
The filtering process that’s been happening here over the years could be studied.
throwaway132448 38 minutes ago [-]
Comment removed - I regret commenting here.
andsoitis 37 minutes ago [-]
where do you plan to go?
taylorfinley 27 minutes ago [-]
I'm trying to build my own software that maybe someday people will pay for. I've also worked really hard to reduce my family's hard costs (paid off mortgage and car, grow lots of our own food, full solar+battery off-grid setup, biogas digester for cooking gas, etc).
I started the NOVC Alliance[0] for people like me that want to build software outside of the mainstream SV/VC culture. Think of it as "BPA Free" for software.
I see your NOVC Alliance is all about no VC funding. But what about other investors?
taylorfinley 18 minutes ago [-]
The full standard is outlined here [0]
Tl;dr: anti-vc, not anti-capital. It's for those building without institutional equity capital structured around venture-scale returns, which is what tends to result in enshittification imo.
Increasingly, I find myself thinking that the right path is not to build software... It's to be good at software and then find a concrete problem and use the fact that you know software to attack it.
... But I'll admit that what those problems are I can't rightfully say.
hunterpayne 33 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
cma 30 minutes ago [-]
Lot's of this is pretty open on Garry Tan's twitter feed
9dev 30 minutes ago [-]
Among others, Peter Thiel or Elon Musk talk about their disdain for democracy and desire for another form of government very openly; this isn't a secret. If you doubt this, I really recommend researching a bit for yourself.
shadowgovt 27 minutes ago [-]
It's not even the first time we've seen this pattern emerge. The Business Plot of the early 20th century is really something that we should be teaching in high school and we just don't.
Powerful corporations in American history have already demonstrated a willingness to back fascism when they think their their core interests are fundamentally under threat.
throwaway132448 30 minutes ago [-]
Comment removed - I regret commenting here.
shadowgovt 28 minutes ago [-]
I believe it and I'll tell you why.
Nearly a decade ago I was in in all hands at Google. There was a scandal. I can't remember which one because there were about three of them back to back in a relatively short period of time. And one of the company co-founders, I'm fairly certain it was Larry but it might have been Sergey... Basically responded to a comment from an employee on the scandal with "I want to be focused on creating great things, not on this."
... And the comment put me right back on my heels because, my guy... You are helming a corporation with over 100,000 employees. I don't care what you thought you would be doing at this point in your career. If you are responsible for 100,000 of anyone? You'd best start caring about people problems.
... I think a whole generation of Silicon Valley leadership tripped backwards into becoming partially responsible for / totally enmeshed with other human beings and were utterly unprepared for it. And for all their technical smarts, when it comes to people that grasp for simple solutions. Simple and unworkable.
socalgal2 13 minutes ago [-]
I agree with Larry or Sergey. Most FAANG employees want to turn every thing into dysfunctional San Francisco where 1000 special interests make all progress impossible. They join and then they each think they should be running things to their specific outlook.
irishcoffee 21 minutes ago [-]
Oh look, a Peter Thiel hitpeice. So either we as a collective accept that one individual has been pulling the strings for decades, or someone has an axe to grind.
Neither would surprise me at this point
lotsofpulp 14 minutes ago [-]
The simpler explanation is just that people are too stupid for democracy, and respond well to tribalist policies. Dark skin v light skin, women v men v non binary, any type of us v them rhetoric that can make one feel superior can be latched onto.
The trick is to be so vague (or incoherent) that sufficient people across the population feel superior.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/26/elon-musk...
> Peter Thiel wrote an essay in which he said he no longer believed that freedom and democracy were compatible and suggested that women and other people getting the right to vote marked the end of freedom being a thing you can have with democracy.
This is true that Peter Thiel wrote ti
> At least, of course, as we can see for white men, he was talking about.
This is spin. He wasn't talking about white men. He was talking that as long as people are allowed to vote to take things from others to give to themselves they will.
And, it can be argued, that in the end that will end up with worse outcomes for everyone. (not saying this is true, I'm saying it can be argued that it's a possibility)
I've been in this field for 15 years and it's about as far left as any industry can get. We were doing land acknowledgments at product demos a few years ago.
https://electrek.co/2026/07/27/tesla-partly-settles-racism-l...
I don't understand how you say that with a straight face when Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are around.
You can look at how, eg, “woke” values (ie, that “left wing” ideology) is directly driving the erasure of Japanese culture by self-appointed white people who Know Better (TM). When their major export is colonialist erasure of other cultures, I don’t take the performative-but-useless land acknowledgments as anything but metaphoric white hoods.
They happily burned many Asian small businesses while chanting “Black Lives Matter!” those same years.
Personally, I think the gap is between the leadership and the rank and file software engineers - the heady days of the post dotcom boom and bust where there was heavy overlap between those two categories are over, and a lot of Silicon Valley looks like traditional business now - an owner class that is setting the pace and the tone and the direction without much input and an employed class that is doing the work and lacks the raw mobility we saw at the height of the boom and bust (i.e. the perpetual capacity to walk off the job immediately into a new one).
Plus, I strongly suspect that some of it is reaction. These companies are based in the US. When the people of the United States have elected Donald Trump twice, one does start to wonder if the correct business decision is to follow the populism. Perhaps skepticism of the efficacy of democracy is justified when this is what democracy has yielded.
The rank-and-file are just too ignorant and racist to realize they’re fascists — eg, their erasure of Japanese culture and arson attacks by masked paramilitaries against Asian small businesses in 2020.
If you think calling yourself an “anti fascist” while burning minority businesses is opposing fascism, you probably also think North Korea is a democratic republic.
Angry, historically ignorant, and stupid.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46066482
The filtering process that’s been happening here over the years could be studied.
I started the NOVC Alliance[0] for people like me that want to build software outside of the mainstream SV/VC culture. Think of it as "BPA Free" for software.
[0] https://novc.fyi
I see your NOVC Alliance is all about no VC funding. But what about other investors?
Tl;dr: anti-vc, not anti-capital. It's for those building without institutional equity capital structured around venture-scale returns, which is what tends to result in enshittification imo.
[0] https://novc.fyi/standard
... But I'll admit that what those problems are I can't rightfully say.
Powerful corporations in American history have already demonstrated a willingness to back fascism when they think their their core interests are fundamentally under threat.
Nearly a decade ago I was in in all hands at Google. There was a scandal. I can't remember which one because there were about three of them back to back in a relatively short period of time. And one of the company co-founders, I'm fairly certain it was Larry but it might have been Sergey... Basically responded to a comment from an employee on the scandal with "I want to be focused on creating great things, not on this."
... And the comment put me right back on my heels because, my guy... You are helming a corporation with over 100,000 employees. I don't care what you thought you would be doing at this point in your career. If you are responsible for 100,000 of anyone? You'd best start caring about people problems.
... I think a whole generation of Silicon Valley leadership tripped backwards into becoming partially responsible for / totally enmeshed with other human beings and were utterly unprepared for it. And for all their technical smarts, when it comes to people that grasp for simple solutions. Simple and unworkable.
Neither would surprise me at this point
The trick is to be so vague (or incoherent) that sufficient people across the population feel superior.
https://x.com/spencerhakimian/status/2091281795647938812?s=4...