The Ministry of Disruption

"Centa-millionaires and billionaires are reshaping our world in ways that are both outside the box and terrifying."

Image by DALL-E 3.5 and Affinity Photo

David Sachs was the COO of PayPal for its first 3 years, until Peter Thiel and Elon Musk sold it to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. In 2008 he launched the platform that was to become Slack and sold it in 2012 to Microsoft for 1.2 billion, the fastest billion-dollar exit in tech history. He is a general partner of a venture capital fund he co-founded in late 2017, now with $2 billion under management. Angel investments include Facebook, Uber, SpaceX, and Airbnb. In June 2024, he hosted a campaign reception for Donald Trump at his home that raised $12 million.

On his All In Podcast on August 30, Sachs said, “The argument now is that Silicon Valley is expected to support Harris even though she wants—and her campaign is confirmed she wants—a 44% capital gains tax. She wants a 25% unrealized gains tax. These are things that I think the vast majority of Silicon Valley considers to be disastrous for the startup ecosystem. Should we support her in spite of those things? And why?”

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Reid Hoffman, who followed Sachs as COO of PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook before founding LinkedIn, picking up $3 billion in net worth, held a fundraiser for Harris. He said he supports her because he favors the rule of law. To that, Sachs replied:

I don't see how it's the rule of law when you have a district attorney—Alvin Bragg—who’s elected on a promise to get Trump and he then takes what is at most a bookkeeping misdemeanor that's past the statute of limitations that's expired, and he turns that into 34 felony charges on a legal theory that was never explained to the jury, and then basically Trump is convicted in a sham trial by a hyperpartisan NY jury system.…

I don't think it's rule of law when Trump is prosecuted on a documents charge that Biden himself is guilty of—he’s got all these documents in his garage for decades—which the judge has thrown out. And we've seen a bunch of these lawfare cases where Trump has ultimately prevailed—the judge has thrown it out or he's won on appeal—so that seems to me like abuse of the legal system for a partisan political goal, not rule of law.

***

I'm not saying that Trump is perfect. I mean, I think he's human. I mean, he's a flawed vessel. But at the end of the day, he is the choice that represents populist forces resisting authoritarianism.

After he finally ran out of breath Sachs passed the microphone back to Hoffman, saying, “Democrats are trying to put Trump in jail for 700 years. These cases are still outstanding. They want to put him in jail, Reid. Do you think Trump should go to jail?”

You have to wonder if, the day after The Debate, Sachs agreed with Donald Trump that the moderators were “So unfair… so unfair.”

The separation of Sachs from reality is about as profound as when Donald Trump and Elon Musk were chatting in their live X-space debacle and Musk opined that we don’t need to worry about climate change for at least another 500 years because that is when the CO2 concentrations might start to limit our oxygen enough to affect breathing.

Earlier this year Musk retweeted a false claim to his 197 million followers that as many as 2 million noncitizens had been registered to vote in Texas, Arizona and Pennsylvania. In the two years since he bought Twitter, now X, Musk has transformed it into a primary source of false election rumors, lowering the site’s guardrails around misinformation.

Musk long described his politics as libertarian, but in recent years, he has become an increasingly outspoken supporter of conservative causes. He has said he supported Democrats for president between 2008 and 2020, but after the assassination attempt on Trump in July, Musk posted a photo of the Republican presidential candidate, face bloodied, with his fist in the air, and endorsed him for 2024 and welcomed him back to X with a live-streamed conversation between the two. Last week, Trump said that if elected, he would put Musk in charge of a government efficiency commission.

—The Washington Post, September 10, 2024 

If you ever feel like modern politics resembles a soap opera with an overabundance of plot twists and a suspiciously high number of rich guys, well, you're not alone. Picture this: a cabal of centa-millionaires and billionaires, armed with the kind of influence that would make the Illuminati look like a neighborhood watch committee, has seized the reins. I’m talking about folks like Musk, Sachs, Hoffman, and Thiel—men who have turned the art of making money into a full-contact sport and who now seem intent on rewriting society’s metaprogram while floating in a sensory deprivation tank at Burning Man, high on ayahuasca.

Venture capitalists are like the fairy godmothers of the tech world. They take a gleam in an entrepreneur’s eye, sprinkle a bit of funding magic, and voila, you’ve got the next unicorn startup or, in more cases, a colossal flop. But in the political sphere, it’s like they’ve decided that democracy is just another tech problem in need of a solution—and what better solution than a touch of Silicon Valley genius? Fail fast, fail forward, then on to the next venture. And hey, if it works for business, why not government?

