https://www.discourseblog.com/p/what-election-do-these-people-think

Quote :

" What Election Do These People Think We Just Had? Democrats are inventing wild fantasies about the power of Big Woke rather than confront the failures of their actual approach."

I agree with this piece

11/11/2024 12:30:57 PM

^

The Democrats, in post-triumph haze,
Seek answers, blame, and ways to phrase
Their loss on "Woke" or campus cries,
But Harris leaned right before their eyes—
In truth, they crafted their own disguise.

11/11/2024 12:56:26 PM

OK, that's not bad.

11/11/2024 1:13:30 PM

Quote :

"Harris wouldn’t stop talking about her desire to crack down on undocumented immigration"

too little, too late. her interest in the issue whatsoever felt forced and inauthentic. voters can't stand inauthentic politicians.

Quote :

"Harris went out of her way to avoid talking about trans rights at all. She wouldn’t even say the word “trans” when asked direct questions about her past policy stances."

voters don't like when politicians avoid discussing stances that they previously took.

Quote :

"What message were voters to take from that other than that Harris felt she had something to hide when it came to trans people?"

it's exactly this. just not the way the author tried to spin it. either come out and tell the public WHY you support prisoners getting government-paid gender transition surgeries, or say it was a mistake. she came across as unprincipled most importantly, and she ran away from something people had questions about rather than tackle it head on. her approach showed zero leadership skill, zero integrity, and zero acceptance of the american voter's legitimate desire to understand her stance on this issue (and the many many other issues she wouldn't face head on).

like I said

Quote :

"if she does the typical politician thing and just deflect, she'll lose"

Quote :

"If the far left was calling all the shots on Team Harris, how did Reines—or, really, anyone who was within 5,000 miles of the loser-filled Clinton campaign—even get through the door?"

it's not that voters think Democrat politicians are super woke themselves. they think that Democrat politicians have let themselves be steamrolled by the fringe activists in the party (and outside the party).

Quote :

"When we are too afraid to say that “Hey, college kids, if you’re trashing a campus of Columbia University because you aren’t happy about some sort of policy and you’re taking over a university and you’re trashing it and preventing other students from learning, that that is unacceptable.” But we’re so worried about alienating one or another cohort in our coalition that we don’t know what to say. In the real world, Democrats relentlessly attacked the Gaza campus protests."

again, it's not what the actual Democrat politicians did or didn't do on this issue. it's more about the fact that they stood by and watched their base go nuts over something that they KNEW the base was wrong about, and didn't do nearly enough to try to correct it. it was pathetic, and the voters saw it as another instance of democrats being weak, spineless and ultimately showed once again the moral confusion and lack of common sense within the party. of all the "progressive issues," the public's reaction to seeing the Dem base lose their minds over the ZiOnIsTs for a year performed the worst.


you know how you won't support republicans because they won't sufficiently denounce their fringe, even if some republican ideals are good actually?

americans didn't support democrats because they also didn't sufficiently denounce their fringe, even if they think some democrat ideals are good actually.

Quote :

"The ugly truth for these people is that Kamala Harris ran as right-wing a campaign as any Democrat in living memory. She downplayed discussions of her race and gender. She bent over backward to welcome billionaires, corporate titans, and Republicans into the fold. She told Black men that one of her priorities for them was…crypto. She made her past as a prosecutor a cornerstone of her pitch. She bragged about owning a Glock and joked that she would shoot people who broke into her house. She stuffed the Democratic National Convention to the gills with cops and Border Patrol agents while crushing even the tiniest dissent over her support for the genocide in Gaza. She promised the most “lethal” military in the world. She was seemingly joined at the hip with Liz Cheney for weeks. She even praised Dick Cheney! It’s hard to think of what more she could have done to satisfy the people clamoring for her to pander to conservatives."

like i said earlier

Quote :

"her interest in these issues whatsoever felt forced and inauthentic. voters can't stand inauthentic politicians."

[Edited on November 11, 2024 at 1:22 PM. Reason : .]

11/11/2024 1:15:12 PM

AOC polling her followers
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/aoc-trump-voters_n_67320370e4b052f25adcff55

I feel the people who vote on vibes are smarter than the people who think trump has good policies though

11/11/2024 2:02:25 PM

Since TGL mentioned GamerGate

https://x.com/esrtweet/status/1856076422818808109

In the style of a country song, because I'm not reading that shit.

(Verse)
Back in '14, a game sparked a storm,
Zoe Quinn's moves broke the norm.
Journalists swayed, folks got mad,
Gamers fought back, things turned bad.

(Chorus)
From games to the polls, a strange twist of fate,
The battle online led to the ballot state.
They raged against, they swayed the tide,
And maybe, just maybe, they turned it right-side.

