[granfalloon]

There was a comment about the political influence and aspirations of certain big names in tech, but it has suddenly disappeared. It contained some criticism of Paul Graham and Sam Altman, but seemed totally reasonable to me -- can anyone say why it was deleted?

[aaron-lebo]

I wrote it, I don't feel like being an ass and I'm feeling overly aggressive today, not to mention I am a guest in someone else's house.

...but my overall point is that the tech elite is composed of a lot of rich white guys with connections, who naturally help each other out. Sam Altman runs YC now and as of last year was apparently seriously considering running for governor of California. That strikes me as grandiose and not good for society. Sam is 33 and because he's a tech billionaire thinks that he should run the most developed economy in the world? He genuinely believes that people outside of tech and business know who he is? He's qualified, because he's shook hands with the best off of society for the past decade?

Why does he deserve that power? Why does Zuckerberg deserve to be president? What makes him qualified? He made a PHP app that got big. Come on. That's what all this boils down to: money and power and a lot of people value that more than anything else in life.

How about we be honest with ourselves as individuals and societies and stop enabling that?

[Iv]

Trump lowered the bar so much that most people think they can do a better job than the current president, and are probably right.

What they miss is that running as a republican is very different than running as a democrat (as I guess most tech people would want to). Zuckberg would beat Trump in the democratic primaries, no question about that. But he won't be in front of Trump, he would be in front of many experiences politicians who actually have a clue about how one manages a country.

[pen2l]

> Zuckberg would beat Trump in the democratic primaries, no question about that.

So, where is this all coming from -- that Zuckerberg wants to run for president? I'll bet my house and every last penny I own, he does not want to be president, he will never run for president.

Oh, and he would never win. He's an insanely smart dude, but he hasn't got the charisma to win presidency.

(I do think that a lot of people on HN should run for some higher office in gov't, particularly tptacek and rayiner).

[aaron-lebo]

It's very possible that a lot of his current rhetoric and actions are part of PR and image control for Facebook as a brand and even a genuine desire to extend his horizons.

However, some of his actions are distinctly political.

http://people.com/politics/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-team-202...

He hired "Joel Benenson, a former top adviser and longtime pollster to President Barack Obama and the chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign", and prior to that he hired "David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama’s 2008 presidential run".

Your statement is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not sure Zuckerberg is actually "insanely smart". He's similar intelligence to a lot of people on HN, but people conflate power and success with visionary ability. Maybe he is that, or maybe he's just a relatively smart guy with lots of connections, a very favorable background, and the same hangups, limitations, biases, and delusions as everyone else.

[jonny_eh]

> He's an insanely smart dude

That's why I agree with you that he wouldn't run for president.

[StevePerkins]

In all fairness, the prior President was a one-term Senator, who pretty much started running for President just 18 months into that one term.

The actual merits of Trump or Obama notwithstanding, it's been three election cycles now since without traditional career politician in the White House. I'm not sure I can fault tech billionaires for thinking that this might be a real emerging trend, rather than just a pair of consecutive flukes.

[mehwoot]

Obama was a community organiser in 1985, 22 years before the presidental election. He had already made political speeches in college previous to that (where he majored in political science). After that he was a civil rights attorney, and his first elected position was to the Illinois senate in 1996, 8 years before he was elected to the United States Senate.

That is 100% traditional career politician in almost every way, it's just he was good enough to do it faster than most people.

[StevePerkins]

From state legislator to launching an (ultimately successful!) Presidential campaign in a year-and-a-half? We'll have to agree to disagree.

Either way, if anything in U.S. politics is non-controversial... it should be the observation that three Presidential cycles in a row have been won by upstarts, whose credentials are strikingly out of place alongside their peers of the past century. That's not arguing equivalence, but ignoring all commonality is absurd.

Maybe it's attributable to being "good", or "lucky", or "racist", or some other factors of sheer coincidence. Or maybe it's a symptom of fundamental social or media shift, and signifies a new norm.

[CalChris]

George W Bush was not an upstart by any definition of the word. To be sure, he had no particular claim to talent but then his father had been President and his grandfather had been Senator.

[0xbear]

If you feel like you can do a better job of winning an election against a Clinton and the entirety of mainstream media, you should run in 2020. Against Trump, naturally, so we confirm the hypothesis.

[komali2]

Trump was not opposed by mainstream media, he was enabled by it.