GINI be damned

Historically, the GINI coefficient—a measure of income inequality—has been a critical indicator of economic disparity and its implications for societal well-being. High levels of inequality are associated with reduced social mobility, diminished trust in institutions, and national instability. For the Silicon Valley billionaire class, the new wealth, whether in options, BitCoin or bullion, far eclipses any previous economic index. Venture capitalists like Musk, Sachs, Hoffman and Thiel are leveraging high-rise money bins to buy influence. Threaten X with State censorship and Starlink might just plunge two-thirds of Brazil back into the analog world. Money buys elections. Money captures legislative and regulatory agendas. Clever algorithms divert civic engagement and monetize political polarization. They dumb down the literacy of the population. They weaponize addictive outrage. Who controls all that? Silicon overlords.

To buck the trend, you could do worse than the Harris-Walz platform: campaign finance reform to reduce the disproportionate influence of wealthy individuals; more oversight for social media algorithms; economic equity (leveling taxes on the superrich). Of course, that is exactly what the tech billionaires go postal about. In their sensory deprivation tanks, their GPT-A.I. companions whisper into their neural-links:

Scenario 1: The Algorithmic Presidency

In a not-so-distant future, the U.S. elects its first "Algorithmic President"—a leader programmed by the finest minds in tech to make decisions based on predictive analytics. Every policy is decided by algorithm. The president’s daily schedule is optimized for mindfulness yoga, then disk golf. State dinners are replaced by virtual reality experiences to save time. But things go awry when the algorithm mistakenly predicts that invading Canada would improve national happiness, leading to an awkward diplomatic incident that could have been avoided if someone had just thought to include "human error" in the model.

Scenario 2. The App-lified Government

Government services are now run on your favorite apps. Want to get a driver's license? There’s an app for that. Health insurance sign up? App for that. Need to file taxes? App for that. Need to protest a new law? Download the "Protest Now" app, which comes with customizable templates for signs and a GPS guide to the nearest demonstration. That last app becomes so popular that it crashes the government data center under the weight of user demand.

Scenario 3. The Techno-Feudal State

Instead of land, the elite own data, social media platforms, and data serfs. The rest of us labor away to keep the wheels of tech turning. To ensure we stay productive, mandatory "inspiration sessions" are streamed live, featuring motivational talks from tech billionaire avatars who tell us that success is just a startup away. Town halls are now augmented reality experiences where citizens can engage in “gamer democracy” by leveling up their civic participation points. The ultimate prize? A coveted digital star on the “Leaderboard of Influence.” Fail and your overlords cut off your internet access, the Ninth Circle of Hell.

Scenario 4: The Robot Senate

Robots are elected to the Senate based on algorithmic analysis of voter preferences. Senate Leader Roboticus Prime, an AI with the charisma of a toaster and the emotional range of a spreadsheet, takes office. Debates are conducted in binary code, and legislative bills are passed in nanoseconds. Occasionally, a robot will malfunction and advocate for the implementation of a “robot utopia” where humans are merely organic batteries—a proposal that is surprisingly popular until a software glitch causes a “robot revolt” episode that everyone quickly agrees was a “gap in the matrix.”

In the end, it’s clear that the influence of centa-millionaires and billionaires on politics is reshaping our world in ways that are both outside the box and terrifying. These modern-day sorcerers cast spells that shape public policy and societal norms. Whether it will lead to a utopia of technological wonder or a dystopian nightmare remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t bet against the latter. For now, sit back and keep your smartphone charged—because in this new world, you never know if the next update might come with a plot twist.

 

Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, 13 May 24, Mohammed Ziad /APA images

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#RestorationGeneration.

當人類被關在籠内，地球持續美好，所以，給我們的教訓是:
人類毫不重要，空氣，土壤，天空和流水没有你們依然美好。
所以當你們走出籠子的時候，請記得你們是地球的客人，不是主人。

When humans are locked in a cage, the earth continues to be beautiful. Therefore, the lesson for us is: Human beings are not important. The air, soil, sky and water are still beautiful without you. So, when you step out of the cage, please remember that you are guests of the Earth, not its hosts.

We have a complete solution. We can restore whales to the ocean and bison to the plains. We can recover all the great old-growth forests. We possess the knowledge and tools to rebuild savannah and wetland ecosystems. It is not too late. All of these great works are recoverable. We can have a human population sized to harmonize, not destabilize. We can have an atmosphere that heats and cools just the right amount, is easy on our lungs and sweet to our nostrils with the scent of ten thousand flowers. All of that beckons. All of that is within reach.