Quote :

"For you Following See new posts Your Home Timeline Show 33 posts Eric S. Raymond @esrtweet · 29m Many people on X are requesting an explanation of how Zoe Quinn screwing around led to Trump's election. I'm only gamer-adjacent, but I'm a wandering anthropologist who pays attention to things. Here's what I think I know - I invite correction in replies from people who were closer to the events. Back in 2014, Zoe Quinn wrote a terrible game. She screwed five different journalists at websites covering video games to get positive reviews of it. When this was revealed, there was a flap about her bad behavior and the poor ethics of the game journalists who allowed themselves to be bribed with her body. This escalated into a broader critique of video game journalism. It was associated with the hashtag #Gamergate. This might have remained just a minor intramural scandal within the gamer community. But a bunch of social justice warriors both within and (critically) outside gaming took up their cudgels for Quinn and began berating gamers for their supposed rampant sexism. Of course, in the way that these SJW crusades usually work, this escalated into a lot of screaming about (largely imaginary) racism, homophobia, and "privilege". Gamers were denounced as fascists in a way that has since become very familiar. This, against a community that was notably tolerant and inclusive for exactly the same reason that the Internet hacker culture I came up up in was - you can't see who's on the other end of the wire from you, or what their skin color is, or what they like to do with their genitals, and if you ever had any inclination to care you quickly learn not to as long as they play nice. Gamers felt unfairly attacked and abused. The war against gamers became one of the major theaters in a wider SJW crusade against straight white men and everything that you might call straight white culture. The SJWs were on the ascendant at the time, and successfully bullied many video game companies into producing horrible woke trash. Often, this destroyed franchises that gamers had loved for years. Many similar battles were taking place across other areas. I myself had to spend a lot of effort trying to fight SJW infiltration of the hacker culture. Elsewhere, I watched them corrupt and then ruin the Hugos (an award for excellence in science fiction), helpless to do anything about it. They finally met their match in the gamers. SF fandom and the hacker culture simply weren't large enough for any revolt against the SJWs to matter on the wider political scene. But they pissed off millions and millions of gamers - not all of them straight white men by any means. Gamers believe there's a short, straight line from this to the fact that record numbers of 18- to 29-year olds swung right and voted for Trump in the 2024 election cycle. I am not in any position to say that they were wrong. Earlier than that, the claim is that this also helped Trump in the 2016 cycle. Which led to the appointment of conservative justices that voted to overturn Roe versus Wade. So gamers also think there was a straight line between Gamergate and that decision. I'm a little more doubtful about this, but it's possible."

[Edited on November 11, 2024 at 4:21 PM. Reason : A]

11/11/2024 4:18:27 PM

Well at least his link on this page isn't about beating Jews but it's still a terribly crafted piece of cope.

11/11/2024 5:16:08 PM

Quote :

"given a fairly substantial portion of my pay has been options and RSUs because of tech jobs, how is it not commie bullshit? It's common to have options which appreciate substantially in value that you can't sell until IPO. On paper I made money, but in reality I can't do anything about it. If you have assets you could pay the tax bill but a lot of normal workers don't and are waiting for the payday. In really extreme cases it's possible to have a tax bill exceed their yearly income. "

Oh I'm not in favor of taxing all unrealized capital gains, for practical reasons like you mention as well as ideological reasons. It seems to me that would be so insane that you nobody would consider it, although I'm not so naive to think that there aren't a number of people on the left who would support it.

As an aside, I'm familiar with what you describe, except my equity is as an investor, not from compensation in equity form. Sometimes the lockup can be beyond the IPO. For example, a company I had invested in (I think I was in a seed round as well as a Series A) was locked up for a year after acquisition by a NASDAQ company. As is often the case, the deal was part cash/part stock; I got a few thousand bucks immediate from the cash portion, and then tranches of payment from liquidation of the public company's stock every quarter for a year. It worked out; the stock appreciated substantially, further multiplying my ROI, but it could have gone the other way...never mind potential tax implications.

No, what I think is a real problem is that at the very, very tip of the tax curve, it goes substantially regressive. I don't care ** about it being insuffiently progressive (I'm no whiny leftist commie), but I also don't think it should go regressive. The reason for this is because as people's wealth gets into the hundreds of millions or billions (and maybe even sometimes in the many tens of millions, approaching 9-figures), their income becomes predominantly investment-derived. That can be part of the problem, although we deal with that via AMT. However, that doesn't account for "buy-borrow-die" strategy, where you just have minimal income and borrow against your assets, and then pass them on to heirs via trusts and via inheritance provisions in the tax code. (whatever interest you pay to borrow is far less than what you'd be paying in taxes to liquidate the assets and realize income)

I'm not for screwing people on investment income, and I'm not for taxing them again on inheritance, and I'm not for hiking the tax rates. Basically I think that all these provisions should be kept for the vast, vast majority of people. I don't think we should be crushing the neurosurgeon or executive making a million or two (or more) per year. I don't think we should be tightening the screws any further on the 30 or 40-something who works at a tech startup that IPOs and makes them rich overnight (sometimes very rich) from their equity.

