Live data from Hacker News

Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

nytimes.com

31–40 of 44 posts

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#31

Silicon Valley tech billionaires who will be un-impacted personally by migration, complain when they no longer have a cheap source of labour. The Valley isn't going to be hosting migrants and they aren't going to be competing against unskilled migrant labour. Why is it walls are just fine around LAs mansion estates and in closed gated communities, but as soon as the general populace wants them they become bad?

Google said this impacts ~180 employees total. is that really enough to impact salaries?

Maybe, just maybe, these sons and daughters of immigrants and refugees are just as disgusted by the actions of Trump (and Bannon) as the millions of others.

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#32

Silicon Valley tech billionaires who will be un-impacted personally by migration, complain when they no longer have a cheap source of labour. The Valley isn't going to be hosting migrants and they aren't going to be competing against unskilled migrant labour. Why is it walls are just fine around LAs mansion estates and in closed gated communities, but as soon as the general populace wants them they become bad?

I'm so tired of seeing all the blog posts and comments that think our problems are due to Trump and Republicans instead of taking a look at our own "progressive" party. Sure, Trump and the GOP are fucked up, but so are the Dems and the tech community seemed perfectly fine fawning over our "tech president" when he was bailing out the billionaires, expanding state surveillance powers, and ordering the murder of thousands with drones.

Whenever I mention how the corporate Dems have been selling us out for years and we need to light a fire under their ass to work for our interests, I'm immediately ostracized from my fellow "progressives."

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#33

Silicon Valley tech billionaires who will be un-impacted personally by migration, complain when they no longer have a cheap source of labour. The Valley isn't going to be hosting migrants and they aren't going to be competing against unskilled migrant labour. Why is it walls are just fine around LAs mansion estates and in closed gated communities, but as soon as the general populace wants them they become bad?

I almost never post here but this "mansion walls" to "Mexico wall" false equivalence bothers me. They are totally different things.

Mansions have walls/hedges for lots of reasons: privacy, sound isolation, blocking unsightly views and sure perhaps some security. None of that has anything to do with whether we should build the world's longest modern wall to help enforce immigration policy. Sure they are both walls but that's where the similarity ends.

Example 1: Mansion walls are unlikely to create diplomatic tensions with one of the US's major trading partners whereas a wall with Mexico would likely do that.

Example 2: The Mexican wall will likely require lots of eminent domain seizures of private land. Mansions walls require none.

Example 3: The mexican wall will impact net flows of illegal migrants between the US and Mexico. Private walls do not.

Sane arguments for or against this wall are inapplicable to private walls. This equivalency is pointless. Your argument is spurious.

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#34
My post is about outrage combined with navel gazing, and perpetuation of human rights issues.

I have a serious question. While I am personally against a ban on immigration of the kind Trump is doing, 6 out of the 7 countries targeted - all except Somalia - have a permanent ban on Israelis. Not a 4 month ban "until they figure out" some aggressive vetting processes, and make themselves look like they kept a promise to their constituents. A permanent ban.

By the logic of "this is a ban on Muslims", that is a "ban on Jews".

My question is - where was the outrage all those years? Seriously think about it.

Chomsky (who I have met and later email-debated with extensively) says criticizing other countries is like criticizing the 19th century, and your duty is criticizing the crimes of your own, because you can do the most there. While I agree with that duty, I think it misses one crucial piece.

People from progressive and developed countries tend to "let things go" when other countries violate human rights because they are so far outside their local political reality. They end up navel gazing at their own sins, with dangerous consequences.

For example, feminists today in the USA spend much more energy on making sure default social network avatars are gender-neutral than they do on stopping human trafficking, honor killings and rape culture in patriarchal tribal / caste societies in other countries. That's what I mean by navel gazing.

Angel Merkel and EU bureaucrats let millions of Syrian refugees into Europe while not requiring Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states to even sign the UN convention on the rights of the refugee. These people speak Arabic but go to a country where their language and customs are out of place and retard their contributions to society. And why? Navel gazing.

Similarly Jews often help exacerbate criticism of Israel by failng to require people to apply the same standards to other countries. Care about the rights of refugees? Great. Let's have a solution that all the countries of the region implement: giving citizenship to those who were born in the country. Then after couple generations Palestinian refugees etc. would have long stopped being refugees. By having Israel alone give citizenship and a right of return, you practically force eg all Lebanese of Palestinian descent to try and flood Israel.

Instead, their pride in their country's achievements makes them acquiesce with those who use the words "Social Justice" to advocate a kind of double standard Marxist view that everything is a zero-sum game and there must be losers. Zionists must lose. White people must apologize and pay reparations. But these double standard Social Justice never lead to anything except perpetuation of misery for those that have to live without rights.

