SocraticGadfly: President Zuckerberg? I just threw up in Facebook's mouth (new updates)

March 06, 2017

President Zuckerberg? I just threw up in Facebook's mouth (new updates)

Mark Zuckerberg via President of Mexico
To be halfway serious, as well as halfway snarky, I think I would take a President Trump over a President Zuckerberg, whose ambitions are hinted at in this Vanity Fair piece.

I think he is:
1. At least as vain as Trump if not more so, albeit in a less mercurial way;
2. Probably as thin-skinned as Trump;
3. At least as imperious as Trump;
4. With a better business and management skill set behind 1-3, which makes them all scarier.
5. Add in that he's surely a tech-neoliberal who thinks that an app, or better, social media (gee, which one?) is the solution to everything, which cultural critic Evgeny Morozov has rightly called "solutionism" and which I call "salvific technologism."

Despite not disclosing party affiliation, I'll list him as a tech-neoliberal Democrat. (I think he's smart enough in terms of current American politics to try to buck the two-party system, so, he's not running Libertarian and he's sure as hell not Green. Plus, he'd probably assume that Dems will slaver for him more than Republicans and that it will be "Dems' turn" in 2024.)

Contra Nick Bilton's claim that Marky Mark would be "an astounding president," for anybody outside the 1 percent, or even more, the 0.1 percent, he'd be a gigantic kick in the nads. Let's not forget he's already ripping off poor and middle-class taxpayers with his "public benefit" foundation. That said, per the foundation, and cluelessness about it, as blogged before, I know that some Skeptics™ would cream their pants over a Zuckerberg run.

Hell, it wouldn't surprise me if he tried to launder campaign finance funds through that foundation in case of a presidential run, via super-PACing off of it or something.

Hell, I distrust him so much I even did a riff on a Shakespearean sonnet about it.

Let's hope that Bilton's right and his lack of a politician's personality bars his run.

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Update, Feb. 17: A 5,000-word manifesto posted by Hucksterman on Effbook, and analyzed by the Guardian, sure makes it look like he's eyeballing the world of politics.

Update, March 6, 2017: And now, Facebook is bragging about being able to influence elections. Would Zuckerberg conduct a more thorough detachment from Facebook than Trump has from his businesses, and far earlier in the process? I doubt it.

Update, March 12: Maegan Carberry of Salon is now on the wagon, saying Hucksterberg would be good because he would be the shortest route to defeating Trump. First, she's thinking inside the duopoly box, error No. 1. Second, she's thinking inside a top-down version of the Dem half of that box, a move that would further kill grassroots level Dems. Third, her idea only inflates the whole imperial presidency issue. Per her five options, even if the Dem half of the duopoly doesn't have time enough for Option 5, failure to do much on Options 2-3 would merely reflect how bad the party is and how much it needs to be blown up. Of course, Obama himself undercut the possibility of Options 2-3 from the 2010 midterms on.

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