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Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

economist.com

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Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#71

Post by andrewjl »

coldtea wrote: post #37
civilian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Humans want to believe that they are not so simple, but usually they are. We're more caricatures than snowflak…

How to explain the behavior of people like Nick Hanauer, who advocates higher taxes on the wealthy?[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Hanauer

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#72

Post by Kutta »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #40
granfalloon wrote: post #24

There was a comment about the political influence and aspirations of certain big names in tech, but it has suddenly disappeared. It contained some criticism of Paul Graham and Sam Altman, but seemed totally reasonable to me -- can anyone say why it was deleted?

I wrote it, I don't feel like being an ass and I'm feeling overly aggressive today, not to mention I am a guest in someone else's house. ...but my overall point is that the tech elite is composed of a lot of rich white guys with connections, who naturally help each other out. Sam Altman runs YC now and as of last year was apparently seriously considering running for governor of California. That strikes me as grandios…

The society can't ever be honest and collectively stop enabling whatever. Everyone all the time responds to incentives, and power goes to whoever is lucky and good at collecting votes and support. Competence, technological acumen or vision is an extra. Altman being governor would be a high percentile outcome considering all of this.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#73

Post by dbroockman »

lumberjack wrote: post #54
dbroockman wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... .

I quickly read your paper. The only way in which technology entrepreneurs deviate from what you would expect, is in their support for more redistribution. But all these people are not paying normal taxes, anyway. Why would they care? Also if you consider the risk of political or economic instability, then even redistribution might just be a self-interested policy stance.

The same logic holds for founders in other industries but they don't seem to like taxes/redistribution much (although we need and are getting more data on that). Would have been nice to ask about taxation on capital gains, but survey space was limited (you folks are busy!) and that is a relatively small share of federal receipts so not as important substantively, even if it speaks to this theoretical question.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#74

Post by HillaryBriss »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #40
granfalloon wrote: post #24

There was a comment about the political influence and aspirations of certain big names in tech, but it has suddenly disappeared. It contained some criticism of Paul Graham and Sam Altman, but seemed totally reasonable to me -- can anyone say why it was deleted?

I wrote it, I don't feel like being an ass and I'm feeling overly aggressive today, not to mention I am a guest in someone else's house. ...but my overall point is that the tech elite is composed of a lot of rich white guys with connections, who naturally help each other out. Sam Altman runs YC now and as of last year was apparently seriously considering running for governor of California. That strikes me as grandios…

How does one measure, compare and conclude that California is the most developed economy in the world?

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#78

Post by ulrikmoe »

Classical liberalism does not oppose universal healthcare. When you had prohibition, in Denmark we had classical liberalism, universal healthcare and a marginal taxrate of <15% (1/4 of yours). This is the society that I prefer and hopefully Denmark can get back on the right track :)

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#79

Post by notacoward »

civilian wrote: post #10
mattnewton wrote: post #9

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…

> People who understand economics tend to both be entrepreneurs ... and they are in favor of free trade and less regulation.

People who want to be tycoons some day tend to have those views. That's not the same as understanding economics, and is arguably detrimental to it.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#80

Post by dmix »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #64
civilian wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. People's values and beliefs usually model the reinforcement signals they've actually received, not the distribu…

This is a bit reductionist. One popular example I see on HN/Reddit is when someone is supportive of market capitalism you often see this dismissive comment in response:

> "Every American think's they are a future millionaire and from this delusion they blindly defend the rights of millionaires to their own detriment."

This sounds clever but it's based on the (fallacious) assumption that everyone's political position should be reflective of their current economic status - or that the government's economic policy should be defensive of one's current economic status - and not doing so is acting against your self-interest.

But it's entirely possible to support a political position that is advantageous to people outside of your own short-term direct self-interest, because you see it as the most beneficial to the most amount of people in the country - and ultimately to yourself, family, friends, and country in the longrun.

Self-interest is often falsely perceived to be merely only about benefiting one's current direct/personal circumstances. Given that:

a) we're social beings

b) we all must live and survive within communities over an extended period of time

a natural side-effect of any one's self-interest within a economic/political system must itself factor other people's interests and external realities.

The exception of course is when an economic/social system attempts to reduce everyone to one imaginary class of people, and a singular self-interest - which is where the Marxism analogy comes in (which opens up another can of worms).

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