Meh, I think this is probably not the best intro to a good discussion. I sympathize with the impulse to mock Tom Perkins (and he probably deserves it), and VCs being idiots is a time-honored genre of tech discussion. But judging by the Slashdot discussion on this same article that started an hour or two ago, it doesn't seem likely to be productive. Either we will all agree "yeah, that was a stupid analogy and also Tom Perkins might be crazy", or a few people will try to defend it and then those threads will trail off into argument, either way, meh.
Perkins' post has now topped David Brooks' piece on pot as the worst thing ever written. Well done Tom.<p>Relevant <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law</a>
I'm sure Mr. Perkins thought that getting a $10k fine for killing a man with his yacht was "just like Nazi Germany" too. What an assclown.
<i>This is the reductio ad absurdum of a rich-guy's persecution complex...Therefore, criticizing the rich is akin to committing genocide against the Jews.</i><p>This Atlantic commentary is a ridiculous straw man. According to Perkins, criticizing the rich today is akin to criticizing the Jews in 1930 (8 years before persecution).<p>Demonize and dismiss - so much easier than attacking the actual argument being made (note: I'm expressing no opinion on that).