

VC Tom Perkins' big idea: The rich should get more votes - skennedy
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/14/investing/tom-perkins-vote/

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rayiner
Its not an unprecedented idea. After all, when the country was founded, only
landowning males got to vote. That said, saying it in 2014 is some variation
of the old "democracy is three wolves and lamb voting on what to have for
dinner." Its based on the fallacious belief that without civil society, people
like Perkins would be at the top of the heap without any non-taxpayers to drag
them down.

Some people may not pay taxes, but their buy in to the system nonetheless
keeps our natural rulers at bay. Those natural rulers are not people like
Perkins. Nerds with a talent for running financial models. Our natural rulers
are those talented at leading people in the exercise of violence. Warlords,
barons and earls of yore. Democracy is a bargain where the people acting
collectively protect people like Perkins from the warlords that would
otherwise make them their bitches.

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gopher1
It's funny that Perkins, who is old enough to remember WW2, should be one to
forget this point.

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rayiner
The ironic thing about Perkins' comment about WWII is that Hitler's
persecution of the jews shows exactly the opposite of what he claims it does:
that when the masses turn a blind eye, no amount of wealth or scientific
achievement will protect you from men whose talent is war and violence. It was
an Atlas Shrugged moment, except it demonstrated that it's the ordinary masses
that hold up the firmament of civil society.

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IsaacL
There is some logic to this. I think it was Plato who commented that a
democracy was doomed once its citizens realised they could vote themselves
largesse out of the treasury. Which is pretty much what is happening these
days in every modern industrial democracy - government spending constantly
increases and any suggestions of cutting spending are met by massive protests.

Example: in the UK media right now you will read many stories about the
current government's "deep, savage cuts", and all the poor people who are
suffering as a result of these cold, uncaring conservatives. But after all
these cuts the UK is still running at a deficit.

Of course, Plato was an old fool who lived in the days before fiat money. Why
raise taxes or cut spending when you can simply borrow more?

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tthomas48
Funny how people always use this example as the poor voting themselves largess
out of the treasury. The rich do this too in the form of ridiculously low
taxes relative to the amount of money they have. Just because the number on
your tax bill is super large, doesn't mean you have a super-large tax bill
relative to the amount of money you have.

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adolph
So true and also not a refutation of the parent. In the spirit of an eye for
an eye one might observe that an entitlement for an entitlement leaves us all
poor. Somehow the means is easier to learn than the consequence.

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jack-r-abbit
> _Pressed for examples of how the rich were being demonized..._

Really, CNN? You haven't noticed that for the past few years? Tom may be an
idiot and an extremist... but don't play stupid about the war on wealth.

~~~
al2o3cr
"Pressed for examples of how the rich were being demonized"

Maybe he could start with the one where rich people are depicted thinking that
they should get more votes than everybody else. I mean, only a complete
strawman would actually make that argument, right?

Oh wait...

~~~
jack-r-abbit
_where rich people are depicted_

You mean _one rich person_. Demonizing all rich people for this would be like
demonizing all Christians just because of the Westboro Baptist Church.

And for the record... we've been demonizing the rich before this. There was a
whole freaking Occupy movement devoted to making the rich public enemy #1 for
little more than having more money. We even gave them a cute little name, The
1%. Like they were all just a bunch of evil assholes just because they had
accumulated more money than us.

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themgt
People like this have apparently forgotten that if all else fails, the hoi
polloi will start voting with guillotines.

~~~
beat
This is a followup to his previous idiocy, when he compared not liking rich
people to the Holocaust.

~~~
nostrademons
I wouldn't be surprised if he is intentionally being provocative, taking an
extreme position so that the actual reality of tech workers driving up rents
seems more moderate. It's like he's trying to get ahead of the controversy by
acting as a lightning rod for criticism, so that rather than it snowballing,
everybody gets mad at him and forgets about what they were mad at originally.

I've known several old-school Silicon Valley managers that do this frequently
- they toss out a strawman that's way more extreme than anything anybody would
want to do, which anchors your outrage so that whatever the _actual_ goal is
seems perfectly reasonable. It's basic behavioral economics - people do it in
negotiations all the time.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
A classic example: When Alec Issigonis designed the Mini in the 1950s, he
wanted very small wheels. " _Ten-inch (254 mm) wheels were specified, so new
tyres had to be developed, the initial contract going to Dunlop. Issigonis
went to Dunlop stating that he wanted even smaller, 8 in (203 mm) wheels (even
though he had already settled on ten-inch). An agreement was made on the ten-
inch size, after Dunlop rejected the eight-inch (203 mm) proposition._ " [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini#Design_and_development](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini#Design_and_development)

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aaronbrethorst
[http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/education/digitalmedia/us-
vot...](http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/education/digitalmedia/us-voting-
rights-timeline.pdf)

1776 - Only land owners can vote.

