Slashdot Mirror
Why Republicans Won't Retake Silicon Valley
An anonymous reader writes "Republican consultant Patrick Ruffini, who counts Google as one of his clients, sketches out a way that the GOP could 'win back' Silicon Valley — but he gets smacked down by tech businessman Francis Cianfrocca. 'Patrick's basic thesis is that the VC firms that fund the Valley will rebel at being regulated by [Treasury Secretary] Tim Geithner, who is talking about increasing reporting requirements for both private equity and venture capital. Assuming I understand them both correctly, something tells me that neither Geithner nor Ruffini understand deeply what venture capital is all about.'"
The GOP just needs to embrace that aspect of the party more.
but let's summarize the summary. A political guy says people will come to his side because they wont like what a politician from the other side will do. A business guy says both political guys are clueless. What makes this a Republican issue? Sounds like a politicians are stupid issue. (And I already knew that.)
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
You know I have politics blocked from my slashdot front page for a reason.
Any thing with GOP in the title is without a doubt politics.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Looks like fascism.
Smells like fascism.
Acts like fascism.
Nawww... Its Republicans and Democrats usual interference. Its "FREEE MARKET!!!"*
*with collusion from govt.
The "business as usual" thing is what got us all into this economic mess in the first place. I don't see what the problem is with a little more regulation of all things financial. Sure, it may suck for a little while, but it's the price we have to pay for 30+ years of financial shenanigans.
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
...something tells me that neither Geithner nor Ruffini understand deeply what venture capital is all about.
Ponzi schemes... Duh!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Actual venture capitalists are relatively few, and their business reporting practices obscured from the average citizen's eye. High-five/six-figure-salaried software engineers who'll have to pay their "fair share" of Obama's triple-the-national-debt package sooner or later (since, like all rich people, they obviously lied/cheated/murdered the lower classes to get where they are) are probably more common. Even in These Perilous Economic Times (tm).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Whew, it's been a while since I saw a story on Slashdot that made me feel good about being a Democrat and patted me on the back for my beliefs. For a while, I almost started thinking for myself. I'm glad this got posted today (especially after the big blow to PirateBay that depressed me all morning...viva la piracy!).
I'm not convinced that the overall political leaning of Silicon Valley has anything to do with the respective benefits of the parties on the industry. Rather, it just so happens that the industry is made up, largely, of people who live in a pretty liberal area. Silicon Valley leaned Republican back when California, itself, leaned Republican, and hasn't leaned that way since. I live in an southeast red state, and by straw poll, the people involved in the tech industry here have politics that pretty heavily reflect the general population.
Silicon Valley isn't up for grabs because San Francisco isn't up for grabs.
that the "us vs them" bullshit is ruining america in every measurable sense?
There's full blown media war between fox (right) and msnbc (left), and the victims are anybody with the ability to absorb two opinions, then form their own.
If you are registered voter for either party, you are a follower, a simpleton, and are part of the problem.
Vote for the MAN, not the PARTY.
Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated that they, and only they, understand things like economics, the military, and science. Republicans successfully deregulated the banking industry. Republicans gave unquestioning support for the military. Republicans were the lone voice speaking out against immoral, dangerous and unproven stem cell and evolution based "science". Republicans, and only Republicans, will be able to meet the challenges of the next decade. Vote Republican, because we rule.
It's what he thinks someone might possibly someday do (this all seems to be premised on something Geithner said as a brief aside). Must be a slow news day.
How is this a troll? Its kind of a tough position for someone living on either a) Mommy and Daddy's money, b) Subsidized student loans, or c) Scholarships to be truly libertarian. Yet middle class white kids do take that hypocritical position while undergrads fairly often. Seems like a fair thing to point out.
My Babylon
of ted stevens, unfortunately the complexity of the tubes seem unnavigable at this time.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Still, come that first Tuesday in November individuals step up to a little private booth and selects their electoral choices. My bet is that a minority of them understand or hold a strong opinion on federal policy as it pertains to venture capital. If past California elections are any indication turnout and passion will be driven by some gut emotional issue and the election will be a "Southpark" style fiasco with both sides of hot button issues behaving like spoiled toddlers.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
It's hard to take seriously an article that makes no mention of Sarbanes-Oxley, which effectively closed the IPO market for venture funded start-ups.
