Oligarchs now in full control of America? What does Hacker News think of this?

[Sol2Sol]

The multi-millionaire and billionaire class have long put their thumbs on the scale of democracy through donations to the political class with the hope of gaining influence and shaping policy. But Tuesday's election outcome brings about a big shift that is different it seems to me from the past. US policy and democracy it seems to me has been handed directly to a small cast of characters led by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bejos and perhaps the Murdoch family.

There is a disturbance in the force. I have felt in recent years, without being able to clearly articulate it, that something fundamental about the world has changed. Things seem a bit darker to me, there is something looming on the edge.

How are folks seeing things on where we stand?

[workfromspace]

Not just the USA, but probably many other countries as well.

For example, in Estonia there's an oligarch named Margus Linnamäe, who owns all the authorized Apple resellers, over 90% of the pharmacies, almost half of the media, almost all the movie theaters etc... This guy can set any price without any competition.

A while ago this guy shut down the most of the pharmacies in the country for a day (in the name of a strike) because government was trying to pass a law affecting him.

No one, especially oligarchs like him should be allowed to have such power.

[al_borland]

When people start to spiral over something that was said in politics, I often think of this from the HN guidelines:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I’m going to assume good faith, and do my best to not take on the anxieties of others. That doesn’t mean blind trust, but I don’t think it will be as bad, or as good, as people are projecting out there.

[Sol2Sol]

I see this got flagged, but when big tech players had such a significant role in the election and will have significant say in policy going forward, me thinks this is more than an intellectual curiosity and relevant to the board.

[JumpinJack_Cash]

Oligarchs or technocrats. In the end you see the 1000 odd people in government and they are not islands . Some people will befriend them (oligarchs and technocrats) and of course they are at the very top of the Maslow pyramid of needs and so of course they'd bond over their opinions about "how society should work to maximize welfare"

[canucker2016]

Looking at the vote totals between 2024 and 2020:

- Trump has just a few thousand more votes in 2024 than 2020 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia... says 74.224M, NYTimes and FoxNews, https://www.foxnews.com/elections, has 74.230M in 2024)

- 2024 Harris has about 11M *FEWER* votes than 2020 Biden (70.330M vs 81.283M, same sources as for Trump totals)

[sidibe]

We are living in an age of open grift. There hasn't been any proactive prosecution and punishment for wildly successful grifters for quite some time the government was too scared to shake the economy/shareholders for many administrations in a row and hoping market forces expose them and the legal stuff can start when they're already bust and unpopular, but now they're firmly in control and can keep it going indefinitely or simply make fraud normal and OK to

[canucker2016]

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart's podcast about billionaire influence in the USA presidential election. Listen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ_2Q3a0NRs

[jfengel]

Oligarchs have always had full control in America. They've chosen to exercise that in an especially conspicuous way, but in the end, a bunch of people went into the voting booth and pulled the lever labeled "felon".

The oligarchs have a huge thumb on the scale, but it's not mind control. As Mencken said, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

Maybe we will indeed get it good and hard, and four years from now we'll reconsider. That won't do much good for the Ukrainians, who will almost certainly have suffered a genocide, but we decided that apparently we're good with that.

Or maybe we'll muddle through, like we did last time. The fact is that a President has only limited power to affect your life directly. Yeah, there's every reason to think that erecting a massive trade barrier will crash the economy, and trashing the federal government will cause tons of misery in the "get your government hands off my medicare" crowd. But we have the sour grapes that the new leadership is at least incompetent, and rarely accomplishes anything he sets out for.

I'm extraordinarily disappointed that Americans have chosen literal criminality. It's hard to imagine that we said "Yeah, nearly everybody around him was convicted, and the first thing he's going to do is pardon himself, but at least he's not..." and I'll let you finish that sentence.

But that's not the oligarchs, at least not immediately. We did this to ourselves, at least in aggregate. A lot of people are going to get hurt who didn't do this to themselves, and all I can do now is try to mitigate that as best I can.