However, I would be OK with taxing unrealized gains, or the loans against the assets, or whatever mechanism work, at some certain very generous level. I don't know where the cutoff should be; that's an ideological matter as well, but also a data-matter. I'd basically set it so that the tax curve, or maybe our best modeling of total tax burden, doesn't go regressive.

11/11/2024 6:21:32 PM

Quote :

"However, I would be OK with taxing unrealized gains, or the loans against the assets, or whatever mechanism work, at some certain very generous level. I don't know where the cutoff should be; that's an ideological matter as well, but also a data-matter. I'd basically set it so that the tax curve, or maybe our best modeling of total tax burden, doesn't go regressive."

Gotcha, it does seem to be an excessive loophole, especially at the top end.

11/11/2024 7:01:14 PM

Reuters is saying house majority too. Republicans will have at least 218.

11/11/2024 7:39:56 PM

Quote :

"given a fairly substantial portion of my pay has been options and RSUs because of tech jobs, how is it not commie bullshit? It's common to have options which appreciate substantially in value that you can't sell until IPO. On paper I made money, but in reality I can't do anything about it. If you have assets you could pay the tax bill but a lot of normal workers don't and are waiting for the payday. In really extreme cases it's possible to have a tax bill exceed their yearly income. "

Listen to this corporate cuck, whining about how a policy that doesn't exist and wouldn't affect him if it did, instead of being upset that his bosses compensate him in what is effectively company scrip.

Quote :

"The Dems have an opportunity for the first time in, like, 60 years to be the party associated with normalcy, and the Republicans be associated with weird shit and all sorts of WTF."

Last Tuesday's outcome was a pretty clear signal that people are not looking for normalcy. They can tell normalcy is fucked up and they want to get rid of it. Some percentage of them can be swayed to an alternative vision of "new normal," if their media bubble can be pierced.

Quote :

"I agree with you in the sense the bulk of the job is with the other tens of millions of members of "the left", not just the few hundred holding office. Average Joes on the street, media and journalists, etc."

Still missing the point. It isn't about "tens of millions" of people on the left. All it takes is one or two incidents or individuals and the conservative media apparatus amplifies them to be the norm of the Democratic Party, leaving Dems with a lose-lose proposition: repudiate whatever the position is, alienating some portion of your base while probably not convincing conservatives anyway, or ignore/accept the position, and prove the conservatives right.

Until Democrats figure out how to pop that media bubble, or at least set up an effective version of their own, they're always going to be fighting an uphill battle no matter how sane they are relative to the GOP.

Quote :

"they think that Democrat politicians have let themselves be steamrolled by the fringe activists in the party"

OK. But why do they think that? The "woke" stuff that's been relitigated over and over on the last few pages of this thread doesn't appear in Kamala's main policy documents. You won't see "trans" or "white privilege" or "toxic masculinity" in any of those materials. I don't know that you ever heard it in speeches at rallies. It wasn't in her address at the Ellipse.

So why do people associate Democratic politicians only with extreme positions that they don't hold, and which in fact very few people hold? Because their media environment told them to.

11/12/2024 8:26:49 AM

For what it’s worth, I denounce the fringe in my party. That fringe is what let Donald get power in the first place, well before 2016. I really wish they’d break away and form their own 3rd party and then just fade away.

11/12/2024 8:50:22 AM

The trump supporting portion isn't the fringe of the GOP, it's the core.

11/12/2024 8:59:11 AM

But go back nearly 10 years. The MAGA fringe let him in. Then more people jumped on board.

11/12/2024 9:02:18 AM

Quote :

"Listen to this corporate cuck, whining about how a policy that doesn't exist and wouldn't affect him if it did, instead of being upset that his bosses compensate him in what is effectively company scrip."

I wasn't complaining I was clarifying if that was what Duke meant. When you get a $300k RSU dump at Amazon it can be a concern if the stock drops around your vest date but that's rare and the way it averages out you'd really have to be terrible with money to have it matter.

I was more concerned for young and poors working for tiny companies that launder VC money from the fed. Not corporate cucks like myself.

