You’ll never believe why Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz are supporting Donald Trump. It has nothing to do with the petty concerns of mere peasants.
The podcast itself is an extraordinary performance. At one point, Andreessen concedes that their major problems with President Joe Biden — the ones that led them to support Trump — are what most voters would consider “subsidiary” issues. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about,” he says. If we take this podcast at face value, we are to believe that these subsidiary issues are the only reason they’ve chosen to endorse and donate to Trump.
These subsidiary issues take precedence for Andreessen and Horowitz over, say, mass deportations and Project 2025’s attempt to end no-fault divorce.
“Subsidiary issues” also include trivialities like abortion or Ukraine or Palestine or the rule of law or democracy. Only peons care about that stuff! Obscenely wealthy dumb-ass venture capitalists like those two have much grander concerns. Like…lowering their taxes and crypto.
We are looking at a simple trade against personal liberty — abortion, the rights of gay and trans people, and possibly democracy itself — in favor of crypto, AI, and a tax policy they like better.
For Horowitz, “probably the most emotional topic” is crypto — a16z started a $4.5 billion crypto fund in 2022, and the pair believe that the Biden administration has been deeply unfair to crypto. In Horowitz’s view, the Biden administration “basically subverted the rule of law to attack the crypto industry.”
Seriously, my dudes? You’re defining your political choices entirely on a foundation of cryptocurrency? They threw $4.5 billion down that rathole — speaking of a mega sunk cost fallacy — and now the primary concern for American citizens should be about salvaging your idiotic losses in a stupid scam?
Those two guys have totally lost the plot.
It’s almost like an economic system that puts control of all of society’s resources in the hands of a tiny minority is… flawed?
Their cryptocurrency fund is more important than the lives of 336 million Americans.
Actually, the Biden administration has been somewhat supportive of cryptocurrencies.
The Security Exchange Commission has approved bitcoin ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). They’ve also approved ETFs for other cryptocurrencies such as Ether.
I still don’t see why cryptocurrencies are useful for anything.
I know they are useful for evading taxes, buying illegal drugs and weapons, and moving money around the world undetected.
I lead a boring life. I have no interest in any of that.
One of the things I find darkly amusing about crypto is that for all the talk of decentralization, ultimately all it would accomplish if widely adopted (well, beyond burning up the planet and all that) is re-centralizing the power with the people who own the most processing power.
Seriously, how much more money do these assholes need? At the expense of losing everything this country represents, they’re willing to accept a deeply corrupt man as its leader so that they can potentially increase their wealth some relatively marginal amount.
Being a billionaire is like playing Cookie Clicker. Number go up, and if it doesn’t go up fast enough, they take more drastic action. One of the things you can do in Cookie Clicker is build time machines to steal cookies from the past, warping the timeline to the point that historical figures get turned into cookie.
Remember watching a video about Cookie Clicker as a satire of capitalism or at least the notion of infinite growth. I may look that up, again.
Just further evidence that great wealth detaches people from reality.
The fact that you have crypto CEOs talking about how “decentralized” and open crypto is clear evidence it’s a shell game.
“Lost the plot?” Dude, maximizing their own wealth regardless of the cost to everyone else has ALWAYS been the plot.
and
After the first ten million or so dollars, money just becomes markers in a game of, “how much money can we accumulate”.
Even Warren Buffet has said that money isn’t of any use to him.
There is one other thing money is useful for though.
Money and power are interconvertible. Money buys you power and power gets you money.
If you desire power over others or the economy, society, and country, then money is how you get it. Look at what the Koches have done with their money.
In theory, money can get you the power to make changes for the better in society as well. Gates and Buffett and Soros have done that.
Well if they weren’t total greedheads, they wouldn’t be billionaires now, would they? What did you expect? Would-be trillionaires who have really big hearts so they could only justify being billionaires?
I have a feeling that those people actually DO have a stance on the big issues in private. It’s just probably more convenient to use crypto (or whatever else) as a facade that they think is more plausible and palatable.
Crypto is Of criminals, By criminals, For criminals. If you are involved in crypto perhaps you are not a criminal yourself, but you are criminal-adjacent. And if you happen to end up facing a jury for your crypto activity and I am on that jury, don’t expect a lot of sympathy from me.
But crypto is The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future! The way of the Future!
In a world where competition is merciless, only those who focus on getting more no matter what float at the top.
They will destroy the planet and countless lives just to see “line goes up”, just to serve their petty egos.
And the more you get, the more you want.
Yes, money is a form of power and power is a hell of a drug.
SHOCKING news today as it’s revealed that capitalists only care about making money.
Now here’s some more breaking news: THE SKY IS BLUE!
No, that’s the opposite of what this article is saying. The claim here is that the issues that Andreessen and Horowitz care about are seen as subsidiary by most voters. Nowhere does the article or (its quotes of) the VCs describe “the big issues that people care about” as “subsidiary issues”.
A few months ago I read The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism by David Golumbia. Sadly, Golumbia died last year, but the book, published in 2016, was extremely insightful and prescient:
“lost the plot”? Oh no, typically on plot for the billionaire class.
Usedta be a bumper sticker I’d see around- “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?”
I’d go for one that said “If you’re so rich, why ain’t you smart?”
mikey:
Cute, but falls flat when you say that to or a about an actual rich person.
Think about it, beyond the sloganeering.
If one is smart, one presumably can leverage that into wealth, but the converse does not apply; just because one is wealthy does not mean they can leverage that into being smart.
(So, not the smartest thing to say)
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More likely, if one is born rich but is not smart, one will not remain rich absent very powerful patrons.
(There’s a wealth of adages about fools and their riches)
Reality has been unfair to crypto lately. What with crypto whizz-kids being sent to jail, how can a billionaire survive in such a world.
Well, not yet. Just wait until Elon comes out with those brain implants. Can you imagine what the deluxe edition will allow you to do? /S
That’s why trust funds were invented. When somebody is rich enough, it turns out they can buy smarts to protect their less smart offspring from losing that money.