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

More Like Subsidized

[Anonymous Coward]

> Uber and Tesla Motors, blazing-hot start-ups that have been opposed at every turn by protectionist regulators

Every Tesla vehicle comes with a minimum of $7,500 subsidy from the federal government plus a bunch of state government subsidies like $2,500 and single-driver privileges in HOV lanes in California. They are the last company that should be laying claim to libertarian ideals.

Re:More Like Subsidized

[Kjella]

In libertarian world negative externalities are paid by those who are stuck with them, even if they're an unwilling third party to someone else's actions because nobody has any responsibility for the common good. If a river flows through your land to someone else's land where they sell drinking water, you can dump your sewage in the river and sell your own clean upstream water. If you're a drug pusher and a junkie wants drugs it's a voluntary transaction, that the junkie robs and steals to feed his crack habit is none of your concern. If you come across a man dying of thirst, you don't have to give him a drink of water even if you have plenty. In short, libertarianism doesn't require you to do anything for anyone else's well-being.

The counter-arguments typically are that charity and compassion will kick in and libertarians will give him a drink of water, but not because they're compelled to by law. People will form voluntary agreements and shared resources like a town well out of mutual benefit. In short, their solution to the "tragedy of the commons" is basically to pretend it won't happen even though history shows it quickly devolves into a few rulers/gangs/companies with power and many regular people at their mercy. If you get to play with every dirty trick in the book then competition will quickly cease and one monopolist or an oligarchy will control the market and smother any start-up in its infancy.

Re:More Like Subsidized

[JesseMcDonald]

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." But men are definitely, definitely not angels. Libertarians think that if everybody else would just "wake up, sheeple!" they would be enlightened like them and of course would adhere to rules of common decency and fair play.

You're thinking of pacifists, or possibly communists. Libertarians are the realists in this scenario; we realize that humans are imperfect, and that, as a direct consequence of this, giving a select group of imperfect humans the practically unlimited power of government is not a recipe for a better world. ("Select" because, for the most part, they are self-selected as the most likely to abuse the position... one doesn't generally set out to become a politician out of the belief that people have the the right to live their lives peaceably without third-party interference.)

Libertarians are opposed to all abuses of power, not just those which originate from government. We oppose the government specifically because it embodies the systematic abuse of power, and, unlike other criminal organizations, maintains the pretense that its abuses are somehow "legitimate". That does not mean that we are OK with non-government entities violating others' rights, or think that in the absence of government everyone would "just get along". There will continue to be bad actors out there; we will still need to defend ourselves against them. But without government they at least won't have a ready-made system available to amplify their offenses and shield them from the consequences.

Re:Gots to find more ways to avoid taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's people like you who enable that mayhem.

The idea that small government is a substitute for good governance is a koch dream. Small government means less oversight. So your dollars go to companies like Shell who destroy ecologies and societies.

Things like regulatory capture happen because people don't pay enough attention to their government, not because it is too big. Money chases power wherever it is. At least with government the money has to put in some work to get what it wants instead of getting it served up on a platter.

bullshit

[meglon]

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.

....except....

http://insideevs.com/uaw-looks...

CEO Elon Musk says Tesla is union neutral, so that’s the automaker’s stance.

Then there's the whole "government run amok" thing... where it should really say "state government run amok." The protectionist policies adopted haven't been federal, they've been state level. Texas, Arizona, Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey have outright bans; Georgia and Colorado have severe restrictions on selling; and Ohio and New York have legislation pending. Musk has said, if the states keep fucking with him, he will use the federal courts to deal with the issue.... so again, the problem isn't the federal government, it's the states.

With Uber, again the problem isn't unions, and it's not the federal government.. it's city governments.

Perhaps this should be a case study on smaller governments causing more problems than they should, and those that promote "small government" lying and trying to blame "big government" and unions.

Re:Silicon Valley is officially old

[thaylin]

To be honest we still submit for a draft, it is selective service and it is compulsory for males. There is just not a draft to take use of it atm

Re:Gots to find more ways to avoid taxes

[thaylin]

You mean give away to people currently down on their luck, or unable to find a job right now? Something that can happen to any one of us, and is a nail in the side of the economy, which needs a maximum amount of workers?