[Sol2Sol]

This is also a source of great frustration to me. That so many people discounted the character issue when many who worked directly with him including his own former VP, Chief of Staff and military leaders said that his character issues disqualified him for the job is amazing to me.

My motto for the rest of the year and going forward is to no longer try to understand the actions of others, but to just accept. Peoples actions won't necessarily match my paradigm of what is rational and logical.

[Rapzid]

That many people from his previous administration and own party coming out against his character issues? It's unprecedented. Mind boggling.

Plus January 6th and all his legal problems(plus convictions). That whole government documents circus.

And we have collectively looked past this and put him back in office? He won the GOP PRIMARY?! I know people aren't "feeling the economy vibes" but dang.

[jfengel]

I'm not really convinced of the "economy" argument. It's easy to make, but there is no reason to think that the other guy is actually any better. They may not be thrilled with where they are now, but they were not noticeably better off four years ago.

Some are worse off; some are better; many are about the same. It's just not sufficient to explain electing a literal criminal.

I'm sure it figures in somewhere, but I don't think it's anywhere near enough to explain the situation.

[Rapzid]

They've mapped polls showing economy being the biggest voter issue and correlated that with voter behavior.

Also, they mapped the counties highest hit by wages trailing inflation in PA.. They flipped for Trump from Biden this round.

It's a referendum on the current party in office, so people just want change and that was promised to them heavily by Trump.

But man.. Trump wasn't the only other choice. There was a whole GOP primary lol.

[damnesian]

>tons of misery in the "get your government hands off my medicare" crowd

Well, and also in the "I genuinely need medicare because my wages were stagnant most of my career" crowd, too.

[canucker2016]

from the 2020 presidential election, Forbes has a 4-part series about the billionaires that donated to Biden and Trump.

Part 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/02/15/biden...

    Four months later, when the campaign ended, Trump finished with 133 billionaire backers who collectively gave him $37.8 million. Biden, meanwhile, had 230 donors who contributed $39.1 million.

    Those sums only tell part of the story, though. Many of the biggest donors to the campaigns also funneled huge amounts into super-PACs supporting the two candidates. Super-PACs cannot coordinate with campaigns, which is why Forbes did not count those funds as part of the totals raised by Biden or Trump. But the groups, which are allowed to raise unlimited sums, can nonetheless plow money into television ads that support a candidate.

[yawpitch]

> Things seem a bit darker to me, there is something looming on the edge.

Yeah, lemme see if I can say this gently. You’re on Alderaan, and that shadow isn’t an eclipsing moon.

[xenospn]

I’ve been feeling this way for a long time. My solution is to completely disengage and force myself to stop caring. It isn’t easy (see this comment), but it helps in the long run.

[lawls]

I plan on going to my nearest Trump Tower and throwing water balloons full of watercolor paints at it to paint the rainbow.

[lawls]

Just to be clear, I will be doing this to the Chicago Trump Tower over the weekend. Taking my son for his first introduction into civil disobedience.

[marcuskane2]

Honestly, after a brief bit of despair, I took a hard look at what Trump supporters were saying and particularly the priorities and beliefs of people in the demographics that shifted in his favor and I think there's a clear path to Democrat victories in the future.

This election shouldn't be understood as some sort of "the oligarchs won", but rather that the American voters have signaled that they're "anti-woke" to the point that they can tolerate many other flaws in a candidate.

The social-progressive faction of the Democrats was too loud, too aggressive and too influential and alienated too many average Americans. The average Trump supporter wasn't voting for him because they were MAGA diehards, they just didn't want their kids' school to have drag queen story hour and they didn't want to be called racists every time Twitter users decided a new word was "problematic".

In four years, Trump will have done terrible damage to the country and world, but the 2028 election can be a landslide victory for the Democrats if they focus on housing, healthcare, childcare, education, environment and economy instead of race and gender.