11/12/2024 9:07:05 AM

https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/10/politics/video/fareeds-take-gps-2024-election-results-digvid

11/12/2024 1:42:09 PM

Quote :

"OK. But why do they think that? The "woke" stuff that's been relitigated over and over on the last few pages of this thread doesn't appear in Kamala's main policy documents. You won't see "trans" or "white privilege" or "toxic masculinity" in any of those materials. I don't know that you ever heard it in speeches at rallies. It wasn't in her address at the Ellipse."

You're joking, right?
Biden nominated a trans person to an important health position in his cabinet. His supreme court nominee couldn't say what a woman is. The OCR rewrote Title IX by executive fiat to explicitly include protections transgender students without any input from Congress whatsoever. Trans rights issues aren't part of the Democratic party's policies?
His Supreme Court nominee made the asinine assertion that the 14th amendment allows race-based discrimination against whites, for fuck's sake.
Brett Kavanaugh was fucking crucified under the guise of toxic masculinity by Democratic politicians, Harris fucking included.

In what world are you living in where these are completely dissociated from Democratic positions? If anything, it's dishonest as hell that they won't explicitly own up to these things in their platform when they do it all the damned time!

Quote :

"Still missing the point."

Yes, you are missing the damned the point. Stop blaming fox news for a ~5M swing among voters. Ask yourself why they went for a damned fascist. It aint cause FoxNews said bullshit that everyone knew was bullshit.

11/12/2024 7:01:38 PM

Ramaswamy and Musk to lead government efficiency commission, whatever the fuck that is

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 8:09 PM. Reason : -]

11/12/2024 8:08:58 PM

Quote :

"Listen to this corporate cuck, whining about how a policy that doesn't exist and wouldn't affect him if it did, instead of being upset that his bosses compensate him in what is effectively company scrip."

That's how startups work, and I don't think anyone really wants to change it. Well, at least not anyone who actually has a dog in that fight, which you presumably do not.

Startups don't have cash--when they need money, they sell equity. Borrowing is often not even an option--nobody will lend the money--and if they do, the terms will be onerous and may cripple growth. In the case of employee compensation, obviously they have to pay a certain amount in cash (you can't eat equity, and you can't easily sell it until a liquidation event like an acquisition or IPO), but when your runway is probably measured in months, most startups accurately view it as necessary to recruit the talent they need in ways that minimize cash expenditure in the here and now. They set aside a pool of equity that is to be used for employee compensation.

This is furthermore in the startup's best interest because it strongly aligns the interests of the employees and the company. Additionally, there can be a vesting period, particularly for key personnel (executives, key technology experts, etc) to ensure continuity, that they stay around. This is also important from an investor's standpoint--VCs and angels aren't going to keep pouring the money in without some substantial confidence that the key figures will be around to bring the whole thing to fruition (and this, in turn, makes it in EVERYON'S best interest...becuase without sufficient follow-on investments, most of these companies will never see profitability, and then they die and nobody makes money from the equity they built.)

From the employee perspective, getting a substantial amount of your compensation in equity is obviously a double-edged sword, but in my observation, is one of the reasons people go work at a startup instead of an established company. You are probably never gonna get rich purely from W-2 income, working for the man (I mean you might over time if you invest large amounts of that pay well, but not from the pay itself)...but I know several people who got very rich by working at a startup and it being either acquired at a lucrative multiple, or IPO'd at a fantastic multiple. I can think of several people on The Wolf Web alone, that I personally know, that I expect are all worth tens of millions of dollars (and I'm sure there are others, again, on TWW alone, that I don't personally know.)

Finally, the concern he raised is real; that would have to be accounted for in a tax policy like what we're talking about here...and it could very well affect him depending on the details. What I proposed wouldn't affect him, but that...a policy that I, a person with no sway whatsoever, proposed on TWW, for whatever that is worth (hint: nothing.)

Quote :

"Last Tuesday's outcome was a pretty clear signal that people are not looking for normalcy."

Sure, this election like pretty much every election globally in 2024, was a referendum on the establishment.

...but that doesn't mean that the sort of departure from normal that swing voters are looking for is hypersensitive woke-ism, fringey social justice stuff, and unpalatable and offensive language that feels demonizing to normal people who are fundamentally decent.

Quote :

"Still missing the point. It isn't about "tens of millions" of people on the left. All it takes is one or two incidents or individuals and the conservative media apparatus amplifies them to be the norm of the Democratic Party, leaving Dems with a lose-lose proposition: repudiate whatever the position is, alienating some portion of your base while probably not convincing conservatives anyway, or ignore/accept the position, and prove the conservatives right."