[0xbear]

It boggles the mind that some people think that utter and complete feathering and tarring of Trump in the runup to the election can even be interpreted as any kind of "enablement".

My point was, the dude is not as clueless as the media and pundits portray him, and he did accomplish the impossible more than once in his life, most recently in the 2016 election.

[ZoeZoeBee]

Trump was opposed by mainstream media, and he capitalized off it.

[sheepmullet]

> What they miss is that running as a republican is very different than running as a democrat

Yeah the republican primaries are more fair and balanced - we all saw what happened to Bernie in the democratic primaries.

[whyenot]

> we all saw what happened to Bernie in the democratic primaries

I don't know what you saw, but I saw Clinton winning 55% of the vote.

[CalChris]

I voted for Bernie in the CA primary. Hillary won the Democratic primary pretty handily. Actually, I was surprised by how well Bernie did. In November, I voted for Hillary.

[eropple]

Which, as somebody who voted for Hillary the whole way through, I really appreciate. I wish that the fact-free narratives that came up hadn't helped convince a number of other Bernie supporters not to do the sane thing.

[mhh__]

I have my doubts that Bernie would have won the primaries even if he was the one being helped. He ended up losing by 3.7e6 votes.

[rb2k_]

> Sam Altman runs YC now and as of last year was apparently seriously considering running for governor of California. That strikes me as grandiose and not good for society

Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Governor of California. At least as far as the 'what makes him qualified' thing goes, apparently that's not a real concern for voters :)

[mc32]

Let's not forget Grey Davis' being a politician didn't help California against rolling brownouts and massive deficits in the 2000s.

[CalChris]

> Let's not forget Grey Davis' being a politician didn't help California against rolling brownouts and massive deficits in the 2000s.

The correct spelling is Gray Davis [1].

The rolling brownouts were caused by Enron [2] who was enabled by legislation (AB 1890) that his predecessor Pete Wilson signed in 1996 [3]. People went to jail for that. [4]

There were no massive deficits under Davis. When the tech bubble burst in 2001, there was a revenue decline but that's about it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_Davis

[2] https://www.ferc.gov/industries/electric/indus-act/wec/enron...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

[mc32]

Arianna Huffington has a different take on the issue. Others do as well. Davis blames federal regulation while at the sane time has retrospectively apologized for being slow to act as the crisis began.

[CalChris]

No, Davis doesn't blame Federal regulation because it wasn't Federal regulation that caused the California energy crisis. The crisis was caused by state de-regulation. That de-regulation (AB 1890) was engineered and signed by Governor Pete Wilson.

  Staff concludes that supply-demand imbalance, flawed
  market design and inconsistent rules made possible 
  significant market manipulation as delineated in final
  investigation report. Without underlying market
  dysfunction, attempts to manipulate the market
  would not be successful.

This wasn't on Davis; this was on Wilson and Enron. As for Arianna Huffington, she ran as an independent against Davis is the recall election engineered by Darrell Issa. She'd been a conservative commentator (supporting Newt Gingrich) before she and Andrew Breitbart launched HuffPo.

Et cetera.

[Applejinx]

Yeah, he was powerless against the Uber of its day: Enron.

I'm not sure the fault there was Grey Davis's. Seems there was skulduggery afoot (it's actually a really interesting story, and seemingly a perennial one)

[wils1245]

I welcome it. I'd much rather have a crowded field than what we had in the last election on the Democratic side - a field emptied by the presence of a dominant presumptive nominee. More competition is a good thing.

[slg]

More competition is also how we got Trump on the republican side because the number of candidates lowered the bar for receiving a plurality of the votes. Trump never would have beaten someone like Cruz, Rubio, or even Jeb in a primary straight up.

[autokad]

I dont agree at all, and I do not think the data backs it up. Jeb is a clear loss mono e mono against trump in the primary, no question.

the candidates you mentioned only did well in limited/specific geographies (such as their home state). i followed the primaries on both sides, and had you consolidated the votes to trump vs other, trump would have won. its also very unlikely that 'other' would all vote for 'other' if they weren't specifically allowed to vote for someone like Cruz.

