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Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

economist.com

11–20 of 222 posts

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#13
post #6

first generation rich people tend to be different than later ones. SV bosses who are owners of successful startups would fall in the former category imho. that explains most traits attributed by OP to the SV people.

Do you have numbers to back this up? The first generation of tech darlings almost exclusively come from upper middle and above backgrounds. I'm genuinely interested if that has changed.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#14

I think more simplistically: when you take this group of people and average them out what you get are beliefs that benefit the large companies they represent. That's the signal that is correlated with running a big tech company, and the rest is probably mostly noise. That's all really, they aren't for or against free trade in aggregate, they are for their company trading profitably, on average.

Author of the study they were writing about here. That is the original expectation I had coming in, but I don't think what we find is totally consistent with that (although some is). We talk about that in the paper. Study here: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers....

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#15

I think more simplistically: when you take this group of people and average them out what you get are beliefs that benefit the large companies they represent. That's the signal that is correlated with running a big tech company, and the rest is probably mostly noise. That's all really, they aren't for or against free trade in aggregate, they are for their company trading profitably, on average.

Bullshit. You're committing the fallacy that comes from Marxist thought--- that one's position/class/socio-economic-factors are the determining factors in their values and beliefs. People are not so simple, their thoughts can come from elsewhere. You're wildly underestimating the sentience of these people. I think a better model is that: People who understand economics tend to both be entrepreneurs (they understand t…

Yeah, companies don't generally want regulations. It's almost always a headache and distraction from the core business. However when regulation is finally foisted upon them, they make sure to take the time to influence what regulation they are subject to so that it benefits them and becomes a barrier to entry for new entrants.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#16
The stereotypical right-wing position is, "This government program is poorly-run; let's get rid of it"

The stereotypical left-wing position is, "This government program should be left alone, even if it's poorly-run"

The stereotypical Gray Tribe position is, "This government program is poorly-run; let's debug it"

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#18

I think more simplistically: when you take this group of people and average them out what you get are beliefs that benefit the large companies they represent. That's the signal that is correlated with running a big tech company, and the rest is probably mostly noise. That's all really, they aren't for or against free trade in aggregate, they are for their company trading profitably, on average.

Bullshit. You're committing the fallacy that comes from Marxist thought--- that one's position/class/socio-economic-factors are the determining factors in their values and beliefs. People are not so simple, their thoughts can come from elsewhere. You're wildly underestimating the sentience of these people. I think a better model is that: People who understand economics tend to both be entrepreneurs (they understand t…

I'm not arguing that they don't have other thoughts. I'm arguing that those other thoughts shouldn't be correlated with being a "tech boss" unless it has some advantage to being a tech boss, because people are largely different! Like, in a completely random sample, we would expect beliefs representative of the population, but by biasing it to only leaders of tech companies, people who dedicate their lives to giant multinational corporations, we should expect to see their beliefs to correlate with what is good for those corporations. And everything else should match the general population, in aggregate.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#19

I think more simplistically: when you take this group of people and average them out what you get are beliefs that benefit the large companies they represent. That's the signal that is correlated with running a big tech company, and the rest is probably mostly noise. That's all really, they aren't for or against free trade in aggregate, they are for their company trading profitably, on average.

Bullshit. You're committing the fallacy that comes from Marxist thought--- that one's position/class/socio-economic-factors are the determining factors in their values and beliefs. People are not so simple, their thoughts can come from elsewhere. You're wildly underestimating the sentience of these people. I think a better model is that: People who understand economics tend to both be entrepreneurs (they understand t…

I strongly agree with your argument regarding economic-class determinism or whatever it's called. After all, some of the most progressive policies for the poor in this country were passed by the wealthiest presidents (FDR, Kennedy, Johnson).

However, if you're suggesting that Silicon Valley CEOs are in favor of libertarian free trade, I think I agree more with the article and disagree with you. Silicon Valley CEOs loyalty is not to free trade, it's to their globalist lifestyle and outlook on life. Indeed, most of these people seem to be hardcore monopolists, and with no shame for it either.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#20
post #16

The stereotypical right-wing position is, "This government program is poorly-run; let's get rid of it" The stereotypical left-wing position is, "This government program should be left alone, even if it's poorly-run" The stereotypical Gray Tribe position is, "This government program is poorly-run; let's debug it"

> The stereotypical Gray Tribe position is, "This government program is poorly-run; let's debug it"

Until the Gray-Triber realizes that there's no real feedback loop between policy effectiveness and actual policy and end up as either a resigned left-winger or bitter right-winger

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