Whichever party cracks that door back open has a shot at winning big supporters from Silicon Valley.
Apolitical? Research donations online, it's easy enough to do. Venture capitalist contributions are large, and in the last election cycle went about 2 to 1 in favor of Democrats.
Could that go to 1 to 1, or even 1 to 2, in favor of Republicans? Certainly, it's up for grabs. Every day employment falls in Silicon Valley, even more so.
All the government really wants to figure out is what the ???'s mean in "Step 3: ???;Step 4: Profit!"
There's no plausible reason I've heard or can think of to regulate VCs more closely. They don't pose any systemic risk in the way that lending, derivatives, or insurance can. They're one manifestation of the big virtue in a sea of mixed issues with capitalism: entrepreneurship. If you lose, you lose your money, the business ceases to exist. If you win, you make money (potentially lots of money) creating and selling a viable business. That's it. No bailouts. Investors lose, people may lose jobs, but there's nothing else for anybody to do. All the arguments for regulation that make a certain amount of sense in other sectors tend don't seem to apply well here.
Heck, even if VCs for some reason COULD pose systemic risk, it's a small enough part of the economy (yearly less than what we're probably going to end up loaning to the auto industry) that it probably still wouldn't.
Tweet, tweet.
The Republicans won't take Silly Valley just because of simple demographics.
In Santa Clara County, 36.8% of the population is foreign-born. 49.8% of the population 5 years or older speaks a language other than English at home. 39.1% of the population is non-Hispanic white, 29.6% is Asian, 25.4% is Hispanic. 43.9% of the population 25 or over are college graduates.
The Bush era GOP embraced the religious lunatics so much that the rest of America were eventually turned off by them and kicked them out of office. Like any ousted party, their ONLY role in life is to get back into power, which means fooling enough people who they'd turned off before to vote for them again. For this, they will try what the polls tell them they need to try, regardless of their real plans when they get back into power. Those plans will no doubt fall back to mirror the religious lunatics who can be relied on to "vote God". The same applies with the party in power, their ONLY goal is to stay in power. Beyond that, everything is false promises and rhetoric.
I used to think the GOP were all about the rich, conservative middle / upper classes who seek to be allowed to profit from everything without any limitations, and let the poor carry the tax burden. I used to believe the Democrats were a slightly more socialist version of the GOP. I used to think Obamma would be willing to change a few things in the balance of corporation / government / people, but the more I see his decisions, the more I was right to think that the system IS broken and needs to be changed in favor of the tax paying US people.
Politicians deal in speeches. Speeches talk AT the people, not WITH them. Speeches are pre-planned rhetoric carefully worded to mean many things to many audiences as well as written FOR a specific audience. Speeches are rehearsed and performed; not unlike actors on stage in a play. Actors play roles which are not them, doing stuff they wouldn't do, saying stuff they wouldn't say. It's performance lying....and politicians wonder why they are never believed.
The eastern wing of the Republican party used to be a vibrant home of mavericks, statesmen, and swing voters. Now how many Congressmen and Senators from the entire northeast US are Republicans? And those pitiful numbers may decline even further in 2010.
The first priority of the RNC should be restoring the vitality of the moderate wings of the party, especially on the two coasts. To make this happen, they need to take the party back from the talk show crowd, the party litmus tests and RINO gybes, and fundamentalist "God, Guns, and (anti) Gays" posturing of the last 15 years or so. Not that those folks don't belong in the party, but they should be a constituency (think of anti-war protesters and civil rights activists on the Democratic side) and not as the prime movers.
If you strongly identify with the Democrats decrying Republicans or the Republicans decrying the Democrats, could you please just re-examine why you're allowing either of the two dominant political parties control you like a mindless sheep. These guys are pretty much all liars and using you. Until Americans think for themselves and hold office holders of all parties responsible for their actions, all the rest of this is cheering at a football game and useless for solving real problems.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about liberal kids who've never had to work a day in their lives at a serious job and seen entire double digit percentages of the money they need to live on getting taken away to pay for the government programs they support. It's easy to be a socialist when you aren't one of the productive members of society paying for the socialist state.
