Are we supposed to be up in arms about this?

> 66 different federal political action campaigns (PACs), nearly half of which are supporting Republicans.

Seems balanced to me.

And Democrats. Basically, any politician who signs on to the pro-SmallTech agenda. Not unusual for a single-issue PAC.

Oh this post is flagged and disappeared from the front page.

I’m curious if someone can truthfully explain this. What’s the main motivation for all the money being thrown at R’s from these and other high up tech people?

What I want is specific reasons not the usual Reddit “they’re rich therefore evil blah blah” zero-insight answers. Okay, but why? Almost nobody wakes up and says “I’m going to be evil today!” People have motives and objectives and belief systems.

PACs are evil, but at least going to Republicans is better than the alternative right now.

Garry Tan is extremely socially conservative, seemingly unabashedly so. I would not be surprised if Garry had donated to Trump, etc.

Note that whatever it once meant to be "conservative", wanting less government control of markets, etc., today's GOP is the party of economic central planning and limiting economic freedom, and also authoritarian rights violations on US soil.

There is absolutely no excuse for supporting the Trump approach / agenda unless one intentionally wishes to see laws broken and democracy subverted.

Wooing the Republicans (despite them being scoundrels openly) is the wealthy and powerful tacitly saying they believe that the Democrats are toothless. The Democratic Party has shown no real leadership, has no real popularity (again, despite an open scoundrel being the President opposing them giving them a perfect target for energizing undecided voters!) and has no interest in changing their tactics or platform to increase their popularity. While the Democrats are likely to make gains and have a better shot than they deserve at winning the presidency in 2028, they are very much unloved and will be at risk of being deadlocked in Congress and then kicked right back out in later election cycles.

An example, "... A record-high 45% of U.S. adults identified as political independents in 2025 ... Importantly, these party shifts do not indicate that Americans are warming to the Democratic Party. In fact, favorable ratings of the Democratic Party are no better than those of the Republican Party, and are among the worst Gallup has recorded for the Democratic Party historically." from https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...

(These aren't my personal opinions. I'll also note that the YC super PAC seems to donate to Dems and Republicans seemingly equally.)

There's a list of things. I can't find much about this specific Super PAC, but things in the past I've heard concerns about:

Prevent limitations to QSBS

Protect H1B / access to global talent

Banning non-competes

Expensing software development

Removing antitrust / regulatory barriers

Light regulation on AI / pro data centers

Because that's how corruption and graft works in the US. Donating to political campaigns doesn't count as bribery. The donation is what gets them access to the candidate, so instead of writing a letter or calling their office you can have 30 seconds to a few minutes of their time at an election campaign fundraising dinner or over a phone call where they want to thank their donors during which you can press them to support whatever you personally want.

They're giving them money in exchange for the opportunity to try to convince the candidate to support what they want.

Republican policies probably benefit them, and the donation also curries favor with the politician.

Isn't it endless loop of US politics that especially clear during current presidency?

Make money to control policies. Control policies to make more money.

I posted a longer comment above which kinda answers this but without repeating myself too much, Republicans mainly serve to keep Democrats from being able to consolidate power, and Democrats have now shown us what 15 years of a (D) trifecta gets you.

Taxes are higher than ever, cost of living has spiked even more here than other places, tens of billions wasted on CAHSR with nothing to show for it, and no good news on homelessness, poverty, or housing costs either.

Crime has been gradually going down per capita (at least what people have bothered to report), but that's a nationwide trend. If Dems are as good at governing as they claim to be, they ought to have more to show for their efforts than "we had the same results as Texas did."

And the latest Democratic superstars like Mamdani enter the picture, with "government run grocery stores" as his big innovation?

So, my question is why wouldn't one want to deprive these people of more power?

Edit: I'd like to add a reasonable example of what a successful (D) trifecta should have got us, lest you think I'm just some conservative who doesn't want them to accomplish any progressive goals:

As the largest state in the union, California has tremendous power. It could have come up with a 'MediCare for all'-like plan, which would cover all Californians who don't have MediCare. Basically a single public agency that insures all of us, and is run efficiently and transparently and which returns all premiums paid that aren't spent on care as a dividend check back to the taxpayers proportionally to what you paid in. If they accomplished nothing but that in 15 years I'd consider them worth supporting for that alone.

If they couldn't pull that off, successfully building HSR from SF to LA in a decade, by whatever means were necessary, would have been a pretty good accomplishment!

Or finally, if they could have caused enough housing to be built to just keep home prices stable, not even decreasing just stable.

> leaders at the San Francisco-based tech incubator are trying to build a tech-forward future

They're donating money to anyone who isn't anti-tech / anti-business / anti-datacenter / anti-AI

That ~50% of those folks are R being the newsworthy part is the real question. Why should Silicon Valley support people who clearly loath the technology industry just because they're blue? The simplest explanation is the most obvious one, and the one this article explains: Tech leaders are donating money to tech-friendly politicians.

Garry Tan is an anti-liberal who doesn't believe that democratic input in the functioning of the state is a good thing and that we should instead be ruled by a class of technocrats making the "right" decisions for us via a system of enforced hierarchies. This sort of belief system didn't fit into previous era republican politics, but it absolutely fits into the modern republican party.

Tan obviously does not just see this as evil. He thinks that it will genuinely produce a better society. I think that he is egregiously wrong.

On what evidence do you make this claim? Garry is a Christian, but not all Christians are socially conservative. I know Garry and went through YC. If "socially conservative" means anti-LGBT, anti-welfare, anti-immigrant, I've yet to see any evidence.

Nothing like government run housing, markets, price fixing, rent control, pushing industry out, eliminating unfovorable resource use, selective government benefits, like the opposing side

I'd push back on that. Trump is the uhh... Trump... of 'economic central planning and limiting economic freedom'. He's clearly an idiot who can't even utter a single sensible sentence about economic policy of any kind.

The GOP itself though, really serves one important role: They interfere with Democrats getting and holding power. The Democratic Party has become the party of unserious economic policymaking, especially in California, where they've doubled and tripled down on their "no amount of taxation is enough" ideas - they will likely pass a wealth tax this year, setting a precedent for outright confiscation of property. "Just for billionaires!" Until they are accustomed to that extra money but the billionaires have all left, of course. Then where's it gonna come from?

If I had money to blow on politics, I'd give to Republicans in this cycle, even if I was pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, anti-gun, irreligious, and pro-free-trade[1], because the Democrats have, much as the Republicans did in 2015, let their loons take the wheel and I don't want them to be given more power and influence.

Trump will pass away of natural causes someday and at that point, grown-ups will take over the policy discussions at the GOP. The opposite is happening in the Democratic party -- the old, retiring Dems understood economics and also how to negotiate with Republicans to get things done. The young ones that replace them learned everything they know about economics and politics at protest marches or perhaps on TikTok. And it shows.

[1] And I am several of those things!