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From Apple To Xbox, Tech Companies Lean Left
Velcroman1 writes "Only a week to election time! How does tech feel about politics? If you guessed liberal, you're right: Big Tech leans left. 'They're dominated by coastal people who tend to be more liberal,' says Jim Taylor, a management consultant who writes about the business of psychology. 'Also, those in Big Tech tend to be educated in the better schools, which lean left. Big Tech skews younger and hipper [and favors] social and environmental issues. Their political values trump financial concerns at the organizational culture level and the missions of many firms, especially those that are new media.' For example, Marissa Mayer, known as 'the face of Google,' gave $30,400 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2009. In fact, of the top 10 contributions made by Google in 2009, only one — by CEO Eric Schmidt — was to the Republican National Committee. Facebook has donated almost exclusively to Democratic candidates, according to Transparency Data, including $1,000 to California Sen. Barbara Boxer a year ago, and more recently, almost $5,000 to Richard Blumenthal, who is running for senator in Connecticut."
Lean is the key word. A lot of tech people are libertarian and republican. This post is just trying to trump up vitriol due to the midterms.
Remember that liberals are usually the loudest, so you think there's more of them.
if the donation is made by an individual, no matter how high ranking, then does it really indicate how the company would behave?
In Alabama we still subscribe to the One Drop Rule. Surely at least that basic principle is universally accepted, right?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I don't vote.
I didn't vote for McCain, because we'd have ended up with crazy crap like federal funding for abstinence only sex education, overt legal battles to maintain Don't Ask Don't Tell when the judiciary has deemed it unconstitutional, and the gutting of major NASA programs. And all this while multinational corporations buy more and more legislation in their favor to protect their "IP."
I didn't vote for Obama and I got the same thing.
I didn't vote for a third party candidate because not voting is just as effective.
I didn't vote for local representatives because my locality is heavily set as democratic, and no one else ever wins anything.
It's not voter apathy. It's voter impotence.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
...in other words, the Democrats are neither liberal in any proper sense of the word, not "left" except in relation to the Republicans. From a European perspective, both big US parties used to be barely distinguishable, far off in the mist on the the right. Of course, the NeoCons and the Tea Parties have dragged the Republicans even further away, and the Democrats have followed more slowly, thus widening the distance. But that does not make the Democrats "left".
Stephan
No. Every single party/candidate fits along these lines in many ways.
For example, the libertarian party believes in maximizing both economic and personal freedom.
Candidates such as Palin might want to increase economic freedoms in some areas but want to bring the state into many personal issues.
Based on Obama's actions, he has wanted to decrease economic freedom and keep the level of personal freedoms roughly the same.
The green party wants to increase personal freedoms while limiting economic freedoms to better the environment.
Etc.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Want to get money and influence peddling out of the hands of feds? Pass a Constitutional Amendment to strip Congress of the Commerce Clause, relying on state's rights instead.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Even then its a hopelessly skewed way to view things.
Can't we just...STOP talking about whole groups of people we in reality know nothing about and instead talk about concrete issues and individuals.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Conversley here in South America, everyone claims to be be of pure European descent(I guess they have been fucking their cousins for the last three hundred years to keep the race pure. So the one drop rule here means if you have one drop of European blood, you have to be white. I am a Colombian Cajun mix(cajun side being Sicilian settlers in Thibodaux) and before I excepted my present employment here in Colombia I was offered a relative high paying job in the Bay Area, but turned it down. I kept being accused of being a southerner when I spoke English and when I spoke spanish it was "you speak great english for a Mexican". I found everyone on the West Coast assumed every Latino was a Mexican.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
A more accurate statement about tech companies would probably be that at least until recently they were largely apolitical. They gave very little money, compared to their size and other companies, to politicians. It has been increasing, because politicians have been increasingly meddling (for good or for ill). MS is an interesting study in this. Prior to their anti-trust deal they gave only a token amount to either party, now they give quite a bit. Makes sense if you think about it, the government started bothering them, at the behest of their competitors. Now right or wrong on that, it let them know that they needed more influence, and so they set out to get it.
In general though, tech companies seem to donate a hell of a lot less. They just aren't as interested in buying off politicians it seems. Perhaps because they don't need to, perhaps because they are younger companies, I don't know.
Not really a bad thing if you asked me, I think companies out to stay out of politics, but there you go.
Which has nothing to do with left or right. That would be authoritarianism.
In reality it is more like enforced personal responsibility, since those who do not leave it to the rest of us to pay for their medical care. Do you also oppose mandatory Car Insurance?
