Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“In my 2019 post Too Much Dark Money In Almonds, I asked: why is there so little money in politics During the 2018 election, Americans — candidates, parties, PACs, and small donors like you — spent a combined $5 billion pushing their preferred candidates. Although that sounds like a lot of money, Americans spent $12 billion on almonds that same year. Why the imbalance? … if some billionaire wanted to spend an actually relevant percent of his net worth on politics, could he just take over everything? I recently talked to some Silicon Valley political consultants who updated me on the status of this issue: Marc Andreessen tried this in 2024 and it basically worked. Now he is trying it a second time, it will probably work again, and Marc Andreessen will probably own every politician twice over.” (10/20/25)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/tech-pacs-are-closing-in-on-the-almonds