anti_dan
23d ago
Of course, the smart set knows that Cuban was lucky. But we don't even have to leave the NBA to find another one: Steve Ballmer. He was Bill Gates's right hand man, so one can argue that he built part of the value of Microsoft. But when Gates handed the reins over to him, his tenure at the top wasn't exactly stellar. He had a few hits, but the Ballmer era will be known more for the long string of misses, and the end of Microsoft being the undisputed industry leader. If we move to another league but stay with Microsoft we have Paul Allen, who was instrumental in the very early days but quickly took to feuding with Gates and was forced out of the company. He didn't do much after that besides philanthropy and other stereotypical billionaire stuff, and most of his net worth came from stock he was able to hold onto.
I mean, even if Ballmer was a literal idiot, whats wrong with him having money and being a doofus at Clippers games? SOMEONE has to own the Clippers and his personality is entertaining. Its not like he's spending his billions lobbying for the expansion of food stamps or setting up a bunch of those fake "success academies" that just spend ungodly sums doing no better at educating poor kids than a lady in an unheated basement with a chalkboard would.
anti_dan
23d ago
I mostly agree, and don't see all that many billionaires acting like the OP describes. FOr example:
I guess I'm just kinda over us deciding that once you reach a certain net worth, you are some sort of luminous being. You can go to pedo island and it's fine, you can do drugs that normies go to prison for an it's fine, you can fuck up critical national infrastructure and it's fine, you have infinite money when it's time to do what you want but somehow you have no money (or negative money!) when it's time to contribute to the public good.
These sorts are incredibly rare. Instead most just kinda sit in anonymity being rich and living in luxury. The ones that are public figures are often total dorks that are funny and do things like buy sports teams then cheer enthusiastically on the sidelines just like they were a 12 year old. The rare few that are actually toxic to our society and discourse are actually closer to the OP's sentiment themselves. The Bill Gates or Mackenzie Bezos types that agree with the OP that being a billionaire is something that must be atoned for, so they distribute their billions in toxic ways intending to buy social clout with influential non-billionaires. If Bill just bout a mountain chateau in British Colombia and employed a bunch of servants the world would be better off. The problem was he wanted to pretend help Africans and the like, and thats why hes jetsetting with Epstein (prurient interests aside), its because he wanted to meet people to do his fake charities and buy social clout.
anti_dan
24d ago
The Tea Party movement began shortly before Obama was elected, based on opposition to the 2008 bank bailouts. At that point most of the participants were Ron Paul libertarians, although the movement was nominally bipartisan (and probably actually bipartisan - I'm not sure). It got a big boost after Rick Santelli's viral rant (broadcast live on CNBC from the CME floor in Chicago) against the Obama admin's homeowner bailout in February 2009. I was watching from the London trading floor of a European bank which had not (yet) needed a bailout, and the dominant reaction was that the American traders cheering Santelli were hypocrites because they were opposing Obama's homeowner bailout at a time when the only reason most of them were still employed was Bush's bank bailout. This was also the reaction of the pro-establishment left.
Yes, skipped over the initial stuff that was a backlash against Bush and the Democrats doing Swampy uni-party things because it didn't really address the point he was making which urquan phrased as
I still don't understand what the Tea Party was angry about, except that Barack Obama was a Democrat and the Democratic Party had a trifecta.
But I've seen often described less charitably as "mad he was black and president."
And my point was well he was actually doing a lot of bad things.
I'm not sure how or exactly when the Tea Party transitioned from being a somewhat focussed libertarian movement that was only incidentally a partisan Republican or Red Tribe thing to a proto-MAGA movement of generically pissed off Red Tribers that was only incidentally libertarian and could plausibly be accused of "just hating the idea of a black President". But there is an obvious route - as the movement grew the average IQ dropped, and below a certain IQ threshold any vaguely right-coded popular movement will pick up support from confederate flag-wavers, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy-theorists etc. and at that point everyone who isn't a MAGA-type conservative started leaving.
I think this is too uncharitable to the tea partiers and FARRR too charitable to their enemies. A Democrat accusing their political opponents of racism is synonymous with them talking. The media treating these accusations as "plausible" is no different, they are largely DNC stenographers and have been for decades. Maybe there was degradation of the tea party's intellectual movement as it got larger, but mostly IMO it lost any momentum it had when Romney/Ryan lost while acting nerdy and not actually fighting during the campaign. Thats what opened up the opportunity for MAGA/Trump because the only appetite left on the right was for someone who actually fights and didn't care about fake rules made up by liberal media.
anti_dan
25d ago
I guess it comes down to what America is supposed to be getting out of the alliance with Israel. I can see the appeal of having a Westernized client state in the Middle East to hold down the fort, but typically one expects foreign policy optionally to be held almost exclusively by the suzerain.
For decades its mostly served as a distraction and resource sink for the local crazies who want to conquer the world in the name of Muhammad and Allah. Recently its also been a leverage point that gave some people in the region the option of not being crazy in exchange for peace, and that seems to have worked decently for SA and the rest.
The option of getting out of the Israel business means you need some other proxies in the region, and there aren't good options, and there are obviously bad ones, like Iran, who only galaxy brain guys like Ben Rhodes think are a good option.
anti_dan
25d ago
Iran was one of these countries until 2020 or so. Except Trump backed out of the JCPOA for spurious reasons and while Iran continued to abide by its terms after the withdrawal, it led to a growing distrust of the West among Iranians.
I don't think the reasons were spurious because I think the correct and credible reason was that Iran was not, in fact, "one of those countries" and the JCPOA was worth less than the paper it was written on. And Iran was not abiding by even the JCPOA's extremely lax provisions.
anti_dan
26d ago
I still don't understand what the Tea Party was angry about, except that Barack Obama was a Democrat and the Democratic Party had a trifecta.
They were mad about what the Democratic party used that to cram through. Obamacare was a gigantic restructuring of about 1/10th of the economy, a part that basically everyone has to interact with from time to time. It also was a large tax increase for most working Americans. There was also Dodd-Frank which seized additional control over banks, ARRA which was one of the largest spending packages in history at the time, and several follow up large spending bills.
anti_dan
29d ago
"Safeguards" in relation to this have always, in my opinion, been fake. No one knows what they actually would entail if there was an actual paperclip maximizer risk, or a Cyberdyne scenario. Instead, its only "use" so far has been to make AIs intentionally stupid by having them suppress the truth when it is politically inconvenient.
Its possible this will be the proper take at some time in the future. But currently it is not in evidence and not close to in evidence. Trumps previous military interventions have all been short and sweet, and mostly successful. The evidence that this one will not be is ???
As a result, I don't think many people actually care about the intervention itself, they are using it to grind some other axe. For some its pretty obvious: Israel. For others also obvious: TDS. For many others: I cannot tell as of yet.
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