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Delusions of Grandeur: the Age of the Populist Billionaire
Chamath’s bid for Governor was met with strong support on Twitter, but let’s not be fooled by a mix of hubris and populist Reaganomics.
4 min readJan 27, 2021
Can we not do the billionaire-turned-politician thing again? We’re just about done not dealing with the deadly consequences of the previous experiment, let’s not have to not deal with the same bulls — t all over again, please.
When Chamath Palihapitiya, the former growth guru at Facebook and owner of venture capital firm Social Capital, announced in an off-handed tweet that he was running for governor of California, he was met with strong support from his followers.
A few hours later, the billionaire published a website, chamathforca.com, on which he outlines his rather terse platform:
In proper 21st-century communication, he also pinned a tweet on top of his profile, outlining his vision for California with a…