Basically, it's bad, but it's temporary and fixable.

[Rapzid]

The average voter doesn't spend their days thinking about woke. That's chronically online behavior.

The top issues voters mentioned and has been correlated with voting behavior this round was the economy.

[Sol2Sol]

He also easily brushed aside the Republican contenders during the primaries so I think it is a bit more than voters can't stand woke democrat policies.

All of the character issues were raised and known during the Republican primaries and they still selected him as their candidate.

[yawpitch]

> but the 2028 election

Ahh, to still have the kind of sweet, sweet naïveté that would lead me to believe there will be a 2028 election.

[xenospn]

There will be one, but not everyone will get to take part. Russian model.

[xenospn]

Are there people who voted for Obama and then decided to vote for Trump because of “woke”?

To me, it sounds like going to a restaurant and not really seeing anything you like on the menu, so instead of getting something kind of “meh”, you decide to go to the bathroom and drink out of the toilet.

[taylodl]

This day has been decades in the making. I'm thinking 1,000 years from now they'll pinpoint the start of the transition of America from a democracy to whatever it is we're transitioning to as starting with the Nixon administration.

One thing I think you're feeling is the end of the post-war period. WWII shaped global politics for the latter half of the 20th century. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but that war ended 80 years ago. We're entering a new global era.

What does that era look like? It's in transition. The US wants to retain its global preeminence and based off the election results, believes winding the clock back to the first decade after WWII is the best way to achieve that. The US literally wants to return to 70 years ago without paying attention that the world has moved on. It should be obvious to anyone with even a scant knowledge of history that effort is futile and will end in failure.

What does failure mean? The US is unlikely to be the dominant political power in the latter half of the 21st century. Other countries recognize this and are positioning themselves to take the reins. Russia is one of those countries, but they too want to rewind the clock back several decades to when the Soviets were great. That endeavor will likely fail.

China on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. The 20th century was rough for them, so no living person has a memory of better times. The better times are right now. Hence, China is moving forward instead of looking backward like the US and Russia are. The smart money is on China being the most influential political power in the latter half of the 21st century (and maybe before).

That's the other thing I think you're feeling - the tectonic shift of power from the Occident to the Orient. The Occident have been dominating global politics and global trade for some 2,500 years. Now it's shifting to the Orient. I think part of the conflict in America that you're seeing is businessmen have already accepted that China is the future - they're the largest export market and there's room for a lot of growth. Main street is a different matter, everyday Americans are accustomed to living in a country that's the most dominant country on earth and they sense that's being lost - and it is. The irony is Americans are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing in order to retain their power and influence. Then again, nobody ever accused Americans of being a smart bunch.

Tying this back to the Nixon administration, I think Henry Kissinger laid the groundwork for the US to maintain relevancy in a China-dominated world, so long as we don't screw it up. Seeing as how America is sending an idiot, conman, and grifter to the oval office, I don't see how it's possible we don't screw it up.

That's my take on where we stand.

[JansjoFromIkea]

Returning to 70 years ago would involve an upper income tax rate of 91% and (as far as I can gather) 25% on capital gains tax

[taylodl]

Almost nobody who voted for Trump was an adult during this timeframe. They were a teen or a child, if they were alive at all. People pining for the past always look at the past through rose-colored glasses. People don't think about the high taxes and a world whose manufacturing output was ravaged by war contributed to the American economic success story.

People almost never talk about the marginalized living at that time. Those unpleasantries are filtered out by those rose-colored glasses! Populists like Trump certainly never mention the realities of the time. They leverage people's fantasies of a by-gone era.

So no, they really don't want what they wish for, and by the time they've realized what they've wished for and what they've done, it'll be too late.

[archagon]

“Scoop: Elon Musk joined Trump's call with Zelensky”: https://www.axios.com/2024/11/08/musk-trump-zelensky-ukraine...

Uh, yes. It’s viscerally depressing.