And as someone else pointed out above, there are at least two more:
Neither of these is likely to be a hot button political issue at the national level except when somebody does something catastrophically stupid like going into Vietnam or Iraq, but still, they represent distinct differences in opinion. And while we're at it, I might as well add:
That's a particularly interesting one because both liberals and conservatives are deeply divided on this issue. It's not enough to say whether you're in favor of choosing life or allowing others to choose to take a life. You must say whether that applies to everyone or only to fetuses that have committed no crime yet. So we're up to seven politically independent dimensions so far, and counting.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If I know voting makes no difference whatsoever, then I know not voting makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.
That's cowardly, lazy justification. Do you really want to screw with some political types? Get a thousand people like yourself to show up and turn in blank ballots. Vote "none of the above". It'll never happen, but can you imagine what would happen if 80% of voters said that everyone running sucks and that none of them deserve support?
If that doesn't sway you, consider that you're fulfilling your own prophecy of third-party irrelevance by not voting for them. If everyone who was eligible to vote but didn't like either major party showed up and picked a third-party candidate at random, I guarantee you that the next election cycle would look a lot different.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
What you probably mean is that the traditional left-right scale would have one side being authoritarian in some issues but libertarian in others, and vice versa with the other-- in other words, there's very little in the way of nuance. For example, the typical American conservative (and even some self-described libertarians) favor low regulation and taxes on businesses, but demand tight government enforcement of immigration, sexual/marital purity, and religious partiality. By contrast, the typical American liberal/progressive favors proactive government involvement in many areas, but firm protection of civil liberties-- which no doubt sounds paradoxical, if not contradictory, to the libertarian.
A more nuanced view of political philosophy uses more than one axis-- the Political Compass, for example, uses "economic liberty" as the x-axis and "civil liberty" as the y-axis.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
>>All corporations lean to the right
Do you mean "the right" in the European sense of the word, or the American sense of the word? To Europeans, all of America is "right wing". If you mean it in the American sense of the world, you should spend some time looking through Open Secrets.org to see how corporations actually give. Goldman Sachs gave nearly a million to Obama, and around two hundred thousand to McCain, for example.
>>After all, corporations exist for the purpose of realizing profits, so why would a corporation ever support a political party or movement that works against the system that has allowed corporations to become as big, powerful, and profitable as they are today?
Big businesses often trend Democrat because Democrats believe in protectionism, whereas Republicans believe in competition and small businesses. Small businesses represent threats to big businesses, but regulation and red tape (Democrat tools) can impose severe barriers to entry for small businesses. For an insightful lesson, look at the difference in how many big businesses failed in post-war France versus America in the same time period. Off the top of my head, something like 90% of France's large businesses in 1950 were still around in 1980, whereas only 10% of America's were. Competition vs. Protectionism. Too big to fail, and all that.
Contrary to popular perception, the ultra-rich also like Democrats. If you believed the media, you'd think that Republicans were all about giving tax breaks to the ultra-rich. But we pay taxes in two different ways here in America - 1) income tax, and 2) capital gains. A reduction on income tax doesn't make the slightest difference to the ultra-rich, who get most of their money from capital gains. But all you hear about in the media is "Republicans pose tax break for the ultra-rich" and you don't hear anything about how John Kerry reduced capital gains taxes, or how Democrats recently killed the carried interest exemption (one of their 2008 campaign promises) after they had a lot of money thrown at them by lobbyists. Not that tax cuts aren't good things, but the carried interest exemption is just a bone thrown to Goldman Sachs.
It's interesting reading to see how Billionaires actually donate to political causes:
http://www.newsmeat.com/billionaire_political_donations
Except Bill Clinton. (Assuming we use number of federal employees as the yardstick)
If you don't vote, you have no right to complain
This is exactly wrong. If you vote, you have no right to complain. By voting you have had your say. By participating you legitimize the contest and are bound by its results. Complaining only makes you a sore loser.
On the other hand, if you realize the contest is entirely unfair to begin with the only logical course of action is to refuse participation. Then you are entirely justified in complaining about the unfairness. It won't do any good of course, but at least it's not unsportsmanlike.
The only real rational course of action is to keep your head down and live the best life you can without wasting it tilting at windmills. As Thoreau said, "I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad."
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Odd that the summary neglects to mention two very high profile elections that have former major tech CEO's running as Republicans for this election cycle.
Then there's amazon.com, which in addition to their ground-breaking aggressive use of an inane software patent, was also donating money to the Republican party during the rise of the Bush Jr. regime... in contrast to Barnes and Nobles, which has been solidly blue, all along.