In my experience, geeks are generally in favor of civil liberties, but also in favor of significant government provision of public services, such as high-speed rail, NASA, and funding for the National Science Foundation. Many also support significant regulation of markets, such as more vigorous enforcement of antitrust law, and institution of net-neutrality rules.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Maybe they would have a chance. After all, silicon valley has lots of well off people who probably don't like getting taxed. I personally would prefer some compromise between democratic, republican and liberetarian philosophies on economy. I think all of them have a point and any extreme fails in real world.
However, to join the republican party, you have to subscribe to the whole package - particular brand of Christianity, social values, pot prohibition, use of torture, prosperity for starting wars, support for outsourcing, global warming denial. 90% of silicon valley residents would find at least one part of the thing more objectionable than paying a little more taxes in exchange for government leaving your private life alone and reining in your employer to some degree. Most immigrants are Hindu, Buddist or agnostic rather than Christian. For that reason alone, they would be inclined to support party whose nominee includes them in the inauguration speech rather than one who is pushing another religion.
http://zombo.com/
I think Cianfrocca is right. The next tech bubble is going to be this so-called "greentech", which is highly dependent on government regulation and subsidies. The last bubble (internet and software) had very little to do with manufacturing physical product and, hence, real science and engineering. It attracted many "fluff" people (who tend to vote liberal-left). The greentech bubble will attract many more of these fluff people.
Also, the finance people have changed as well. The original VC's (of the 70's and 80's) were successful entrepreneurs. The big seachange was in the 90's when the investment banks and financial MBA types got into the game. Often being of East coast "blue blood" pedigree, these people tend to have a more East coast liberal outlook.
If people like you really did win then it is the end of hope.
What can I say to such a towering intellect and example of open mindedness?
Too bad I actually think that the president is doing an okay job. Not great but okay and that I tell a lot of people on the right that they are being unfair to judge him yet since he really is just getting started.
I just hate all politics on slashdot. Right and left... In fact posts like yours are why I hate any political post on Slashdot.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Whoa whoa whoa, this "sound fiscal move" of yours to actually try and turn around the deficit sure sounds like "socialism" to me. Why should we spread the wealth to our creditors?! It's our money now!
Giving our money away...who do you think we are, China?
I'd like to bring the idea of venture capital firms into focus for a minute, and I think it may be important to Slashdot.
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/04/asleep_at_the_wheel_of_creativ_2.html
It *is* harvard business school, so perhaps a grain of salt is required.
Although others may not agree with me, there is an important point in both the Democrat article linked by the summary and in the link above: Venture Capital is not a systemic risk to the financial system. Why? The articles disagree on that point, but I tend to think they are not doing what they are supposed to, and the reason why they aren't might be worthy of a moment of cogitation (or whatever).
Haque makes the argument that one major reason the downturn has been so bad is that VCs have not done what they are supposed to for the last 15-odd years: Invest in risky technology and bring in the new companies/ideas as the old ones crumble, not try to be completely safe and make a a gazillion dollars! The new technologies, processes, and ideas that are supposed to sweep in and replace the old broken ones (is there anyone to replace GM, Ford, and Chrysler, for instance?) are not here, they're 5-10 years out, such as Tesla Motors. Venture capital is supposed to be the creative force behind our economy (please argue with me here), while the market determines the worth of the product created and ultimately leads to the destruction of companies that do not pass muster.
The reason we had this bubble is because there was no real blockbusters worth investing in. Something had to be mocked up to look like a good investment, not only Real Estate, but things like social networking sites. There was even a recent Slashdot article, I believe, on Facebook's issues. Why are we pouring money into things like this (I'll cover my opinion on that in a moment)?
Haque's argument also states that America was the only really booming economy in the world for the last 100 years because it was the only real venture capital country. I'm not sure I completely agree (it's obviously more complicated than that) but I wonder if the point isn't partly true. By deciding to not take big risks in technology and science, by not funding the education necessary for people to actually take those risks, and by creating a culture where style matters over substance, perhaps the state of Venture Capital firms (and even silicon valley) is a reflection of the mindset that has led to the current economy.
In that regard, I'm not sure any political party should really want to control them. How innovative are they really going to be without visionaries willing to take big risks for their visions?
Yes, I know there are visionary benefactors out there, but if there's a discussion to be had surrounding VCs should we tie it back into innovation since this is Slashdot?
Are there any people here involved marginally with VC (I know I have been recently and have a story for another post) that can give us some perspective?
