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Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

economist.com

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Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#161

Post by aaron-lebo »

pen2l wrote: post #96
Iv wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump lowered the bar so much that most people think they can do a better job than the current president, and are probably right. What they miss is that running as a republican is very different than running as a democrat (as I guess most tech people would want to). Zuckberg would beat Trump in the democratic primaries, no question about that. But he won't be in front of Trump, he would be in front of many experience…

> Zuckberg would beat Trump in the democratic primaries, no question about that. So, where is this all coming from -- that Zuckerberg wants to run for president? I'll bet my house and every last penny I own, he does not want to be president, he will never run for president. Oh, and he would never win. He's an insanely smart dude, but he hasn't got the charisma to win presidency. (I do think that a lot of people on HN…

It's very possible that a lot of his current rhetoric and actions are part of PR and image control for Facebook as a brand and even a genuine desire to extend his horizons.

However, some of his actions are distinctly political.

http://people.com/politics/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-team-202...

He hired "Joel Benenson, a former top adviser and longtime pollster to President Barack Obama and the chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign", and prior to that he hired "David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama’s 2008 presidential run".

Your statement is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not sure Zuckerberg is actually "insanely smart". He's similar intelligence to a lot of people on HN, but people conflate power and success with visionary ability. Maybe he is that, or maybe he's just a relatively smart guy with lots of connections, a very favorable background, and the same hangups, limitations, biases, and delusions as everyone else.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#162

Post by slg »

autokad wrote: post #158
slg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More competition is also how we got Trump on the republican side because the number of candidates lowered the bar for receiving a plurality of the votes. Trump never would have beaten someone like Cruz, Rubio, or even Jeb in a primary straight up.

I dont agree at all, and I do not think the data backs it up. Jeb is a clear loss mono e mono against trump in the primary, no question. the candidates you mentioned only did well in limited/specific geographies (such as their home state). i followed the primaries on both sides, and had you consolidated the votes to trump vs other, trump would have won. its also very unlikely that 'other' would all vote for 'other' i…

>the candidates you mentioned only did well in limited/specific geographies

That is because the other candidates all took their own piece of the pie. The republican and democratic primaries were very similar. You had someone framed as a populist outsider who was selling themselves on their ability to fix the system. On the democratic side you had one other establishment candidate who more or less campaigned on the status quo. On the republican side you had numerous establishment candidates that basically campaigned on the status quo who split the vote and several outsider candidates that never had much support at all. The democratic side was consolidated much earlier around their candidate. The republican side never consolidated around an establishment candidate because it was never clear which establishment candidate was the favorite. This allowed Trump to succeed with his consistent 20-30% of republicans in early primaries.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#163

Post by CalChris »

mc32 wrote: post #159
CalChris wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's not forget Grey Davis' being a politician didn't help California against rolling brownouts and massive deficits in the 2000s. The correct spelling is Gray Davis [1]. The rolling brownouts were caused by Enron [2] who was enabled by legislation (AB 1890) that his predecessor Pete Wilson signed in 1996 [3]. People went to jail for that. [4] There were no massive deficits under Davis. When the tech bubble burst…

Arianna Huffington has a different take on the issue. Others do as well. Davis blames federal regulation while at the sane time has retrospectively apologized for being slow to act as the crisis began.

No, Davis doesn't blame Federal regulation because it wasn't Federal regulation that caused the California energy crisis. The crisis was caused by state de-regulation. That de-regulation (AB 1890) was engineered and signed by Governor Pete Wilson.

  Staff concludes that supply-demand imbalance, flawed
  market design and inconsistent rules made possible 
  significant market manipulation as delineated in final
  investigation report. Without underlying market
  dysfunction, attempts to manipulate the market
  would not be successful.
This wasn't on Davis; this was on Wilson and Enron. As for Arianna Huffington, she ran as an independent against Davis is the recall election engineered by Darrell Issa. She'd been a conservative commentator (supporting Newt Gingrich) before she and Andrew Breitbart launched HuffPo.

Et cetera.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#164

Post by icelancer »

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.

Eh, it is what it is. I am politically liberal, all for BLM/LGBT marches, equal rights, believe white privilege is a real thing, etc. Voted for Sanders. Still getting downvoted because the mere mention or skepticism of how privilege is applied attracts the usual attention.

