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Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

economist.com

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Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#121

Post by s73ver_ »

wils1245 wrote: post #83
aaron-lebo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I welcome it. I'd much rather have a crowded field than what we had in the last election on the Democratic side - a field emptied by the presence of a dominant presumptive nominee. More competition is a good thing.

Not always. You don't want just one or two, but you also don't want the situation where they have to have a JV debate beforehand because they can't fit all the candidates.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#122

Post by 0xbear »

komali2 wrote: post #113
0xbear wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel like you can do a better job of winning an election against a Clinton and the entirety of mainstream media, you should run in 2020. Against Trump, naturally, so we confirm the hypothesis.

Trump was not opposed by mainstream media, he was enabled by it.

It boggles the mind that some people think that utter and complete feathering and tarring of Trump in the runup to the election can even be interpreted as any kind of "enablement".

My point was, the dude is not as clueless as the media and pundits portray him, and he did accomplish the impossible more than once in his life, most recently in the 2016 election.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#123

Post by pvg »

lliamander wrote: post #88
zht wrote: post #77

Please excuse my ignorance with modern political parlance, but I always got the feeling that "globalists" was actually dogwhistle codeword for Jew. Is that the case?

Interesting, that's never been my understanding. More refers to anyone who desires world government (or the diminishing of local governments) and who finds the desire to preserve one's culture, community, and national identity as backwards and unenlightened. I suppose it could be used by some as a dogwhistle, but it seems there's also a meaningful set of ideas that can be represented by that term.

Refers to anyone who desires world government (or the diminishing of local governments) and who finds the desire to preserve one's culture, community, and national identity as backwards and unenlightened.

That's not what 'globalist' means outside of the fringes. It's certainly not the way the linked article uses it.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#124

Post by s73ver_ »

jsmith0295 wrote: post #120
icelancer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it suits the privilege narrative, Jewish people are white.

What's odd to me is that this seems like it should be bad for Jews, and that they wouldn't want this to be the case, and that in general people wouldn't want a minority treated as the majority group in these cases... But instead I've been flagged.

Because, in general, those who like to point out that someone is Jewish are the alt-right. And they don't point that out because they love Mel Brooks movies and matzo balls.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#125

Post by ZoeZoeBee »

komali2 wrote: post #113
0xbear wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you feel like you can do a better job of winning an election against a Clinton and the entirety of mainstream media, you should run in 2020. Against Trump, naturally, so we confirm the hypothesis.

Trump was not opposed by mainstream media, he was enabled by it.

Trump was opposed by mainstream media, and he capitalized off it.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#126

Post by uncletaco »

JPKab wrote: post #23
Shivetya wrote: post #8

their categories are broad enough to arrive at any result they wanted. still I never ever considered any of the SV bosses to anything close to libertarians.

I think that SV founders fall into a pretty solid category of people who were raised by educated, successful people. My main concern with this is that people raised by successful, hard-working people don't understand poverty and the culture around it. Zuckerberg is a perfect example. He's a guy who preaches about tolerance, diversity, and inclusion, but he grew up in an upper middle class suburb that was lily white a…

I also think its something that is regional. About 50% of the Asian population lives on the West Coast, so it makes sense that you might see more of them in big tech firms, even the ones from historically underrepresented ethnic groups (filipinos etc.).

Sometimes I wonder how the conversation would shift if Silicon Valley were instead Silicon Delta or someplace else Southern. For instance Atlanta has a fairly robust black middle class and has long been a hub in the South. Would we be having the same kinds of conversations about minority representation if Silicon Valley were centered in a region that gave a geographic advantage to another minority? In the same way that half of the Asian population is concentrated on the West Coast, half of the Black population is concentrated in the south, as well as a good chunk of the black middle class. Would we see a lot more black people in tech if the tech industry called Atlanta rather than San Francisco home?

Even so, could decentralization and remote work be seen as an avenue to increase diversity? I don't know the answers to these questions but I would love to see stuff where researchers have asked them.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#127

Post by dbroockman »

lliamander wrote: post #115
dbroockman wrote: post #76

Author of the study they wrote about here. I think the NYT write up is better: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/silicon-valley... . Study here: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers... .

A couple thoughts: - The survey covers just SV elites. It would be interesting to see how those beliefs compare to rank-and-file SV tech company employees (and to see that broken down further by profession). Differences in values between employees and bosses could lead to conflict further down the road. - I'm reading more lately about the degree to which our temperament (the Big 5 personality index) influences our po…

Great points on both. On #2, we wanted to include those, but space constraints :/. Given the interest in this survey we'll probably do another after collecting more suggestions like these. Thanks!

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#128

Post by StevePerkins »

mehwoot wrote: post #118
StevePerkins wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all fairness, the prior President was a one-term Senator, who pretty much started running for President just 18 months into that one term. The actual merits of Trump or Obama notwithstanding, it's been three election cycles now since without traditional career politician in the White House. I'm not sure I can fault tech billionaires for thinking that this might be a real emerging trend, rather than just a pair of…

Obama was a community organiser in 1985, 22 years before the presidental election. He had already made political speeches in college previous to that (where he majored in political science). After that he was a civil rights attorney, and his first elected position was to the Illinois senate in 1996, 8 years before he was elected to the United States Senate. That is 100% traditional career politician in almost every w…

From state legislator to launching an (ultimately successful!) Presidential campaign in a year-and-a-half? We'll have to agree to disagree.

Either way, if anything in U.S. politics is non-controversial... it should be the observation that three Presidential cycles in a row have been won by upstarts, whose credentials are strikingly out of place alongside their peers of the past century. That's not arguing equivalence, but ignoring all commonality is absurd.

Maybe it's attributable to being "good", or "lucky", or "racist", or some other factors of sheer coincidence. Or maybe it's a symptom of fundamental social or media shift, and signifies a new norm.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#129

Post by dbroockman »

mrDmrTmrJ wrote: post #107
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... .

Great work. Thanks a ton for climbing onto the hackernews thread! When I look at chart in the article (I haven't read the paper) I get really curious about how 'support for regulation' might break down by issue. A lot of the regulation that the Trump administration is rolling back are environment rules that are strongly net positive for our economy once you account for health care externalities. While many of the reg…

It's hard to tell exactly what the underlying principle is from just the few questions we could get folks to answer, but the general pattern seems to be about like you describe -- on the environment, founders are pretty liberal; on issues of labor and product market regulations, they're fairly conservative; on everything else, they're fairly centrist. We have all the survey questions we asked that went into this index in the Appendix.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#130

Post by aaron-lebo »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #114
aaron-lebo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you delete that post yourself?

Yes, there's no funny business going on.
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