I know it's second nature to tar both major US political parties with the "whores for business", and I've done it myself. However, in the 30 or so years since I started to pay attention to politics, this much has become crystal clear:
Luke, help me take this mask off
I say this with all due respect, but you've got this all wrong. Pharmaceutical and insurance companies supported "Obamacare" because of its particular implementation. Instead of nationalizing health care, and going to a "single-payer" model, they introduced broad regulations, including requiring citizens to purchase private insurance. Thus, health providers were saddled with some extra regulation, but they were promised a customer base like they had never seen before. I believe they saw this as a net plus.
Dark Reflection
It seems to me if you were so smart, you'd lend some of that prodigious mental firepower to persuading others to come around to your point of view, rather than alienating them with poisonous invective and crude sexual epithets.
Good luck with your strategy.
- AJ
"And what makes the Eurocentric frame of reference the correct one? " Objectively? European countries have the highest rates of economic growth, the highest living standards, and score at the top of pretty much every quality of life metric ever designed. There's a reason so many people from Africa and the Middle east are trying to go there.
Perhaps because the quality of life metrics are written by those that favor the European model? You can get health care in the US that Europe can't even dream of, yet because the models favor socialized medicine, even if it is low quality socialized medicine where people frequently die of relatively trivial causes, Europe (or Cuba for that matter) ranks higher?
That's just bullshit and you know it.
Because they favors taking extreme vacations where grandma is allowed to die because of a heat wave as a better quality of life than countries where people have less vacation but the elderly are better taken care of?
Is that why average life expectancy in the US is shorter? Because the elderly are being so well taken care of?
Because some countries impose maximum work hours per week, making it punitive to try to help your family get ahead? Because you have riots on a bi-weekly basis?
Such regulations are necessary since otherwise corporations can make everyone "decide" to work more hours. Every time Americans brag about their GDP per capita (which is btw. lower than in some European countries), it sounds like they're bragging about being suckers. The GDP per capita differences between European countries and the US are very small but there's a huge difference in how much more holiday and shorter working hours Europeans have.
Because you spread colonialism to every continent, disrupting every country you came across for your own benefit, allowing you to get ahead on the backs of their misery?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? I think it's been quite a while since a European country invaded another whilst the US on the other hand has been quite busy "spreading freedom" lately...
Your "objective" measures are purely subjective... but Eurocentric arrogance blinds you to it.
Yes, right, the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund give purely European measures. Especially when cited by the CIA world factbook.
As for immigration, last time I checked, the entire western world was (mostly) populated by people fleeing Europe for a better life.
It's as if you have a few hundred years of history to catch up on.
That Europe is better than someplace like Rwanda where the government is non-existent isn't a surprise... neither is the fact that Europe is desperate for immigrants since their socio-economic models cannot sustain themselves with the declining European native population rates.
Where did you get such a crazy idea that Europe is desperate for immigrants?
Stop pretending Europe is the be all and end all...
It's quite amusing that a discussion like this started when I made the observation that in a European frame of reference Democrats are to the right of center and the very reason I made the observation was that the European frame of reference didn't seem relevant in this case. But I guess you just want to make accusations.
I'm afraid my little Indian princess is scared to death of marriage at this point. She was married twice in the past and both were horribly physically abusive to her, which also gave her serious self esteem issues. Just the fact that we live two hours away from each other (due to the fact that we both have elderly parents we need to be close to in case of emergency) has my poor little princess worried sick I'm gonna "get tired of her" and find someone else.
Lucky for me even her grown kids just love the hell out of me, because they know I would NEVER raise a hand in anger or be abusive to a woman, and my family already considers her part of the family, so slowly but surely I'm working on building her back up. I never knew the long term damage physical abuse could cause until I fell in love with a woman who had been abused. What it did to her self esteem was worse than the broken bones IMHO, and definitely will take longer to heal. But they say time heals all wounds, and she is finding out I'm one seriously stubborn bastard when it comes to getting what I want.
Having to be apart these past 90 days due to illnesses in the families has been a perfect chance to show her she has nothing to fear, and I won't cheat on her or mistreat her when I don't get to be with her as much as I like. Of course when she shows up next weekend I have a feeling I won't be leaving the bed for a couple of days, but it is comfy and I like it there ;-) But yeah her family is a hoot, half Indian and half redneck makes for a hell of a combo. Just don't ride with them! Good Lord, if they are going less than 90MPH it is a miracle, crazy!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have this crazy idea that I'd prefer less government and less regulation in general. I don't want the government overseeing my bedroom or my wallet.
Your bedroom is up to you, but the contents of your wallet did not get there magically without any connection to anyone else.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it