[fnimick]

I'm more upset about the large group of people in the startup industry, possibly even a majority, who would be totally happy about countries slipping into fascism if they made a little more money along the way.

Who cares about ethics and morality? Those aren't profitable!

[jongjong]

Yes, but it's not just personal moral failings, the system itself is corrupt. Rich people aren't supposed to be constantly living on the precipice and forced to double down on evil to keep their wealth. It shouldn't be all-or nothing. This is the result of our debt-based system. This is deeply abnormal. Rich people should be comfortable in every way and should have the surplus to take a moral stance without risking to lose everything. You can see this play out very clearly with OpenAI. Sam has enemies. He may have done some things that he fears would catch up with him if he loses power. It's always like this with the most powerful people; they usually end up making Faustian bargains which put them into extreme all-or-nothing situations and they take the entire world for a ride with them.

That's not to say anyone should be excused but the system's fragility compounds the problem.

[CamperBob2]

Rich people aren't supposed to be constantly living on the precipice and forced to double down on evil to keep their wealth.

That does resonate to some extent, when I see people of actual merit (or at least, people who have done things with actual merit) like Jeff Bezos and Jensen Huang, lining up to suck meritless people like Trump off.

The problem is, once the rich people have secured their fortunes through self-abasement, they never seem to use those fortunes to redress the humiliation they've suffered. That makes your argument a hard sell. Would Bezos and Musk and Cook and Huang and Dell and Altman and Soon-Shiong and Zuckerberg and Mickey Mouse -- all the figures from the famous Ann Telnaes cartoon and more -- still be as supportive of Trump if they didn't have to be?

We have no evidence to the contrary.

[jongjong]

Yep great point. I guess this is the most extreme case. This dependency that billionaires have on the government is a symptom of the same effect and it's terrible regardless of which party is in charge, just negatively impacts different people. The same dynamic of government dependency flows down to everyone else.

It's because the government can print money. The government is the ultimate fallback, if interest rates increase and money becomes scarce, these big corporations need the government to provide big contracts to back them up to get through that tough period.

This is what I mean by all-or-nothing situation. These big corporations NEED huge, constant inflows of cash to stay solvent. The system is always full of debt; the liquidity is always under threat of being sucked out rapidly... So all these big companies are terrified of such event. They need to know that if money gets scarce, they've got a reliable stream they can draw from and the only reliable source of money in times of monetary scarcity is the government.