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Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age

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Re: Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age

#141

Post by eli_gottlieb »

Lambent_Cactus wrote: post #69
dmix wrote: post #43

> True libertarians would be repulsed at the thought, but the success of Silicon Valley even suggests that governments could do much more to encourage these kinds of internal compensation structures, in the name of better business and social cohesion. (Not to mention old-fashioned fairness.) Wait, what part did the government play in how tech-companies compensate their employees fairly? Or does he mean the government…

The author appears to intend that latter meaning, where SV companies have more egalitarian ownership structures on their own, but that now that we've seen the results, the government should encourage those structures more broadly in the economy. Actually, the government plays a small part already in how high-tech companies share equity with employees, through preferential tax treatment for Incentive Stock Options. Yo…

Given how little the votes of the average shareholder actually mean today versus the singular, large bloc-votes of the large shareholders, I see no reason not to move the economy towards a form of worker cooperatives that issue non-voting stock, or in which stockholders vote for some portion of the Board of Directors and employees for the other one. The main actual issue will be splitting up dividends between proper Mondragon-style Employee Capital Accounts and stock-investors.

Re: Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age

#142

Post by eli_gottlieb »

dmix wrote: post #73
Lambent_Cactus wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author appears to intend that latter meaning, where SV companies have more egalitarian ownership structures on their own, but that now that we've seen the results, the government should encourage those structures more broadly in the economy. Actually, the government plays a small part already in how high-tech companies share equity with employees, through preferential tax treatment for Incentive Stock Options. Yo…

Corporations can still distribute revenue and equity as they please. It's a legal structure for taxation and liability. The state forcing corporations to distribute their earnings or equity a certain way is a massively more intrusive structure. If that was done, it would likely be single handily the greatest manipulation of markets and private assets ever done by a government in modern history. If an egalitarian equi…

If an egalitarian equity structure legitimately benefits the companies, they will adopt that structure.

Interestingly wrong. The problem here is the definition of "benefits the company". The interest of the company is defined as the interest of its shareholders, with the interest of different shareholders counting in proportion to their ownership stake.

The equity structure is itself the terminal teleological value of the company, and consumer markets make zero evaluation of that structure except in very specialized sub-cases (like when I deliberately purchase King Arthur Flour for being a worker cooperative, for instance). This is one of those "companies do not evolve" things; state action is the only thing that will ever change company structures away from what the incumbent shareholders want, and even a fresh-founded start-up has incumbent owners in the form of its founders and seed investors.

Re: Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age

#143

Post by arcosdev »

CleanedStar wrote: post #95
onemorepassword wrote: post #54

One foundation of the entire argument seems to be that support for the Democratic party makes SV progressive. However, in a global context only the minority left wing of the Democratic party could be called progressive. Also, a simpler explanation for the large support for the Democrats would be that SV consists of intelligent, highly educated and well-informed people that wouldn't dream of supporting the extremist,…

Yes, the Democratic party is not left wing on either a global scale, as you say, or even on a historical scale. The Democrats used to support the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps to put people to work. Massive government projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority and Rural Electrification Administration were instituted. More recently the Democrats have been about "ending welfare as…

Wow, the comment with the most insight and clarity in this discussion. I couldn't agree more. We are building a future that we can't properly retire from, making "software" of questionable value (socially, economically, sustainably) while our countries crumble around us and the middle class evaporates.

Re: Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age

#144

Post by eli_gottlieb »

joshAg wrote: post #16

> For starters, almost all of them recognize that their industry itself arose out of government funding (see ARPANET), and some of the most celebrated achievements of the digital culture (open source software, Wikipedia) involve commons-based collaboration with no conventional definition of private property whatsoever. It’s precisely because we lack a new vocabulary to describe this worldview that we end up lumping t…

I'm pretty sure that's just a form of socialism.

Quiet you, we're trying to Talk Like Very Serious People ;-)!

Re: Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age

#145

Post by dyno12345 »

tomkarlo wrote: post #78
dyno12345 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50%? That's way better than any SV firm

It's not quite apples to apples. Bankers get paid way more (so they sell off less of their stock) and they are also often paid in RSUs or other forms of stock comp that can't be sold for several years. Tech workers are generally paid with stock that vests each year, and if they're smart they'll sell that down immediately (as they still generally have lots of future stock they're still exposed on, from a portfolio per…

sell that down? What does that mean?

Re: Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age

#146

Post by saraid216 »

yarrel wrote: post #136
saraid216 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarianism is basically a fundamentalist version of liberalism. It's essentially "liberalism has gotten too complicated and the complexity is producing errors; here are the most important bits and they're what Really Matter", which is what fundamentalism is.

It's a fundamentalist version of economic liberalism certainly, but not of political liberalism in the sense of vaguely leftist centrism.

Political liberalism is and always has been nonsense. It's a propaganda label and is as meaningful as having a Libertarian Party with a platform half the libertarians in the country disagree (all of whom contend that those who do agree aren't True libertarians).

Re: Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age

#147

Post by Tycho »

dmmalam wrote: post #44
loganfrederick wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked with both, they are not quite the same type of people. You might find some similar personality traits (ego, intelligence, and/or arrogance). But there is one major difference: The typical Silicon Valley worker is much more capable of creating a product or service than the average Wall Streeter. This is anecdotal, but the i-bankers I have worked with and met generally have a limited skillset which boils…

Yea, I did mean personality traits, and moreso sale/trading/asset management than pure i-banking/PE. However while the typical wall steeter used to be a liberal arts major, it has heavily shifted toward STEM. At most i-banks, something like a third of headcount are tech. Even many of the front office are engineers, though again moreso in trading/asset management. Nowadays a large part of the competitive advantage com…

What is the name of that electronic portfolio management system?

Re: Why Silicon Valley is not the second coming of the Gilded Age

#148

Post by dmmalam »

Tycho wrote: post #147
dmmalam wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I did mean personality traits, and moreso sale/trading/asset management than pure i-banking/PE. However while the typical wall steeter used to be a liberal arts major, it has heavily shifted toward STEM. At most i-banks, something like a third of headcount are tech. Even many of the front office are engineers, though again moreso in trading/asset management. Nowadays a large part of the competitive advantage com…

What is the name of that electronic portfolio management system?

It's a proprietary in-house system.
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