The Nerd Reich wants to 'destroy' democracy, and it's mask has slipped

Fricken 21 points 11 comments September 02, 2026
www.abc.net.au · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (5 comments)

alephnerd

I don't want to be that guy, but Murdoch also owns much of the Australian media and the "nerd" reich.

wand3r

Everything happening in America is a choice. Policy is a choice. Whatever you believe or values you have, what your congressmen, senators and president do, is a choice. Most things that benefit normal people are not "too hard". This country has a policy constructed to benefit 10,000 people at the expense of 330m. I am not a pessimist, but man, it is shocking. There is only like 1 out of 500 people in power that genuinely values democracy, this country or the people. I am sure it will be somewhat great for the people at the top, but I am curious what happens when say 100 million people can't meaningfully live in American society.

adamredwoods

I don't like the use of "nerd" here. There are millions of good nerds, but only a few bad billionaires.

hiharryhere

Musk and his peers complain that the system doesn’t work. That somehow they’ve been hard done by. They’re the richest people in history. Did society not work spectacularly for them - why are they obsessed with burning it to the ground?

anenefan

IMO, the way tech has moved from ownership to subscription based terms pretty much marked most of us would end travelling on a dark and poorly lit path, but I never realised the extent of the bigger problem [1] [2] Technofeudalism could be further amplified with LLMs / AI. Expect a small fraction of its overall output as useful, the rest will be spent on population analysis to keep the population in it's place. First step; just remove good public search engines that deliver good results regardless of where one lives or their place in society. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technofeudalism [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-05/what-is-technofeudali...

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