Rand Paul and Silicon Valley's Shifting Political Climate

SonicSpike sends this story from NY Magazine: Rand Paul appears to be making a full-court press for the affections of Silicon Valley, and there are some signs that his efforts are paying off. At last week's Sun Valley conference, Paul had one-on-one meetings with Thiel and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. ... Next weekend, Paul will get to make his case yet again as the keynote speaker at Reboot, a San Francisco conference put on by a group called Lincoln Labs, which self-defines as "techies and politicos who believe in promoting liberty with technology." He'll likely say a version of what he's said before: that Silicon Valley's innovative potential can be best unlocked in an environment with minimal government intrusion in the forms of surveillance, corporate taxes, and regulation. “I see almost unlimited potential for us in Silicon Valley,” Paul has said, with "us" meaning libertarians.

Today's Silicon Valley is still exceedingly liberal on social issues. But it seems more skeptical about taxes and business regulation than at any point in its recent history. Part of this is due to the rise of companies like Uber and Tesla Motors, blazing-hot start-ups that have been opposed at every turn by protectionist regulators and trade unions, in confrontations that are being used by small-government conservatives as case studies in government control run amok.

Comments

Re:Silicon Valley is officially old

[DNS-and-BIND]

LOL...still butthurt about Ronald Reagan? Look, the Cold War is over, your side lost. Get over it already. "You had elected someone who loudly proclaimed that people no longer had to invest in the future, and everything would smell like flowers and look like rainbows." [citation needed]

Used benefits and services provided by the government? A hell of a lot of people get nothing from the government, and never had a check other than a refund check their entire lives. Yeah, we're not talking about stuff like police and highways. It's bizarre seeing a radical leftist talk about WWII deaths...you mean all the racists who joined up so they could murder Japanese? What's with the patriotic "this country" angle? Don't you people despise and hate America, even to the point of pretending not to understand what people mean when they say Americans, saying "oh I thought you meant Brazil was in America and therefore they're Americans too.

I think you really need to step back and stop dehumanizing other people because they disagree with you. It dehumanizes yourself most of all.

Re:Rand Paul's a plagiarizing misogynistic racist

[DNS-and-BIND]

Seeing racists in the shadows (dog whistle racism keyword), check. It is a poor witch-hunter who cannot find witches.

Criticizing gerrymandering when it is precisely that which has guaranteed black seats in Congress, check.

Total ignorance of the Laffer Curve, check. Increasing tax rates beyond a certain point will be counter-productive for raising further tax revenue. It's no coincidence that the Marxist states of the 20th century (and this one!) were the most impoverished ones around.

Rape, rape, and more rape. Calling stuff that's not rape, rape, in order to get more sympathy because actual rape is a horrible crime, Check.

A refusal to consider that other adults might be sane when they have different thoughts, check.

A demand for censorship for those who disagree, check.

Unmitigated hatred, check. Ladies and gentlemen, behold the leftist in her full glory. Please note that from all appearances she is proud of behaving this way in public.