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Comment by DFHippie | Hacker News Reader

It's weird to me how "Silicon Valley" now means "people invested in tech", not "people making tech".

Even weirder that this definition holds even here on HN, a site literally dedicated (originally) to Building Something People Want.

The whole demographic of the "tech" scene has shifted from products to finance, up and down the stack. And that's absolutely being reflected in the political cynicism we're seeing. Tech bros couldn't get what they wanted from a Democratic administration so they figured they'd just grease a few orange palms and get it from republicans.

What no one predicted, though, was the abject buffoonery of the whole process. Watching billionaire after billionaire get played, laughed at and discarded by a Trump administration that never cared a bit about any of the issues the VC set wants is just amazing. These are the people we're supposed to trust to guide us into the future?

> Even weirder that this definition holds even here on HN,

I think that a discussion forum sponsored by a startup accelerator in a particular industry being biased to the interests of capital investors in that industry is a very good contender for the least surprising fact in the world.

That might sound mercenary and spineless, but usually that's how politics works. You shop around for your best shot for getting your policy chosen. This isn't Political Simulator where you play the Political Compass game to figure out your ideology and then join a movement.

That's exactly how Labor in the US defected to Trump too btw. Politics isn't political science.

This is also my problem with online discussions in the US Left. Politics is more than just policy positions, it also needs to focus on strategies, solutions, and coalitions. But online the only thing that folks seem interested in talking about is why the US can't implement some EU policy.

"How politics works" usually involves people reaching compromise and getting some of what they want, not shrieking off in a tiff and accusing the president of human trafficing or whatever.

I'm not following at all. This seems like the opposite of "how politics works".

HN is about the Austin of tech sites. It sounds like a really awesome place where people are inventing cool things. Then the techbros show up and start techbro-ing and it becomes a bit less cool. Then the VC's show up and start drawing out the engineers and techbros and … well, you get HN.

Lobste.rs is where stuff is actually getting done without much comment.

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