-
samefag
These are two very different entities. 'Venture Capital' supplies risk capital to start up firms and should be left alone. The private equity groups that need regulating are the ones who scraped the low risk mortgage-backed paper out of the banking system, leaving them with the garbage. We need to know who these people are, what they are up to, and whether there is any collusion between them and the banking industry.
Unfortunately, we don't have a good way of separating the VC investors from the bad guys in a legal or regulatory sense. From the law's point of view, they are all private equity. So the VC people are going to have to open their books to the point that regulators can see that they are not in fact fiddling around with screwball securities schemes. Or benefiting from bank bailouts. More regulation and/or reporting requirements are never welcomed by any group without reservations. But the VC investors should welcome the opportunity to distance itself from these other 'investors'.
Have gnu, will travel.
you sound like a fag
Psycho-Sociologists refer to it as "The Ayn Rand Phase."
From the article:
"Good luck creating Twitter or Facebook in any industry as tightly regulated as the auto or banking sectors in the Age of Obama. (...) Virtually every successful technology startup in the last 20 years has been funded through VCs..."
Wasn't Twitter founded without VCs? Hmmm...
m
Is there any Silicon in "Silicon Valley" anymore? I saw a really bad James Bond movie from the 80's where the evil plot was to flood Silicon Valley. The Villain said that would wipe out 85% of the semiconductor industry. How much is there now? Would anybody care?
What is exactly does the Republican Party stand for these days? I know fiscal restraint and states rights are out of vogue now so, seriously, besides their hatred of Obama, how can you tell a Republican from a Democrat?
You are totally blocking my view of the wall. - Dogbert
The sooner they get out of our faces, the sooner we can forget how much they hate America.
Until then, I doubt they'll do well anywhere, except for states that still have low education levels and gullible fools willing to vote against their own economic interests.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The University of California, Berkeley is one of the cheapest public universities you can attend. For that reason, claiming that only rich kids go to Berkeley, or simply comparing them to the peers that go to Harvard is not only a stretch, but a lie. Many students I know at Berkeley (yes, I am a research associate there) are paying their way through college, since it's actually quite affordable.
Everyone I've ever met who is a Libertarian is either in it for the guns, for the dope, the right to drive like an asshole without getting ticketed, or is just plain batshit crazy. It's just another special interest group.
Silicon Valley votes for competence, the ability to deliver, and little else. There have been rising stars, like Tom Campbell. But Republicans have more or less disowned them as they sink into their own self-made mess of incompetence, corruption, and general ridiculousness.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
We, the people, form a government to protect our rights. Like our rights to compete in a market. Without that government opposing business monopolies and otherwise policing the market, it looks like the market in Mogadishu, Somalia. Ron Paul should run for office there - or consultant to a warlord, which is what people like him do for a living in "libertarian" societies.
--
make install -not war
Whow Would Jews Vote For.
Nope, they don't. They just do things like amass huge amounts of wealth by inventing the PC, Internet search engines, and iPods. What is it that the conservatives do again? Oh yeah; start wars, invent Walmart, inhale exhaust fumes at NASCAR. I'll go ahead and remain a hippie, thanks. Ya'll can keep Sarah Palin and Heidi Montag!
Silicon Valley will never be a GOP stronghold, because creative people are rarely conservative. And this town is fueled by creative people, because without them it would no longer be Silicon Valley.
What a tool.
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
The "business as usual" thing is what got us all into this economic mess in the first place. I don't see what the problem is with a little more regulation of all things financial. Sure, it may suck for a little while, but it's the price we have to pay for 30+ years of financial shenanigans.
I keep seeing this silly meme... about how deregulation is the problem in finance. You are aware that finance is by far the most heavily regulated business sector in America, right? All those thousands and thousands of pages of regulations didn't stop this, so we need... more regulation?
Specifically, tell me what was de-regulated that caused the housing implosion? The repeal of Glass-Steagall? That simply let bank holding companies (that's regular banks, to most folks) buy and sell stocks and bonds... which is what they're doing now anyway, now that banks bought out all the big finance firms... with the blessing of both the Bush and Obama Administrations.
So, tell me which particular de-regulation did this again?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
when you see someone get "-1 insightful" all the time.
We need something to filter posts and ignore the downmods, if nothing else for things approaching politics where the left wing downmods sensible posts as "troll" to enforce the groupthink.