I get what you're saying. I agree with your overall premise. I am not missing the point at all. Where I disagree is that I think the left could substantially move the needle with some broad change even if it's short of perfection. Sure, some UC Berkeley student with a rainbow mohawk and his fucking eyelids pierced, is gonna say some silly shit...and sure, Fox News is gonna trumpet it, to say nothing of OAN and Newsmax...but as stupid as the average person is, some meaningful number of them will recognize that the head of the Nonbinary Vegan Communist Student Union at the University of of Vermont is...maybe not representative of what the left is generally about.

I'm not sure where that critical mass is, but we are clearly well above it at the moment. Like, I consume basically zero right-wing media (unless you count Economist or WSJ, and even then not generally their editorial page), and I'm at least reluctantly on Team Blue and have been for a while, and I totally get what these people are feeling. It's not some faint undercurrent that you have to be inundated with Breitbart in order to feel awash in it.

You're claiming that getting below that critical mass isn't achievable. I don't think that's true, but it doesn't matter, because the left (the broader tens of millions, not just the elected types) haven't been doing it up to this point, and they're sure as hell not about to start now that they're far more inflamed than they were before. They're gonna paint their nails, and they're gonna lash out even more if someone dares to say "You know, he's not really harming me if he wants his pronouns to be "Xem", and I hope he finds peace...but don't act like I'm the fucked up one just because I don't think that's normal."

Quote :

"they're always going to be fighting an uphill battle no matter how sane they are relative to the GOP."

Again, disagree to an extent. Well, maybe an uphill battle, but not an insurmountable one. You're thinking about it as a well-informed, logical-ish (albeit maybe not objective) viewer. You see and acknowledge the crazy on both sides, but judge that the right is WAY THE FUCK crazier.

Duh, no shit.

...but this isn't about you and me and people like us. Of those who aren't entrenched partisans, who may conceivably be persuaded to either change sides, or to vote when they otherwise weren't like likely to, are orders of magnitude more likely to see that crazy on both sides and say "fuck it, both sides are crazy. I'm not bothering to vote." Or "fuck it both sides are crazy, I don't understand half this shit anyway, but I know shit's expensive right now. Let's do something different."

I think the needle can be moved, although it won't be. I agree 100% that it's not good enough to just be saner than the GOP. That much is self-evident, and I think that a lot of it is for the reasons you describe. I'm just saying that there is a fucking lot of crazy on the left, and I think there is a point below which, if crazy was culturally eschewed on the left instead of protected, it could make a real difference.

Quote :

"OK. But why do they think that? The "woke" stuff that's been relitigated over and over on the last few pages of this thread doesn't appear in Kamala's main policy documents. You won't see "trans" or "white privilege" or "toxic masculinity" in any of those materials. I don't know that you ever heard it in speeches at rallies. It wasn't in her address at the Ellipse. So why do people associate Democratic politicians only with extreme positions that they don't hold, and which in fact very few people hold? Because their media environment told them to."

This is exactly what I'm saying. Harris did a great job of not falling on these swords, at least in the context of her 2024 campaign...but the broader left (a little bit in terms of elected officials, mostly vis a vis Gaza, and maybe a little on her prosecutorial record...but mostly academia, media, regular people on social media, protestors, etc.) It's mostly not egregious stuff...it's the constant drip-drip-drip, in my opinion, that is very off-putting.

You and I? Sure, we either aren't bothered by it, or look past it. Like, if I'm listening to NPR and somebody starts babbling about "Latinx" (which mercifully, the left has started to take the fucking hint on), I change the station most of the time...but I'm not gonna go vote for Matt Gaetz over it.

...but some people, who aren't astute, aren't informed, aren't seeing a very big picture? Yeah, I think getting drip-drip-drip water tortured by this stuff absolutely and arguably rightfully builds an identity in peoples' minds in terms of what the Democratic Party stands for, and I think it sways votes.

...and again, I think you can protect vulnerable people from getting targeted by the GOP without being so open-minded that your brain falls out, or off-putting and annoying as shit.

[Edited on November 12, 2024 at 9:04 PM. Reason : ]

11/12/2024 9:03:36 PM

Quote :

" Biden nominated a trans person to an important health position in his cabinet"

and?

11/12/2024 9:30:10 PM

I wish I never made this thread.

Although that's not a request for it to go away. It still has historical value.

11/13/2024 2:06:25 PM

Quote :

"From the employee perspective, getting a substantial amount of your compensation in equity is obviously a double-edged sword"

There's an understatement.

Look, I get that years of Republican efforts have dovetailed nicely with Silicon Valley techbro thought to create a culture whereby it is considered good and intelligent for young people to gamble their labor on these ventures, and to hustle for pennies in exchange for the possibility that they might strike it rich. It's better than the lottery, I guess. But it only seems attractive because realistic alternatives to make a good living have been smashed out of existence, and extreme wealth has been so thoroughly highlighted.

