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2) Homelessness, retail and infrastructure decline. People often say, “why don’t billionaires fix the broken things that they see right in front of them?” I’m not saying that’s their duty, but what if allowing fast decay (and the decay HAS been fast, the rise of homelessness and fentanyl addiction has taken less than a decade) is intentional? (Included in this is the decay of retail shops, which erode tax bases, and the decay of other types of infrastructure.) The MAGA party arose on the premise that the USA is a garbage country. So now they act quickly to overthrow it.
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As far as I can tell, a lot of the "tech-right" shifted to the right
because of their exasperation with progressive governance in the Bay Area failing to solve public disorder and the housing crisis. Musk was a Democrat, and then got so pissed off at the failure of Democratic governance in California and SF that he tumbled all the way down the rabbit hole to the right-wing extremism. But it started from a place of being negatively polarized against the left. I can empathize to a large degree, I just think he took it way too far.
I think one of the absolute best people to read for those of us on the Democratic/left side of the divide to understand the tech right is Scott Alexander. I think he was ahead of the curve on seeing this coming, and understands them very well, while explaining them from the perspective and language of us on the left. Some recs:
I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup - the left thinks of itself as "tolerant" because of its oppositions to the "isms" of the right, while being extremely intolerant of the right. People of different sexualities and races are not the left's outgroup. The right is. Priding ourselves on "tolerance" of our own in-group while being extremely intolerant of our out-group is very hypocritical. With the left in control of academia, journalism, bureaucracy, Hollywood, etc., people on the right really are not feeling the love of our "inclusivity."
Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous Planet-Sized Nutshell and
A Thrive/Survive Theory of the Political Spectrum - this is a pair of pieces that Alexander did on neo-reaction way back when Curtis Yarvin was an obscure anonymous blogger. He tries to engage the reactionary arguments in good faith. The first one tries to more neutrally present the reactionaries' beliefs (which might read more as conceding ground to them), while the second calls them on their bullshit some more, while also discussing more of the basic psychological difference between liberals and conservatives.
Right Is the New Left - this explores political beliefs sort of like fashionable trends. The elite are usually the early-adopters of new trends, and then as those trends trickle down the class ladder, it becomes gauche, and the elite want to differentiate themselves. If you examine politics through this lens, you can see that social justice progressivism has trickled too far down the class ladder, and the elite are now trying to distance themselves from these beliefs. Since being right wing is now considered taboo in polite middle class to upper-middle class society, it's now an assertion of status and power for these tech billionaires to openly proclaim they're on the right, because they're asserting that they're so powerful as to be immune to the social censure of polite society. They enjoy a feeling of smug superiority from developing a worldview that's "smarter" than the middle class masses with pronouns in their bios, or whatever. It's the same kind of stylistic "power move" as Zuck or Musk wearing t-shirts and jeans where other people wear suits, just with political beliefs.
Another point I'm not sure if Alexander has made that I'm sympathetic to is that because the parties have polarized around educational attainment, there's simply a lot less competition at the top in the Republican Party. It's a lot easier for a wealthy, competent, intelligent people to start throwing dollars around at Republican fundraisers and quickly become a powerful and influential power broker in the halls of government. The Democratic party is comparatively full of intelligent, competent, wealthy people, so gaining power and influence there is a lot harder and slower-going. If you're a power-hungry billionaire, the path of least resistance to more government influence is to at least feign right-wing sympathies. Along the way of feigning right-wing sympathies and spending a lot more time around right-wingers, one can quickly come to hold those beliefs more genuinely.