As far as I can tell, my Jewish friends are considered white when they are referred to regarding privilege (by the left) and a minority by the alt-right. They get the worst of both worlds. Asian-Americans get it on a similar, if lower level.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#165

Post by StevePerkins »

CalChris wrote: post #147
StevePerkins wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

George W Bush was not an upstart by any definition of the word. To be sure, he had no particular claim to talent but then his father had been President and his grandfather had been Senator.

He's also outside the range that I just said.

As old as this might make one feel, George W. Bush's last victory was four election cycles ago.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#166

Post by mc32 »

CalChris wrote: post #163
mc32 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arianna Huffington has a different take on the issue. Others do as well. Davis blames federal regulation while at the sane time has retrospectively apologized for being slow to act as the crisis began.

No, Davis doesn't blame Federal regulation because it wasn't Federal regulation that caused the California energy crisis. The crisis was caused by state de-regulation . That de-regulation (AB 1890) was engineered and signed by Governor Pete Wilson. Staff concludes that supply-demand imbalance, flawed market design and inconsistent rules made possible significant market manipulation as delineated in final investigatio…

Still Pete or Gray, their experience in politics did not prepare them for the events that followed. All major players have some blame, Pete, Gray and Enron. Enron was greedy and Pete and Gray, as evidenced by their political careers, didn't handle the sitch well in the eyes of the public.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#167

Post by Applejinx »

ericd wrote: post #140
Applejinx wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But labor productivity growth doesn't cause any wage gains anymore, hasn't for decades upon decades. Probably worth asking if you assert that American corporate taxes are the highest in the world: sometimes there are just major, major reality-based differences in the discourse and it's useless talking any further. I know I can't believe some of your axioms here, unfortunately.

I'm curious what you mean by that, because I've never heard anyone seriously argue against that assertion. Our top marginal corporate tax rate is one of the highest, according to Wikipedia [1], though companies are generally pretty good at not being too profitable and therefore not paying a very high tax rate, if that's what you mean. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_St... Excerpt: In 201…

You do understand the difference between marginal and baseline tax rates? That word 'marginal' did not slip by me, I'm afraid.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#168

Post by gcb0 »

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... .

the nyt open with: "Silicon Valley has long preferred to remain aloof from national politics, but the Trump era has altered that stance."

which is kinda of hard to defend since Obama constantly blocked the bay area on reelection campaigns and most of his advisors came from/went to silicon Valley companies.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#169

Post by CalChris »

mc32 wrote: post #166
CalChris wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Davis doesn't blame Federal regulation because it wasn't Federal regulation that caused the California energy crisis. The crisis was caused by state de-regulation . That de-regulation (AB 1890) was engineered and signed by Governor Pete Wilson. Staff concludes that supply-demand imbalance, flawed market design and inconsistent rules made possible significant market manipulation as delineated in final investigatio…

Still Pete or Gray, their experience in politics did not prepare them for the events that followed. All major players have some blame, Pete, Gray and Enron. Enron was greedy and Pete and Gray, as evidenced by their political careers, didn't handle the sitch well in the eyes of the public.

As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, I'm greedy, quite greedy. But Enron wasn't just greedy, it was a criminal organization. As such, people went to jail and it went out of business. The job losses at Enron were 4000 but they were 85,000 at Arthur Anderson, its accounting firm.

Wilson enabled this although to be fair, he didn't foresee it. The CA energy crisis was the result of mid-90s neoliberal hubris. Like supply side voodoo economics, its lessons get quickly forgotten. Hubris is like that.

Re: Tech bosses are globalists, not libertarians

#170

Post by wallace_f »

Gloablist vs Libertarian is a strange dichotomy to me. As a Libertarian this study would mark me as a 'globalist.' I believe free trade and immigration are good, and that foreign policy is important.

They go on to ask SV if 'they are libertarians' by asking if they believe in Minarchism--that the State should only provide police and military, which most libertarians themselves don't even agree is an ideal interpretation.

What a silly piece of work.

There's a whole lot of corporate and political pushback against libertarians, which is getting to be crazy. Google defunded Ron Paul's Youtube channel, which is ridiculous.

Libertarianism is not the opposite of globalism or socialism. In fact, there exist prominent libertarian socialists, Noam Chomsky for example. The reality is libertarianism is the opposite of authoritarianism.

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