But all of this is immaterial. I don't think employees should accept this arrangement but I'm not going to tell them they can't. I am, however, perfectly willing to tax the shit out of bosses who use the same method to disguise what is, in effect, income.

Quote :

"...but that doesn't mean that the sort of departure from normal that swing voters are looking for is hypersensitive woke-ism, fringey social justice stuff, and unpalatable and offensive language that feels demonizing to normal people who are fundamentally decent."

I don't think it is the departure they want. I also don't think it's what the democrats were selling. I also think that in an environment where normalcy is being voted down, maybe striving to be the party of normalcy isn't the way to go.

More later. Must go acquire child.

11/13/2024 4:41:49 PM

Quote :

"Look, I get that years of Republican efforts have dovetailed nicely with Silicon Valley techbro thought to create a culture whereby it is considered good and intelligent for young people to gamble their labor on these ventures"

Only Fans for autists.

11/13/2024 5:36:28 PM

In retrospect, it does seem like Bidens team didn't have enough turnover

11/13/2024 7:57:04 PM

Quote :

"There's an understatement."

I don't know, is it? That's not the prevailing view. Anecdotally, I know a number of people who've played that game and won. A few of them have won big. A few of them are on this very website. I only personally know one person who played and significantly lost--he was in the C-suite and had a bunch of equity, and then it busted going public and went bankrupt.

...but...he went from that into being a full-time VC, which was his ultimate goal when starting down that road to begin with.

Furthermore, it's not like being waitstaff, where basically all your pay is equity.

11/13/2024 10:55:12 PM

^ I think it is now. I probably advocated strongly for that 15 years ago. I myself prioritized working in smaller startups, moving to SF and being in the LA VC scene for a minute. I worked with a lot people involved with MySpace and the acquisition by Fox since it was in LA. It was a fairly large exit, yet only the very top (Tom) made money. One guy I know that was medium early and worked hard got like $1600. The way the deals are structured the people doing the work get bwned, even if early and have a lot of paper equity. Cynical view is it looked like by 2019 VC startups are just a way for retail investors to get fucked when a company IPOs. Companies that usually wouldn't be able to stay open without VC money, then retail investor money.

If you aren't the founder and the exit is not outsized, you'll make peanuts. Why I called it OnlyFans for autists.

[Edited on November 14, 2024 at 6:39 AM. Reason : A]

11/14/2024 6:38:08 AM

Quote :

"Anecdotally, I know a number of people who've played that game and won. A few of them have won big."

Anecdotally, I paid off my student loans by winning a game show. It can be done. That doesn't mean it's solid financial plan for people.

You know people who have done well. Congratulations. Maybe you think everyone you know who has gone that route has gotten rich. But surely you don't think that the majority do. If that were the case, nobody would do anything else.

Quote :

"You're claiming that getting below that critical mass isn't achievable. I don't think that's true, but it doesn't matter, because the left (the broader tens of millions, not just the elected types) haven't been doing it up to this point, and they're sure as hell not about to start now that they're far more inflamed than they were before."

And you're claiming that there's tens of millions of loonies running around, and I just don't see it. I certainly don't see it among the political class. I am pretty well surrounded by over-educated liberal elites and they aren't doing it. The fact that you think there's this teeming horde of radical dingbats is proof positive that the media blows these things vastly out of proportion. You're right, you don't need to be awash in Breitbart - because those places just start the amplification. They throw it in Democrats' faces, Democrats have to react, then that becomes a mainstream news story, and now you're seeing it as though it's the prevailing position.

But regardless of how many there are, no, I don't believe you can get below this "critical mass," where no "normal" person ever has to see or hear anything that offends their delicate sensibilities. A man painting his fingernails, oh heavens! We'd better disband NATO.

11/14/2024 9:32:55 AM

^ You are/were a poker player so I assume you understand expectation. If 10% of the people make 2000% gains, it's still probably a good bet for every one involved. Sometimes your aces get cracked heads up, but it's still always rational to call preflop.

If the 10% of successes do something meaningful in society like a platform for showing your butthole to millions of people or a social media platform that previously disempowered oligarchs can use to take over the government then even better!

If instead it's 1% or less and the 1% of "success" is really due to chub retail investors then it's a net negative for society. The truth is probably in the middle of those two extremes.

