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Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

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Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#81

Post by confidantlake »

zozbot234 wrote: post #73
confidantlake wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but in my personal view social sciences are not really sciences at all. They have a largely ideological component. I expect there to be disagreements there. On the other hand denying hard sciences seems much worse.

> Agreed, but in my personal view social sciences are not really sciences at all. That's quite wrong. Even as we speak, hundreds of millions of people are being lifted out of poverty, thanks in no small part to the gradual adoption of saner policies based in the social sciences. That's not "ideology", it's real results.

Agree, I am having trouble expressing my thoughts correctly here. Maybe what I mean to say is describing a physical properties of our universe is much simpler than understanding social systems. Therefore these ideas tend to get simplified and you hear things like "communism is good" or "capitalism is good". It becomes more about tribal identity than scientific inquiry.

But I concede that in other instances better policies based on social sciences are helping us tremendously.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#82

Post by radicalbyte »

Are "we" backing these candidates because of their social policies, or because they're going to be the best leaders at this critical point in the fight against the climate collapse?

As a group tech workers are highly educated in the STEM fields. We understand the science and accept the conclusions. So we know what we need to do.

That and Warren in particular is positioned as being so fantastically competent that it's very easy to see our group getting behind her.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#84

Post by jdjdjjsjs »

Smaller tech companies will almost certainly be better for workers.

More competitive companies mean more demand for workers and higher salaries for workers.

More competition also likely means more innovation and better prices and more choices for customers.

The only people possibly losing out even slightly are the preexisting owners.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#85

Post by spamizbad »

sedeki wrote: post #2

Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.

Let’s take the industry out of the equation: if you asked someone who studies political demographics what the likely politics of someone who is under-40, urban-dwelling with a STEM education, who generally work with (and/or for) immigrants... they wouldn’t hesitate to say left-leaning.

The industry’s youth and location alone are going to skew political demographics leftward no matter what.

And purely anecdotal... but I’ve noticed younger right wingers to be less enthralled by capitalism and market economics.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#86

Post by adrr »

recursivecaveat wrote: post #36

Pretty telling that the idea of voting against one's own financial self-interest, even as a single part of a large platform, is a wild idea to these business journalists.

Having a few large companies that have colluded to keep salaries down by having no poaching agreements doesn’t seem it’s good for tech workers. Having a bunch of companies and a competitive labor market is much better for tech workers.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#87

Post by m4nu3l »

geofft wrote: post #21
sedeki wrote: post #2

Can someone explain why SV tech workers are more left-wing to me as an outsider? I always thought these tech workers were more libertarian.

As a left-leaning tech worker, I don't have a more satisfying answer for you than that I think the left-wing position is correct (realistic, just, etc.) Part of why it's surprising, I suppose, is the presumption that those making lots of money would tend to be libertarian, since libertarian principles (lower taxes, lower regulation, etc.) would yield higher profits. But I believe tech workers (myself included) make t…

As a moderate Libertarian tech worker I would have to give the same answer. I hold my position not just because I don't want to pay too many taxes, but because I find the position to be the correct one.

I think that pay has very little to do with effort of the worker. As you mentioned, lot of people work harder and put more effort while making less money than others. IMO the argument that effort should be used as a measure for pay can easily be invalidated with this reductio ad absurdum: If you pay me for the effort I put on my work I would make more money by carrying a heavy rock back and forth all day than to work on most of the jobs available today.

As economy theory goes, labor is a commodity and, as such, subject to the law of supply and demand. That's really it, there is no other way at the moment to assign salaries. Yes you can reduce inequality with taxation. But there is an inverse correlation between taxation an economic growth, even though there are some exceptions.

My thoughts on automation are that, yes, automation displaces jobs, but it also reduce prices (not just of the final products but those of capital goods used to produce them too), so, while I don't know how a close-to fully automated society will look like I'm sure resources will still need be allocated based on demand from consumers and the economic output will be limited, hence there will still be a concept of markets and currencies. My guess is that Capitalism will be partially automated itself. We will probably need some limited redistribution for those that initially own no shares in automated companies, allowing them to live and invest in these, or to buy automation capital goods to create new automated companies.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#88

Post by methodover »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #48
malvosenior wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's generational. SV in the Gen X era was highly libertarian. The Millenials in SV seem to be mostly left wing or even socialist. Broadly speaking that is, exceptions abound.

A lot of social democrats start out as libertarians and then move left once they see the bigger picture of power dynamics beyond the individual.

This was my experience as well. Started off as a libertarian. But then I started working, first in the lobbying industry, then in Silicon Valley.

Meritocracy is not as good an idea as it seems to be in practice.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#89

Post by rayiner »

ajross wrote: post #74
mc32 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>”What a crazy idea, voting against your own interest. gasp!” I know you mean it differently but people in the middle class get accused of voting against their interests and it’s said as something negative in their political choices.

Only in the same sense that's happening here, though. I assume you're talking about takes like "Why don't working class white voters vote for democrats?", which isn't fundamentally any different as I see it. It's a legitimate question, and the answers (in both cases) tell us things about how politics work in a way that simple analysis doesn't. And FWIW: as far as tone, this one seems more "accusatory" to me. There's…

The tone is accusatory because usually there is a classist dimension to the question. Why does a high income tech worker vote Democrat when that would cause her own taxes to go up? The question implies noble intent on the part of the tech worked: because it’s better for society as a whole. We don’t extend that charitable interpretation to the blue collar worker in Iowa. Why do they vote Republican even though Democrats are promising them government benefits? We don’t charitably assume it’s because they believe it’s better for the country in the long run. We assume it’s because they’re easily manipulated or too dumb to understand what’s in their own interest.

Re: Tech Workers Backing Candidates Looking to Break Up Their Employers

#90

Post by zozbot234 »

claudeganon wrote: post #68
zozbot234 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth taxes are actually bad for society, and especially bad for altruistic people who care about the less fortunate. A wealth tax is a tax on capital, period - and making capital more expensive hurts everyone, but it hugely hurts those who need capital the most. If you care about lowering inequality without hurting folks more than you have to, what you want is a mildly-progressive consumption tax. (I.e. an income t…

> Wealth taxes are actually bad for society, and especially bad for altruistic people who care about the less fortunate. Maybe instead of depending on the sporadic largesse of billionaires and all the awful political and economic consequences that come along with that kind of wealth concentration, we can have a functioning safety net, like the rest of the developed world.

You can have a functioning safety net and pay for it via a progressive consumption tax. That's actually what most Western countries outside of the U.S. seem to do, broadly speaking. Some countries even tried out a wealth tax, like France - they had to reverse it real quick because the unintended effects were so dismal.
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