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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.'"
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.
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.
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Seriously, that's me exactly. It doesn't fit the usual labels, so I call it "game theory politics." Namely, preserve people's rights to the utmost practical limit, and have government only involve itself in programs that would otherwise fail due to game theory considerations. Example: building roads is really bad if left to the individual to do ad-hoc. Building a space program requires such massive collaboration that it will never happen if left to individuals. People generally want clear air - but aren't willing to unilaterally buy a cleaner car if others won't. We all know that taxes are necessary to some extent, but try like hell to minimize our own burdens.
To me, all those examples are where the majority of the individuals want a given outcome, but nobody wants to take the first step. Government is good at fixing that. Problems that a person can, could, or should solve on their own, no thanks. In particular, I really hate "the government is your daddy" taxes, and would opt out of Social Security in a second if I could.
Plenty of research shows that high education level and liberal political positions are well correlated. As far as what causative relationships might be responsible for this correlation, we can only speculate.
Out of curiosity, how much time have you actually spent with Harvard undergrads? The ones I knew, particularly the rich-prick types, tended toward libertarianism - they expected to be at the top of the economic pile and liked philosophies that said they deserved it. The scolarship types, who got there by being smart and hard working, understood that they also got there thanks to the help of the society of which they were a part, and tended toward liberalism.