11/14/2024 10:14:12 AM

Quote :

"Maybe you think everyone you know who has gone that route has gotten rich. But surely you don't think that the majority do. If that were the case, nobody would do anything else. "

I don't feel like looking up the exact numbers, but they would be something on the order of the following:

50-60% failure
30-40% exit at a "small" multiple (say, 2-5x)
10% exit at a large multiple (10x or greater, sometimes much greater)

Now, failures tend to happen earlier than successes (read up on the "J-curve" if you want). So, I suspect that if the breakdown of companies is pretty close to the above numbers, the percentages for people are likely to be somewhat better, because later-stage companies that grow and succeed employ larger numbers of people than do the failures that heavily tilt towards small and early-stage.

Additionally, of that portion involved in a startup that fails, again--more often than not, it fails early, so there's less equity accumulated, and some percentage of those people will move on to another startup and "win." (I know one of these; he's on TWW).

Finally, even a "small" exit multiple of 2-3x (on whatever amount of your compensation was equity over a period of a few years) would likely be a nice chunk of money.

So...no, the majority surely don't get a life-changing, stratospheric amount of money. My guess is that a majority benefit, although most of those will either be at a lower multiple or on a small amount of equity so that it's not a crazy windfall that catapults them immediately through multiple layers of socioeconomic strata...and if someone produced data to show that a majority of people returned <1x on their equity and would have been better off with cash compensation, then I wouldn't be shocked.

...but even THEN, I don't think it would be a crazy bet. If there was a game with even odds of either losing all your money or getting a 5x return, we would all play the shit out of it!

This is why I have never talked to anyone who worked for a startup who said they wouldn't do it again. I'm sure there are plenty of them out there, but I'm going off of the people I know. Even of those who lost equity in a startup failure, one went to another company, and then another, with equity being a large portion of his pay, and made a TON. Generational life-changing money. Another became a VC. They both, when I was leaving the USMC and considering career options, suggested I join a startup.

From my vantage point on the other side of the coin, I have invested in 18 startups over the last ~5 years, other than one of them which was a few years before that. That first one, I invested ~$18k and lost it all. The 3rd one, though, I invested $7500 and received a $55-60k payout last year when it exited. The rest are still active--neither failed nor exited. Far more of them are doing well than faltering. The 2nd one is primed, I think, to return 15x or better (maybe even approaching 20x?), hopefully in the next couple of years, and should reach "unicorn" status ($1B valuation) in the next year or a little more.

The calculus is similar--to many, it's worth risking some substantial losses in order to have a considerable chance of reaping outsized rewards. Neither side of the game is right for everyone--in fact it's probably not right for most--but it's not a crazy bet if you have the right temperament, and priorities, and financial security to play the game.

Quote :

"And you're claiming that there's tens of millions of loonies running around, and I just don't see it."

No, 100% not. I don't think that. I think that a far, far smaller number of loonies wag the dog at least a little, and more to the point, tens of millions who are liberals but not loonies do a poor job of squashing the loonies (except in your Presidential primaries), eschewing silliness, and presenting their ideas-which are generally not insane-- to the Average Joe (think "the tax code needs to be revamped so that the very richest are handle by effectively comparable rules to the merely rich" instead of "evil billionaires, who shouldn't even exist, are cheating and dodging taxes!" Or "people with gender dysphoria should be treated with dignity and compassion, and sometimes the best harm-reduction strategy might be medical or surgical. They're just trying to get by the best they can with a situation they didn't ask for" vs "It's totally normal to identify as a Xem and you're a bigot if you think that's, uhhh, not normal."

Quote :

"The fact that you think there's this teeming horde of radical dingbats is proof positive that the media blows these things vastly out of proportion"

Of course they blow it out of proportion.
No I do not think there is a teeming horde of radical dingbats. There is a small number of radical dingbats, and you think that the left is powerless, due to the media, to avoid the entire group getting lumped in with them.

That's where you and I disagree. I think that's basically the only place where we disagree.

(and even then, we functionally agree, because the collective "you" aren't going to avoid that. I just think you could.)

Quote :

"If the 10% of successes do something meaningful in society like a platform for showing your butthole to millions of people or a social media platform that previously disempowered oligarchs can use to take over the government then even better! "

hahaha

11/14/2024 8:07:25 PM

Quote :

"There is a small number of radical dingbats, and you think that the left is powerless, due to the media, to avoid the entire group getting lumped in with them."

Well we disagree there, and also more broadly on the value of spending effort arguing against phantoms when faced with actual flesh-and-blood fascists/integralists/corporatists. Partly because it distracts from the real problem, partly because denouncing the phantom makes it seem more real, and partly because the phantoms aren't always wrong.