Apparently he can't understand the tax code. And he runs the treasury...
From the prepare-for-pudge-rage dept
That tag doesn't really apply here. Or at least, not to this specific discussion. Pudge keeps his political discussions to his journal, where he can squelch a long list of people he disagrees with. If he posted here, those people could reply to him and point out the problems in his arguments.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Other people have pointed out the problem that the 5% figure leads to in this case, and the problem that many of the ultra-rich did work pretty hard. I'll point out something different, but which I think is more important: you're implicitly assuming that how much somebody's paid should depend on how hard they work. That would be a really, really bad thing to do, because it provides a perverse incentive for working hard instead of working smart.
This is not to say that there aren't plenty of good arguments against the concentration of wealth that prevails in our society. All I mean here is that the one you're using here sucks.
Are you adequate?
"extreme political views of all stripes are most often held by those whose beliefs have not yet been challenged by real-world experience."
I'm with you.
"Most often this is due to youth and inexperience,"
You lost me.
Might be more true of libertarians and liberals, but have you looked at some of the raving Neo-Con lunatics on TV? Most of them are old gasbags with lots of the wrong kind of life experiences.
"that's good old-fashioned left-liberal."
No way. He/She is a social libertarian/fiscal liberal.
I myself know an anarcho-capitalist that doesn't go to college because he can't fund it himself, and because he adamantly refuses to take federal aid as he would be taking far more than he has paid into the system with.
Presumably we're talking about a smart person here, given that Anarcho-capitalists tend to be smart (if somewhat blinkered). What about scholarships?
What's their objection to loans? They're a pretty big staple of standard capitalism, often allowing both parties to profit if they're done in good faith.
There's also a lot of education options that are considerably more affordable than, say, Stanford or Harvard. At the community/state college level, you can find options that are affordable enough to manage working part-time (full-time summers) and going to school.
All in all, I don't think that not wanting to take state-funded grants is a particularly strong excuse for avoiding college.
Tweet, tweet.
They just don't believe that government and society are the same thing.
Which is one of the problematic elements of the philosophy. By the time you have a sufficiently organized society -- even one that only does the main things libertarians claim they want it limited to -- you have something that's essentially government, even if it doesn't fit the concept of the modern state. In short, Libertarianism seems very much like it'd like to have society without any societal impositions, and it's pretty reasonable to doubt that's even possible.
Obviously you can have degrees to which a society imposes on its individual members, and I agree with the idea that it's worth working to minimize that. The problem is if you also want to curb the degree to which individuals can impose on each other, you have inevitable tension between those two principles. So far, I haven't seen a stripe of Libertarianism that acknowledges and engages that problem effectively.
Tweet, tweet.
Why assume Geithner will dig deeper? Maybe he'll just continue the liberal anti-business, anti-rich meme and go after VC on principle.
Hmm... Francis Cianfrocca... Now where have I heard that name before...? Oh yes, a Francis Cianfrocca was the original author of the EventMachine library for Ruby, a reactor pattern library similar to Python's Twisted. The library is seeing wider and wider use in the Ruby community, given that it's fast, efficient, and has a well-designed API. Any relation, or is such a name rather more common than I expect? Or could he even be the same guy?
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Libertarians are almost always people who are well off and don't like the idea of helping those who weren't dealt as good a hand as they were.
You can sum up libertarianism as: Fuck everyone else, if you're poor, it's their your fault.
It's an easy and cheap conceit to think that just because some folks think the government ought to refrain from doing something, to think that those people object to it being done at all.
It allows folks like you to think that they're kinder and better than those they oppose. It's a cheap ego trick you play on yourself.
Folks that believe government ought to stay out of charity think this: There are fundamental, critical problems associated with governments carrying out charity work, problems that private charities do not suffer from.
When you say folks like me think 'fuck the poor', you're showing a certain lack of depth, you're implying you cannot fathom that we think there are very important reasons that the work is best done by folks other than the government. (We do put our money where our mouth is, as you'll find if you search for political association and charitable giving.)
Now I'm not a libertarian, but I certainly share some beliefs with them, and this particular conceit of yours is worth addressing.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
When you decide to take an anti-intellectual approach to politics you're going to, surprise, lose the intellectuals.