This is the problem with having a two party system

[brunes69]

The idea that economic policy and social policy are tied at the hip in the two mainstream parties is ridiculous. Someone who supports conservative economic policy but liberal social policies, in any other country, has a mainstream party to get behind. In the US, they're essentially an outcast who has to decide which is more important to them, their personal values or what they think is the best direction for the economy, because voting for third parties is viewed as a lost vote.

Politics in the US needs drastic reform away from the two party system.

What Kim Stanley Robinson said of libertarianism.

[Anonymous Coward]

"That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves."

And given the overwhelming historical association between "liber"tarian ideology and slavery, it's probably more accurate to just call it according to its real preoccupation: Moneytarianism.

No doubt such a viewpoint would find a receptive audience in some of the shallower minds and uglier spirits of Silicon Valley.

But the philosophical core of the region and the tech industry remains fundamentally progressive. That's why it remains the king despite decades of conservative "small government" states desperately trying and failing to replicate it on any remotely competitive scale.

Re:Gots to find more ways to avoid taxes

[thaylin]

You cannot get welfare if you are in that situation... But keep on thinking that.

Re:This is the problem with having a two party sys

[swb]

I think its due to the nature of the voting system (winner take all, even if you don't poll a majority). But it also seems to be endemic to many democracies, they tend to gravitate to two party systems. The UK has Labor and the Conservatives, the Germans have Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.

But even in countries with larger third parties, they're seldom major parts of government. I think the current coalition government in the UK is one of the few times the Liberal Democrats have been in government. In Germany the FDP has mostly been a kingmaker rather than a majority party capable of forming its own government.

We just started using ranked choice voting for elections in Minneapolis, which in theory eliminates the "lost vote" problem by allowing you to make third parties your first choice but still vote "defensively" by making some other candidate a secondary choice.

So far it doesn't seem to have led to a lot of radical change in outcomes other than making the election results take a couple of extra days due to the calculations involved when there's a dozen candidates.

Re:Rand Paul's a plagiarizing misogynistic racist

[MachineShedFred]

I just find it fascinating that left leaning people always proclaim how they are such fans of diversity and inclusion, yet revile any thoughts that might stand in opposition to their own.

God forbid people be open minded towards new ideas, or even old ones.

Re:Gots to find more ways to avoid taxes

[thaylin]

And do you enjoy living off a max of something like 30% of your income from when you are employed in some states? UI, which is an insurance program has a limited time length. The way you can extend it is in a time of high unemployment or by going to school.

Re:Silicon Valley is officially old

[Ol Olsoc]

Which is why the libertarian dream is to derive all the benefits of living in a country where public money is invested in the future while avoiding any of the responsibility or cost themselves. Silicon valley would be NOTHING if not for public investment to build off of.

Because today's Libertarians really aren't very good Libertarians.

Bill Maher of all people, put it best : https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Selfish pricks are what now define Libertarianism.

The new libertarian is quite happy to do whatever they see fit to benefit themselves. Enlightened self interest my ass. More like pathological greed, but with their truisms trotted out whenever cornered about their lack of the "enlightened" part of that equation.

In other words, today's Libertarians are mostly just Republicans with a tiny bit of liberal around inconsequential edges.

Because today's Libertarians are perfectly happy to gut the system in pursuit of their personal wealth. That their greed ends up putting more people on the public dole, as people working for minimum wage are not capable of surviving without it, is of no consequence to them.

This country is now in the wealth extraction phase of it's existence. Where the wealth came from is of no concern to those who are gleefully gutting us.

Re:Silicon Valley is officially old

[captbob2002]

That's an interesting alternate history you've concocted there. So robber-barons, child labor, rampant pollution, and killing workers the attempted to stand up for themselves is you idea of the best the United States ever was?

Re:Double standards

[NeutronCowboy]

Oh, right, the old argument that "if you're truly open and interested in diversity, you'll let me shit all over openness and diversity, including your own, and you will be happy about it."

Here's the dirty little secret that you're trying hide with that platitude: some ideas are objectively terrible, lead to social disaster, and go against everything the Enlightenment and the revolutions of the 18th century fought for. As a result, the people who espouse those terrible ideas should be called out and ostracized. And while you're right that no party has a monopoly on good ideas, there's only one party that is actively promoting anti-science ideas, segregation, and a general Galt's Gulch approach to society. As soon as the republicans stop being loony, I'll vote for them again.

In the meantime, stop shitting in my cereal and telling me that it is chocolate.