Quote :

"think "the tax code needs to be revamped so that the very richest are handle by effectively comparable rules to the merely rich" instead of "evil billionaires, who shouldn't even exist, are cheating and dodging taxes!" Or "people with gender dysphoria should be treated with dignity and compassion, and sometimes the best harm-reduction strategy might be medical or surgical. They're just trying to get by the best they can with a situation they didn't ask for" vs "It's totally normal to identify as a Xem and you're a bigot if you think that's, uhhh, not normal.""

So your takeaway from a Donald Trump victory is that voters crave more nuance. Uh-huh.

The appropriate response to conservative noise on these fringe wedge issues is deflect and attack in simple terms:

Did a pronoun overturn Roe v. Wade?
Did a pronoun storm the Capitol?
Did a pronoun let COVID run rampant?
Did a pronoun tank the economy?
No. Donald Trump did.

I do wonder if part of what's happening here, at least subconsciously, is that a lot of people making the argument you're making do not actually want Democrats to govern. They just want Democrats to beat Trump. So your best case scenario is a Democratic President too busy putting out dingbat fires to do anything.

11/18/2024 8:32:20 AM

Quote :

"So your takeaway from a Donald Trump victory is that voters crave more nuance. Uh-huh."

Well, that discussion was in response to the side-bar discussion about how, presented properly, I have had success talking to very right-wing people:

Quote :

"...and it can be done. You can get the point across to them. I know, because I did it, and when presented to them in the right terms, they agreed about the systemic and intrinsic racism stuff a fair amount of the time...and I think they'd agree even more of the time, and I think it would "stick" more, if it was presented in the right way to them without the toxic anathema parts mixed in with it."

Quote :

"I don't know, I think that if there was a seismic change, it would move the needle substantially. and it's not just about social issues. I've had a few conversations about taxing unrealized capital gains--a policy that I don't even like, other than in EXTREMELY limited application. My point was just to explain that it's not just a bunch of goddamn commie leftists wanting to redistribute wealth. I mean, that's all true, but the unrealized gains thing isn't totally batshit like it would appear at face value to anyone who isn't a goddamn commie leftist. I briefly explain the investment and tax strategies a few very basic statistics, so they understand that there is a genuine policy problem, and that taxing unrealized gains is one way to tackle it. Those thieving bastards are apt to get the details of the policy wrong, and there's a near-100% chance that they'll try to sell it by demonizing being wealthy and successful, but the basic idea isn't nonsensical, per se"

to which a right-wing voter responded:

Quote :

"^^ given a fairly substantial portion of my pay has been options and RSUs because of tech jobs, how is it not commie bullshit?"

...and I'll spare you quoting everything else; my point was just to highlight where the statement your referencing was rooted, but we ended up here:

Quote :

"Gotcha, it does seem to be an excessive loophole, especially at the top end."

[Edited on November 18, 2024 at 9:24 AM. Reason : ]

11/18/2024 9:23:54 AM

Quote :

"The appropriate response to conservative noise on these fringe wedge issues is deflect and attack in simple terms"

I don't think deflection is the right call. These people have concerns; if you just ignore them and only attackTrump...well we just saw what happens.

Quote :

"Did a pronoun tank the economy?"

There are endless valid attacks on him; I think he's probably the worst out of 46 Presidents. For sure no better than about 43 or 44 at best...but I don't think there's a very good claim to make about him tanking the economy. He might very well do it this time, but I think last time it was really a COVID thing; it would have largely happened to anyone.

Quote :

"I do wonder if part of what's happening here, at least subconsciously, is that a lot of people making the argument you're making do not actually want Democrats to govern. They just want Democrats to beat Trump."

Well of course.

...although I don't think it's mostly on the President to put out dingbat fires, and I furthermore think that this approach would take something broader than squashing the dingbats. I think that, at least since the "defund the police" debacle, elected Democrats have pretty consistently tamped down elected dingbats. Half the point we're trying to make here is that alone isnt' going to do it.

11/18/2024 9:36:13 AM

https://x.com/forecasterenten/status/1858527168608829707?s=46

Quote :

" Trump's mandate? It's very shallow. Trump's now under 50% in the popular vote. His margin ranks 44 of 51 since 1824. Weak coattails: 4 Dems won for Senate in states Trump won. (It was 0 in 2016 & 2020.) The GOP is on track for smallest House majority since there were 50 states."

11/18/2024 1:05:33 PM

^Facts don't matter, bro. Except the fact that Democrats lost.

11/18/2024 1:15:28 PM

Oh TGL

11/18/2024 1:36:27 PM

^^^Perception is 9/10 of reality. The vote decisively moved toward him in 2024

[Edited on November 18, 2024 at 8:26 PM. Reason : ^]

11/18/2024 8:26:42 PM