Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan launches group to influence CA politics

I think rich people have too much influence, I probably agree with Garry Tan on a lot but we need to get money out of politics. Let’s face it we’re all meant to get one vote but rich people spend money on this stuff so that they manipulate what and who can be voted for.

I do think that if this current system is the result of democracy + the internet we need to seriously reconsider how democracy works because it’s currently failing everyone but the ultra wealthy.

This is one of the guys that thinks we should eliminate voting because he thinks him, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Bezos all know "better" than the people.

Praying for Garry's downfall used to be a hobby of mine but these days it seems like it will take up less of my time as he has become aligned with my other enemies, reducing my number of enemy agents at play at any given time, or at least the number of attack vectors they have on me.

The title was changed, but "dark money" has a specific meaning in US politics that is now lost:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_money

Such a group is not a PAC or a Super PAC, but anonymizes donors. It can be used as a vehicle to transfer money to a Super PAC while only naming the dark money group and keeping the donors secret.

He is probably going after Ro Khanna, who comes across as a pretty decent rep (he and Massie got the Epstein files released):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro_Khanna

Based on this warning from Garry to Ro re: wealth tax

https://finviz.com/news/277038/y-combinators-garry-tan-warns...

So this appears to be all about the wealth tax and taken down anyone who supports it.

AIPAC is also mad at Ro so it seems that Garry Tan can find common cause with them:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GRXZqcQiU/?mibextid=wwXIfr

> dark-money group to influence California politics

Does this mean what I think it means: basically legalized bribery?

US: %country% has corrupt political system

Also US: it’s not bribes if we call it PACs, lobbying, and what have you

hate to see that tech leaders getting into politics

Garry has tweeted about the violence his peers have had to endure in SF so I don't blame him for putting his money where is mouth is.

Every single article I looked at seems to be generated from a tweet. The latest is a blatant attempt at promoting one of YC's privacy invasive investments Flock: https://garryslist.org/posts/atlanta-solved-35-homicides-wit...

That tells you all you need to know about how trustworthy the site is.

Money is like poison in politics

At this point it's just boring to have another rich asshole using government to protect their own interests. There's no substance or principle to it, it's just whatever policies makes CA more favorable to other rich assholes.

shouldn't we call this bright money

Setting aside the merits of this, complaining about big money in politics while your site proudly displays a Twitter link is a bit of a face-palm.

Save us, please!

"Garry's List" is just straight up AI slop. This is a window into the coming AI-enabled era of astroturfing from wealthy individuals for their pet causes.

This looks concerning but I'm withholding judgement for now so that he can clarify this first on his side instead of jumping into conclusions.

Well, this is helpful.

Now I can refer to this list to let me know who, and what, to vote against...

He's been posting extremely stilted political content lately, in addition to unchecked AI evangelism.

I really, really hate that our future has ended up in the hands of people like him, Andreessen, Thiel, Musk, etc.

> “I want to work to ensure Californians know the importance of investment and entrepreneurship to our state’s current and future economy,” Tan wrote.

I know a dog whistle when i see one, didn't have to read much further but did anyway.

Cool.

This won't end well for the oligarchs. Just ask the Ancien Regime or the Zar what happens if you keep pushing too hard.

To me, tech entrepreneurship looks more like some form of "lemon socialism." It feels more centrally planned than ever, and a company's success has much more to do with your relationships with capital than anything else. It's why we're seeing so much money invested into a bunch of similar takes on AI. Founders with a real vision of the future aren't really accepted into VC that has almost wholly accepted the FOMO strategy of investment.

I used to hold a lot of respect for Paul Graham and his essays, but I've realized his stances on things are pretty elementary, and largely come back to his ego or wealth management. People like Graham and Tan don't seem to really care about human flourishing, and they certainly don't seem to have any coherent vision of the future. Graham, like Andreessen, was technically good enough during a veritable tech gold rush, and Graham's lieutenants like Tan and Altman were lucky more than anything--just in the right place at the right time versus having started anything of value.

I am *absolutely* cynical and jaded when it comes to tech nowadays, so no need to call me out there. These people remind me of the high modernists, that tech will solve all problems, and we don't have to care too much as to how we solve those problems. Just handwave, and AI will solve all problems. But I think how we solve problems matters, and the entrepreneurship meritocracy that Tan and Graham allude to does not exist, and it never did.

I just find it abhorrent that while 15% of American households are food insecure, a company like Anthropic spent millions on a superbowl ad just lamenting OpenAI's ad strategy. Or that the Trump administration dropped a FTC case against Pepsi and Walmart for colluding to price out grocery competition. Or that Facebook and Google have been shown to have pushed for apps to addict people to their slop content. Or that tech capex this year alone rivals the Louisiana Purchase or the amount America spent on building out the railroads[1].

We're not solving the right problems because capital is entirely disconnected from the every day reality of Americans in this country. But by all means, let's aim to replace 50% of white collar workers with AI and handwave that prices will come down.

[1]: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-spending-tech-companies-compa...

It won't work. The Trump admin has so thoroughly betrayed its voters that independent voters no longer want anything to do with billionaires like the all-in people lying to them for 4 years before an election.

You had your chance, it is gone now.

Garry Tan desperately wants to become Elon Musk/Peter Thiel so badly. Quite pathetic.

It's way too early to fix California. The average California voter, which HN is a good sampling of by the way, really believes that California is fine, and that there's no corruption or grift, and that they can tax billionaires more without them simply leaving the state (because CA is magical and unique (it's the 4th largest economy in the world, don't you know!) and they'll come crawling back to be a part of it). It's going to take awhile for people to change. As the saying goes "science progresses one funeral at a time". People put ideology above the evidence in front of their eyes. (That "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command" Orwell quote is making the rounds, which is ironic because most people don't need a party to tell them to disbelieve uncomfortable facts!) We have to wait for a new generation to grow up with the visible corruption to fully internalize it. Then it can be fixed. I can't help but think that Tan's efforts would be better spent trying to get a startup scene going somewhere where you can park your car without getting the windows smashed.

Yet another terrible step toward total oligarchy. Get the fuck out of politics, tech ghouls.

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Among the many weird things that the U.S. have but real democratic countries don't, the most promiscuous of them is this flow of private money into politics.

Campaign financing, U.S. style, is just legalized bribing. In any healthy democracy it would be illegal. In the U.S. is just the way things are.

I don't know if I agree or not with his views, but the fact that he's moving from complaining about something, to doing something about his beliefs, has convinced me to move from a negative to a significantly positive view of him, as a person; to reiterate, regardless of whether I agree with said views.

The will to fight for what one believes in - I think we can all agree that is an admirable human trait that would result, for those who do follow his views, in him being labeled as a hero and defender of people's rights.

Bravo, Garry.

The Mission Local is a good source for hyperlocal Bay Area news, but it does have a strong SF leftist/progressive political tilt in most of its articles, and Gary Tan is a favorite boogieman for these types. Here's what they have to say about his malign influence in the article:

> But the operation is also a media venture: Garry’s List started with a blog pillorying public-sector unions as “special interests,” attacking the ongoing teachers’ strike, and denouncing the proposed billionaire tax.

- Public sector unions are special interests. This is a plain fact.

- The current teacher's strike in San Francisco, even if it succeeds, will only push the district into insolvency, prompting a state takeover. The state will then cut much more aggressively. Maybe this would be a good thing though, although probably not what the union intended. Advocates of the strike are literally demanding the district spend its reserves on a couple years of raises.

- I'm certainly no billionaire, but the proposed tax will do nothing more than push the extremely small and mobile group of billionaires to take their business elsewhere. It's unlikely to raise tax revenues over the long run.