Silicon Valley 'nepo baby' publishes scathing first novel about growing up rich

https://sfstandard.com/2025/04/07/jim-breyer-son-daniel-breyer-novel-smokebirds/

by CalChris • 1 year ago

23 15 1 year ago

ggm2• 1 year ago

He says he doesn't want to come across as some kind of class-war warrior, but I think this is his future fate, at least until he writes another kind of book.

Fitzgerald married into wealth. Parker was born into the fringes.

9283409232• 1 year ago

I don't know why people are so shaky about calling the class war what it is. I remember this being a big issue during the Obama era, Republicans accusing his proposal to raise taxes as "class warfare". It's like Warren Buffet said: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning.”

ggm2• 1 year ago

I don't disagree. I only commented on a thing he was quoted on in the article.

An awful lot of the energy in left wing intellectual circles has always come from what Lenin called "useful idiots" and this guy is no different.

Objectifying things as class war is a mechanism to cast the warrior into the bad set basically. I suspect he said it, because he doesn't want it dismissed by some readers on the basis thats his place. I don't personally think it invalidates the writing.

louwrentius• 1 year ago

  >  Asked about his life as an investor, and whether he thinks about the potential harms of companies he invests in — such as AI startups that require vast quantities of energy to run their chatbots, or automation companies that could replace human jobs — his answers are slightly less considered.

Being rich seems to ‘lessen’ the capacity to feel empathy for other people or responsibility for your actions (the questionable things you invest in).

readthenotes12• 1 year ago

Power doesn't corrupt; it reveals. --Robert Caro

thfuran• 1 year ago

Gaining power probably generally does more revealing than corrupting, but I think being born into it tends to serious messes up people's perspective.

ofrzeta• 1 year ago

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power -- Abraham Lincoln

SubiculumCode• 1 year ago

It's really hard to separate oneself from one's socioeconomic upbringing. For those whom did not grow up at the edge of a great financial cliff, that cliff is merely a metaphor for 'a relative had to bail me out, how embarrassing', while for those whom lives at it's very edge, never slept too easy lest the fall and hope that there exists a social safety net, whilst others learned to live on the cliff face itself, eeking out a small subsistence before the inevitable meth-fueled plunge.

Herring• 1 year ago

Yep. Anything that insulates you from consequences also degrades your ability to learn from those consequences (pain = real-world feedback), so it makes you dumber.

VirusNewbie• 1 year ago

Asking someone about an AI startup that isn't building a foundational model about "energy to run chatbots" is straight up awful gotcha reporting and people who fall for it I immediately lose respect for.

dragonwriter• 1 year ago

Wouldn't whether they are running chatbots be more key to whether the question about energy to run chatbots is relevant than whether they are building a foundation model?

thundergolfer• 1 year ago

This is unintentionally a pretty amusing puff piece, and indicates the book is going to be horrible.

His novel is not so much an attempt to break away from that world — he loves investing and working with entrepreneurs, he says — as it is an opportunity to skewer it.

He started a crypto company and then took a father-sponsored investing job. He's done nothing to show he has the appropriate perspective to do more than lightly self-flagellate himself and his friends.

When asked about his responsibilities as an investor:

“I just do the best I can to be like, I really like this opportunity. I think this could be really cool, and a positive thing, and really fun to work on,’’ he says. “But yes, if I backed a company that turned out to, like, cause horrible harm for people and tons of negative effects, I’d feel fucking terrible.”

Oh he'd _feel_ terrible. Well good, I thought for a second there wouldn't be appropriate consequences.

What an airhead.

I don't know anything about the elder Breyer, but this book promotion looks like a great promotion of massive inheritance taxes.

readthenotes12• 1 year ago

What would make the story perfect is to find out that the book was Ghost written

mcshicks• 1 year ago

Silicon Valley meets Bret Easton Ellis and Less than Zero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Less_than_Zero_(novel)

Silicon Valley 'nepo baby' publishes scathing first novel about growing up rich

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