My point here is that pride in exceptionalism leads to complacency. We should have cared when these countries (and other Islamic countries) banned Israelis from entering. But we were focused too much on our Western world.

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#35
post #32

Silicon Valley tech billionaires who will be un-impacted personally by migration, complain when they no longer have a cheap source of labour. The Valley isn't going to be hosting migrants and they aren't going to be competing against unskilled migrant labour. Why is it walls are just fine around LAs mansion estates and in closed gated communities, but as soon as the general populace wants them they become bad?

I'm so tired of seeing all the blog posts and comments that think our problems are due to Trump and Republicans instead of taking a look at our own "progressive" party. Sure, Trump and the GOP are fucked up, but so are the Dems and the tech community seemed perfectly fine fawning over our "tech president" when he was bailing out the billionaires, expanding state surveillance powers, and ordering the murder of thousan…

I can see what you're against. What are you for? What do you support? In particular now? For example, are you happy with the Executive Order regarding immigration?

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#36
post #23
post #9

"Ambivalence?" All I've been hearing on HN for the past year plus is comparisons to fascism, the Nazis and the Anti-Christ. That said, at least Mussolini made the trains run on time and the Nazis were pretty efficient, which is more than can be said for the Trump administration's first week...

Point of trivia: Mussolini didn't even make the trains run on time.

Actually he "did" -- in quotes because he put out alternative facts -- propaganda -- to that effect.

Little known fact: the original word for the kinds of publicity companies use to grow demand for their product was "propaganda" (propagate the goods, get it?) coined by Edward L Bernays, Freud's nephew and the first formalizer of advertising.[1] After Germany appointed a minister of advertising ("Propaganda"), the industry decided it needed a new name.

Now we have a journalist/propagandist on the National Security Council. Should be interesting. Did you know Alan Kay was on Reagan's? He (Alan) has some hysterical stories of his time on the NSC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#37
post #4

Personally, I find this "turn to anger" a little hollow/self-serving. Nothing Trump has done so far is in any way out of line with what he was saying on the campaign trail - the only people who are surprised by his actions are the people who took a "he's not being serious, it's just talk" view when evaluating his speeches. I wish SV companies and executives could have had this "turn to anger" back when it mattered an…

What was the tech sector supposed to do? Go campaign in Wisconsin for Hillary? Tech was already shoveling tons of money into her campaign. Bezos-owned Washington Post was about as Anti-Trump as a news organization can be.

Twitter could have suspended his account.

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#38
post #32

Silicon Valley tech billionaires who will be un-impacted personally by migration, complain when they no longer have a cheap source of labour. The Valley isn't going to be hosting migrants and they aren't going to be competing against unskilled migrant labour. Why is it walls are just fine around LAs mansion estates and in closed gated communities, but as soon as the general populace wants them they become bad?

I'm so tired of seeing all the blog posts and comments that think our problems are due to Trump and Republicans instead of taking a look at our own "progressive" party. Sure, Trump and the GOP are fucked up, but so are the Dems and the tech community seemed perfectly fine fawning over our "tech president" when he was bailing out the billionaires, expanding state surveillance powers, and ordering the murder of thousan…

The biggest thing against Hillary, geopolitically, was her hawkishness and the posture against a nuclear Russia. Obama-Putin was very rocky. Hillary-Putin would have been an abysmal and possibly dangerous relationship.

Avoiding a hot war in Eastern Europe is worth the people affected by the new immigration bans.

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#39

Personally, I find this "turn to anger" a little hollow/self-serving. Nothing Trump has done so far is in any way out of line with what he was saying on the campaign trail - the only people who are surprised by his actions are the people who took a "he's not being serious, it's just talk" view when evaluating his speeches. I wish SV companies and executives could have had this "turn to anger" back when it mattered an…

The biggest problem is that the Dems could only offer a hawk who had issues getting along with Putin. I would have held my breath if she entered office while Putin was still in power. That and her globalist outlook (even if later she tried to pretend to become anti-globalist.)

There was really no good choice and it became a choice of the least bad and the guy who won at least isn't afraid to say he's looking out for Americans whereas Hillary was more timid about looking out for the average Joe and Sue.

Re: Silicon Valley's Ambivalence Towards Trump Turns to Anger

#40
post #5

All talk no action. This is the definition of 'for show'. If they wanted, the ultra rich valley billionaires and companies could affect real change by leveraging their power. But these are the same companies and people who tacitly approved of Trump and did nothing to stop his election, or even try to educate people. I'm looking at Google, who are now trying to woo Republicans !

twitter couldve banned trump months ago and his career would be over. but they know he brings them so much money/traffic they would never do it. as thiel said, they were working for him the entire time.
Post reply on HN