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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.
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.
You say that like avoiding taxes is a bad thing.
Every dollar kept out of government hands is a dollar not spend on bloody mayhem.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The idea that the largest most powerful entity to ever exist on this planet is only ever just trying to be benevolent and good, but is in danger because some people think it is too large is laughable. The corruption and regulatory capture you speak of are only possible BECAUSE the modern US government is an enormous leviathan.
The idea that libertarians would instantly reduce the government to nothing if they took power is laughable. Over 100 years if progressive bullshit have given us this opressive monster, it'll take more than just a few libertarians gaining power to turn our government into something reasonable again.
And the Republicans were perfectly happy choosing to shut down the government. It wasn't a threat. It was completely real. They shut down the government because they didn't want people to have healthcare.
In fact, the Republican majority still voted against the bipartisan bill. It was John Boehner's blinking to allow the bill to simply be voted on, and the small cross-over from the Republicans that banded with the united Democrats in ending the shutdown.
The country was stripped of its AAA credit rating, was one day away from a credit default, and Boehner was about to lose his job as Speaker. Which of those three do you think mattered?
The Republican party (and the so-called "libertarians" and "tea party" they pretend to be) are lunatics.
Robber barons: captains of industry that in many cases created their industries from nothing.
Child labour: a problem that free market capitalism solved. Children always worked and they are still working in countries where there are very little individual freedoms and very little capital. Free market capitalism allowed the parents of the children to become productive enough not to have to send their children to work, as parents always did before capitalists invested into tools, management, training and generally more efficient means of production to allow workers to produce much more with all these tools than they ever could before, thus allowing a smaller and smaller number of people to execute bigger and bigger tasks, which is what productivity is. Child labour will return to the USA as the parents of the children are becoming less and less productive every single day, which is the actual reality as opposed to fantasy that the gov't propaganda is pushing upon the population, pretending that Americans are becoming more productive. Very few Americans are increasing their productivity, vast majority is unproductive, as in it requires subsidies to live. Subsidies come in many forms, including loans by other nations that can never be repaid.
Rampant pollution: a byproduct of early stages of industrialisation, which is solved when governments do not interfere by a wealthier society, society that accumulates wealth through industrialisation. Indeed the worst polluters of all times are governments and government controlled economies. I was born in one of those countries, Chernobyl wasn't caused by private enterprise as an example.
Killing workers: free market capitalist employers do not kill workers or customers, that's not good for business it doesn't add to the bottom line. OTOH government kills people on daily basis. Be it wars or government created pollution or even government regulations that prevent people from having access to things, simple things such as medicine that may already exist but is not allowed, thanks gov't.
USA was the freest country in the world until it generated so much wealth that enough parasites could lift their heads above the ground and start destroying the country by using the worst traits of people: jealousy to those who make more without desire to work more, with a desire to be subsidised, things of that nature.
You can't handle the truth.
Power concentrated in the hands of organisations such as multi-national corporations (or even less omniscient entities such as car dealership networks) is no better than being in the hands of an autocratic and abusive regime.
That's not necessarily true. For one thing, you're talking about multiple corporations that compete against each other, providing a better balancing of power than a single entity with unlimited power. Also, governments retain a monopoly on violence. So corporations might have a lot of financial power, but they can't put you in jail or kill you like governments can. They generally can't spy on you, either, unless you're using their stuff - not true with government which injects itself into the very infrastructure of all communication channels, which they license and regulate.
If the rule of law is working, maybe government is a better choice. But that is breaking down severely these days.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia