Why tech billionaires want a 'corporate dictatorship' (podcast with Gil Duran - audio & transcript - from The Verge)

[highplainsdem]

You'll find both the audio link and the transcript at the the link below.The excerpt below is part of the intro to the podcast.

https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/707010/gil-duran-the-nerd-reich-tech-billionaires-authoritarianism-dictator

Hello, and welcome to Decoder! This is Jon Fortt, CNBC journalist, cohost of Closing Bell: Overtime, and creator of the Fortt Knox streaming series on LinkedIn. I’m guest-hosting for a couple more episodes of Decoder this summer while Nilay is out on parental leave.

Today, I’m talking with a very special guest: Gil Duran, an old friend, journalist, and author of The Nerd Reich, a newsletter and forthcoming book about the shifting politics of Silicon Valley and the rise of tech authoritarianism.

I’ve known Gil for a long time. We met at the end of high school and went to college together, and we were also colleagues at the San Jose Mercury News. Gil has had a fascinating career that spans both media and politics: he’s worked as press secretary and comms director for high-profile California politicians like Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and he also advised Kamala Harris when she served as California’s attorney general.

Now, writing The Nerd Reich, Gil is focused on a new type of story, one he says has gone woefully under-covered by mainstream media. That story is the influence of tech money on politics and society at large, and the disturbing philosophical undercurrents that are driving it.

-snip-

[Walleye]

1. Big business thinks of the US Constitution as just more "burdensome regulations"

[Moostache]

2. In all honesty. until we address the EXISTENCE of billionaires, the rest is navel gazing...

The fact that we have allowed our government to be bought and sold off to the likes of Musk and Thiel and Bezos and Zuckerberg really does clarify the situation for me. No one should be able to utilize their $$$$ to buy the government lock, stock and barrel. Yet, that is exactly what we have seen this year (and really since the 2008 crisis, which never ended for those on the lower rungs of the ladder).

The fundamental problem is money is NOT speech and buying tax policy and write offs is NOT good governance.

Top tax bracket should be 90% of every dollar over $100M in accumulated wealth. If you can pay the tax bill under that system and STILL be a billionaire, then more power to you, I tip my cap to your product/service/enterprise and appreciate your contributions to a just and equitable society. However, when I see assholes taking genetic therapy, engineered nutrition, hormone replacements and blood transfusions of younger blood AND these same assholes party with a dictator, ignore the plight of their exploited workers and build literally dick shaped rockets to waste millions per launch to "go to space", I want to vomit.