[slg]

>the candidates you mentioned only did well in limited/specific geographies

That is because the other candidates all took their own piece of the pie. The republican and democratic primaries were very similar. You had someone framed as a populist outsider who was selling themselves on their ability to fix the system. On the democratic side you had one other establishment candidate who more or less campaigned on the status quo. On the republican side you had numerous establishment candidates that basically campaigned on the status quo who split the vote and several outsider candidates that never had much support at all. The democratic side was consolidated much earlier around their candidate. The republican side never consolidated around an establishment candidate because it was never clear which establishment candidate was the favorite. This allowed Trump to succeed with his consistent 20-30% of republicans in early primaries.

[jeffbax]

Maybe, but even at the end when it was Trump vs. Cruz vs. Kasich Trump polled well ahead. I don't think that quantity really was the determining factor -- I think Trump is just the natural end state for the way America seems to be at the moment with its massive political division and the inability for either side to treat the other with good intentions.

Really agree with this post

https://medium.com/@russroberts/the-world-turned-upside-down...

[slg]

People like voting for winners and it was clear that Trump was going to win the plurality of the vote by that point. It also came at the end of a long and grueling primary that served to normalize Trump and rally establishment republican behind him. There is no way he would have won against a generic republican if the race started with only two candidates.

[s73ver_]

Not always. You don't want just one or two, but you also don't want the situation where they have to have a JV debate beforehand because they can't fit all the candidates.

[Clanan]

I think we see similar behavior with other famous/rich people; Hollywood stars are always involving themselves in politics (and are often surprised when their engagement means nothing).

That being said, the point of campaigning for office is to demonstrate why you deserve the votes. Nothing wrong with a young successful guy giving it a try. Who knows - maybe the qualities that made him successful would translate well to governing. If anything, I think we should encourage more non-lawyers to run!

[_0ffh]

I suppose everyone thinks "Trump did it, why shouldn't I? I'm certainly better than that guy!"... but I think they forget that they weren't playing a successful authority figure on TV for years.

[Kutta]

The society can't ever be honest and collectively stop enabling whatever. Everyone all the time responds to incentives, and power goes to whoever is lucky and good at collecting votes and support. Competence, technological acumen or vision is an extra. Altman being governor would be a high percentile outcome considering all of this.

[HillaryBriss]

How does one measure, compare and conclude that California is the most developed economy in the world?

[adventured]

It doesn't make much sense. California doesn't have a super high median income or GDP per capita compared to other rich US states. The US has around a dozen states with median incomes equal to or higher than Switzerland.

California ranks #8 in GDP per capita in the US among states. It's around $59,000 for 2017, which is high globally but not particularly high vs the overall US figure of ~$57,000.

California ranks near the bottom in education and is 35th in poverty rate.

The title of most developed US state goes to Massachusetts most likely. It has a super high GDP per capita and median income, and is generally highly developed in most regards including education, poverty, and median standard of living. The problem is, it's the size of a Scandinavian nation. New Hampshire is even worse: they have one of the world's highest median incomes and GDP per capita figures, but only 1.3 million people.

[Houshalter]

GDP per capita probably. If California was a country, it would be on the top 10 list, only beat by some small oil rich countries.

[Houshalter]

Why should all of our leaders be charismatic lawyers? How are they more qualified? Or in some cases, famous actors. The current president's main qualification was inheriting a ton of money and being good at getting in the news.

The bar is not terribly high and I think successful tech leaders are probably more qualified than anyone else that shows up.

I think the idea of having representatives and leaders is a bit old fashioned to begin with. But if we are going to have them, they should be the most competent intelligent people we can find from outside of politics.

[frostburg]

I wouldn't want to vote for them, but do you think that your actual politicians are qualified or deep thinkers? By "qualified" I don't mean "better than Trump", that's a very low bar.

[11thEarlOfMar]

Did you delete that post yourself?

[aaron-lebo]

Yes, there's no funny business going on.

[granfalloon]

Sorry, didn't mean to drag you back into the discussion! I posted my question because I was concerned that maybe a moderator deleted it. I guess I was being a little paranoid!

[jshelly]

I'll be honest I had no idea who Sam Altman is so I read his wikipedia page and I still don't quite understand how he got to where he is today? Was his success started by the Loopt sale?

[pen2l]

He's a very smart guy, according to a lot of people, and he's also nice. He made an app that was reasonably successful, sold it. When in YC, pg recognized his genius... and over time decided he's the guy who should run YC.

[rurbrbdubebe]

He got to where he is today because Paul Graham took him under his wing and made him his de facto son. It's not really a replicable model.