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Your guide for what American choices 2024 means for Washington and the world
In our era, the meaning of any image depends on which side you are on. Take a picture of Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezosa, Elona Male and Sundar Pichai who were sitting in front of the cabinet members on another Donald Trump inauguration. The caricature of liberal elitists, like me, considered it a portrait of American oligarchy. Trump, his supporters and technologically interprets, interpret the picture differently.
Trump, the master of the spectacle, put billions there for a reason. His message: “I brought them to the fifth and used them on the American project.” He knows that most of his voters will approve. Maga was built more on a cult of entrepreneur than to a cult of strength, although they overlap. Many business people consider great entrepreneurs to the winners of the life game.
Trump built his reputation by playing a big entrepreneur on TV. He then entered politics by selling the idea that the Government was “a defective corporation called USA”, to quote Gordon Gekko “Greed is a good” speech from the 1987 movie Wall Street. Trump promised to lead a government like a job. Donald Trump VS Kamala Harris elections were, among countless contrasts, entrepreneurs against a government official.
Trumpism can be the pinnacle of a political cult of entrepreneur. I cannot remember that another entrepreneur will become the head of the Government in the big economy, except Silvija Berlusconi. Last American political cults were related to soldiers (Washington, Eisenhower) or corporate bosses, such as Mitta Romney. George W Bush, who had Harvard MBA, was appreciated as “President of the President.” But the corporate executive director is a character related to the rules in a degree suit. An entrepreneur is a wild beast, autonomous, rules, frequent abandonment of college. He is his own man. (This is a male cult – remember Zuckerberg’s recent praise “Male energy”.)
The biggest entrepreneurial wealth in history was performed in the Silicon Valley between 1998 and 2008 .. Today, mid -year users are. Their 80-hour work workers are generally completed, leaving them enough energy to pour into politics. They are known to ordinary Americans by their names or nicknames, in the case of Musk to his tweets and their anti -ctorm dresses. Billionaires are relentlessly self-branched as iconoclasts, who can go wrong, as it may be with Musk’s apparent Nazi greeting.
Basically the cult is a belief is that what is good for entrepreneurs is good for America. Venture Capitalist Marc Andressen said to Podcaster Joe Rogan that Trump’s message, “America must win”, meant that US companies “should win global markets.. How can anyone be against it?” Growth could pay for “well -being and help programs in food, all these things.”
The argument is suspicious. First, Europeans retreat earlier and live longer than Americans, despite the lower economic growth and mostly lower proportions of the Duga Government and GDP. Second, growth does not necessarily increase public consumption, given that high technology has perfected tax avoidance. These companies do not create much jobs either. The target has 72,000 mostly highly qualified employees, including immigrants on H1-B visas.
Last, how could they – who have spent decades ignoring Washington – read that photo? In Andressen’s storytelling, Joe Biden forced them to Trump’s arms. While most of the ordinary Americans seem to have experienced Bidenism as a time of inflation and outflows, Moguli noticed something more vicious: the administration for business hatred by abolishing their freedom. Andreessen accuses the commission of securities and exchange in Biden of “attempting to kill the crypto industry”.
Crypto and AI are the new Battalion fields of entrepreneurs. One difference between Trump and Trump II is that the price of Bitcoin in 2016 was $ 900 and today amounts to more than $ 100,000, while we saw the shifts in AI on Monday.
On Crypto and Ai, like everything else, America is divided. Democrats are cautious cryptocurrency as an opportunity to launder. Trumps see this as a libertarian job that destroys the Government (although crypto entrepreneurs want bank accounts and Trump’s support). Biden tried to regulate AI; Trump won’t. Technologists hope to help them win what Peter Thiel calls “Global War” to conquer enemy territories such as EU, UK and Brazil.
Billionaires take care of politics, but they also want love. Several, like Andressen, leaned a liberal. But if the liberals reject you, you will choose a guy who loves you (for now) and shows him with your sitting plan.
Send Simon to Simon.kuper@ft.com
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