I regard a man in his area of expertise, and no further. A professor of English literature is the one to talk to about Shakespeare, an oncologist is one to consult with about cancer, and a veteran mechanic is the guy I talk to about why I have to rev my wife's car to 5k rpm to start it after a cold night.
When folks say the right is anti-intellectual, they are really deriding us for not giving collateral credit for being 'smart' to areas outside one's demonstrated expertise.
If you've spent 10 years studying or working in a particular field, and have demonstrated mastery of that field, then you're my guy for all concerns in that field. Outside of that field, their opinion is quite frankly just another opinion.
You'll notice that I repeatedly emphasized demonstrated competence. The reason for this is because we've tended to confuse 'articulate' and 'competent' in the public scene lately. When you have shown, by way of doing, that you can manage something, you are worth listening to on that subject, no matter how rough your speech. When you've never even attempted a particular task, all your grand theories and fine speeches are at best gum-flapping, at worst sophistry.
Sounding intelligent, sounding brilliant, sounding cultured, etc, is a particular set of grammatical patterns and delivery style. It is a skill that is to be regarded in it's own right. Unfortunately, many folks in society think that sounding intelligent is the same as knowing a damn thing.
It's not. Bonafide competence and fantastic delivery occasionally travel together in a person, but quite often not.
When you realize this, you will understand that calling the right 'Anti-intellectual' is merely a cheap seduction. It's along the lines of "Hey, come join us, we've got all the smart people, and you'll get credit for being smart by hanging out with us." Actual thought is optional, the association with 'the intellectuals' is sufficient for the tawdry temptation to be successful.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
No, you're putting too much effort to try and get your party name in there. Liberal (at least in the classical sense, and I did take care to specify "old-fashioned") implies both leftist economic and - surprisingly enough - liberal social policy.
I am trolling
"When folks say the right is anti-intellectual, they are really deriding us for not giving collateral credit for being 'smart' to areas outside one's demonstrated expertise."
If only. No, the right is derided as being anti-intellectual because right-wingers will demand that their ideology trump knowledge. Think about: evolution, global warming, the health care debate, importance of financial regulation, importance of environmental regulation, matters of constitutional law, and these are just off the top of my head. In every single issue above right-wing ideology has been proven wrong by those with demonstrated expertise on the issue at hand (sole exception above: 2nd amendment where it's the liberals who are blinded by ideology). Exactly how many times do you guys have to be proven so badly wrong before we get to call you what you are?
they get the origination and securitization fee
they dont give a fuck about the terms of the loan as long as there is a buyer for the securities.
The parent post was brought to you by the Democratic National Committee and the Ad Council.
It is time to start ignoring posts about political parties. Nearly everyone here is just using it as an excuse to paint themselves in a perfect light, while painting anyone who disagrees with them as an unreasonable extremist freak. But then, this would be what political parties were designed to do. Too bad no one cares about real issues.
Most of them are old gasbags with lots of the wrong kind of life experiences.
I don't think it's entirely explained by inexperience, nor by "wrong" experience.
I think it's much better explained by making an opinion a part of one's identity. Once an opinion is part of one's identity, it will act as a filter for any facts that may contradict it.
I recognized that some of my opinions needed to be changed fairly early on, and I think I avoided making them too much a part of my identity to change. However, I recognize that some of my opinions did become a part of my identity, so I still need to be careful when acting on them.
If someone appears irrational the best thing to do is recognize two things:
1. They have probably made the opinion a part of their identity, and may be using unsound arguments to support it.
2. If the person is otherwise intelligent, there is probably some underlying validity to their position.
In other words, their argument might not be sound, but their position be valid.
A good test for yourself is to pick a few controversial topics that you have strong opinions about. For each one, try to imagine what facts would need to change for you to change positions.
Sometimes you'll find that quite reasonable adjustments in statistics or facts, some of which you might not know with much precision anyway, could cause you to switch sides.
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
Until then, I doubt they'll do well anywhere, except for states that still have low education levels and gullible fools willing to vote against their own economic interests.
No, they'll continue doing great among the Real Americans who know that far from a nation founded upon freedom and diversity America is really all about the white evangelical Christians who live in rural areas.
Also, liberals are just as bad.
There, now that that's out of the way, we don't have to work through the tired and increasingly predictable responses from libertarians/conservatives.