1789 - "George Washington elected president. Only 6% of the population can
vote."

~~~
cschmidt
An then they came up with the poll tax to keep the poor from voting. I'm sure
Tom Perkins would like that again.

~~~
adolph
That might be one way to implement it. Another might be to treat a vote as a
transferable property right. In that case the large number of votes left un-
cast would represent a lot of money left on the table.

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beat
"Just taxes until there is no more 1%".

I don't think he quite understands how math works.

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tthomas48
Nice he's buying into the stupid "people who don't pay income tax in our
progressive tax scheme don't pay tax" narrative.

I don't like this idea, but it would be interesting if the tax we're talking
about is sales tax. Everyone would get some votes and there would be financial
incentives for millionaires to actually spend their money and juice the
economy so that they could have more votes.

~~~
nickff
Why would you reward purchasing consumption goods more than investing in long
term growth? Sales tax is generally applied to consumer purchases, whereas the
wealthy currently allocate much of their money to investing in businesses,
which presumably use this cash to finance capital expenditures, or scaling
already productive businesses.

Should we not give those who invest in the economy, and presumably in job
creation preferential treatment over those who purchase yachts, airplanes,
race cars, and other consumption goods?

~~~
tthomas48
Because consumption drives the economy at its most basic level. You can have
the rich invest in companies they like or you can have consumers "invest" in
companies they like through consumption. Clearly the consumers are going to be
a more accurate reflection of what the market wants, and the long term
viability of the company. Investment from the wealthy is indicative of what a
tiny number of lucky people want. And many companies have billions of dollars
they're sitting on, so clearly the market does not allocate dollars in the
most efficient way possible.

Basically sales tax is the best way to know that your dollar is doing
something of value.

~~~
nickff
In earlier times, I might have agreed with you.

If you look at the systems which recent advances have allowed humans to
produce, you can easily see that the most valuable and desirable goods require
highly integrated sub-assemblies and components, and the end products have
high part counts. Your cellphone or computer alone is made up of hundreds or
thousands of components, each requiring highly complex R&D and production,
your car has 10k parts, an airplane 500k parts, and a space shuttle has 2000k
parts. As a result, creating modern goods requires an ever-increasing number
of 'steps', which in turn requires ever-increasing capital investment in R&D
and production. We should be encouraging this investment if we want to
continue to make more advanced and complex products available to everyone
(including consumers).

~~~
tthomas48
Sure, I was trying to create a simplistic system here though. Clearly if we
spent years we might come up with something sort of elegant and sort of fair,
just like our tax code.

The point is it's easier to figure out what you're contributing to the economy
via sales tax than it is via investment. It's difficult to tell the difference
between the guy who has invested $2 billion in 10,000 different startups, and
the guy who is generating no revenue sitting on $2 billion in non-productive
land in the middle of nowhere. Clearly we don't want to tax investment in
startups just so we can see who's investing.

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tomasien
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7240119](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7240119)

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sharemywin
disgusting. Maybe we should just give all the power to the rishest individual
and call them supreme emperor. If your going to throw democracy out the window
you might as well do it right.

~~~
crpatino
Maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. "You are the richest person? You get to be
president for 4 years, but have to pay 50% of your net worth for the
privilege. Not twice as rich as the 2nd richest person? Sorry. No reelection
for you, pal!"

~~~
nostrademons
That might be interesting. I wonder what the market price of being President
would be? Would you be _mandated_ to take the position if you were the richest
person, or would it be an auction where anyone can bid?

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pyalot2
Tom Perkins of "Kristallnacht" fame now suggests that money is a democratic
medium.

Let's not forget how in Nazi germany the Nazi party and Kristallnacht was
sponsored proudly by IG Farben, VW, Bayer, Thyssen, and so forth, and that
while the Nazi party in public denounced capitalism and socialism as well as
rentiers, the marriage between industry and nazi party was what enabled them
in large part in the first place.

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badman_ting
They do.

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duffdevice
Yeah, I was thinking "Isn't that kind of how it already works?"

