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Silicon Valley Bosses Are Globalists, Not Libertarians (economist.com)
From a report via The Economist: In a recently published survey of 600 entrepreneurs and executives in Silicon Valley, conducted by David Broockman and Neil Malhotra of Stanford University and Gregory Ferenstein, a journalist, three-quarters of respondents said they supported Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election. But although technology-firm leaders hold views that in general hew much closer to Democratic positions than Republican ones, they are far from reliable partisan ideologues. As you might expect from captains of industry, Silicon Valley executives are much more likely to support free trade and to oppose government regulation of businesses than your average Democrat is. For example, just 30% of tech bosses believe that ride-hailing companies need to be regulated like the taxi industry, compared with 60% of Democrats.
Given their combination of socially liberal attitudes and a preference for free markets, you might call Silicon Valley executives libertarians. However, libertarians generally advocate shrinking the state as a share of the economy, which technology bosses resolutely do not. When asked if they "would like to live in a society where government does nothing except provide national defense and police protection, so that people could be left alone to earn whatever they could," just 24% agreed. In contrast, 68% of Republican donors concurred with that statement. Moreover, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are just as likely to favor redistributive economic policies, such as universal health care and higher taxes on the rich, as an average Democrat is. The outlook of our new robot-building overlords is far more communitarian than, say, the doctrines of Ayn Rand.
Given their combination of socially liberal attitudes and a preference for free markets, you might call Silicon Valley executives libertarians. However, libertarians generally advocate shrinking the state as a share of the economy, which technology bosses resolutely do not. When asked if they "would like to live in a society where government does nothing except provide national defense and police protection, so that people could be left alone to earn whatever they could," just 24% agreed. In contrast, 68% of Republican donors concurred with that statement. Moreover, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are just as likely to favor redistributive economic policies, such as universal health care and higher taxes on the rich, as an average Democrat is. The outlook of our new robot-building overlords is far more communitarian than, say, the doctrines of Ayn Rand.
Globalization is a means to lower business operating cost. It's that simple. Libertarianism is about maximizing personal freedom of everyone not just corporations. Do you see most companies doing this? Apple locking people into their platform and not interoperating with other platforms. Comcast locking you into archaic price models because it's what's best for them, not you. The US Chamber of Commerce rubbing elbows with politicians to slant things in their favor at your expense. They do not represent the true views of Libertarians which would be promoting this country to be as free as possible for all citizens. Companies don't want humans to be free. They want them locked in as loyal consumers and to pay the highest prices possible.
We'll make great pets
Cognitive dissonance much? Who do you think started global trade and marketed it for everybody as the way forward, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Hint: it's not the Chinese.
It's rather hilarious to see the West panic about this now. Globalization has been going on since the age of sail, and has thus far only benefited the advanced economies. The massive fortunes of the US and Europe rest on the foundations of global trade and extracting resources (both human and raw materials) from underdeveloped economies at ridiculously cheap prices.
But now that the benefits of global trade start to affect Asia and Africa moreso than the west, now this thing that has brought the west its current fortunes is suddenly a thing of the devil and we must all somehow magically revert back to 1500s mercantilism where each nation somehow cuts itself of from the global networks of trade and logistics and start producing everything by and for itself, which is an absurd idea.
First we (=the west, not just the US) go around telling everyone how great this global marketplace really is, and how everyone really should start to do business with us because it's for the good of everyone, and then a few decades pass and we start to blame these countries for doing exactly what we told them to do and from which we've also ourselves benefited,
This is the economy at work: people want lower prices but also high pay, you can't have both if you only manufacture domestically unless you automate, in which case the prices stay low but you won't get a lot of jobs.
The fact of the matter is that full-time employment will cease to be the norm within this century for most westerners. You can be in denial about it, but you can't stop the technological progress that's taking us there. Machines will simply become more efficient at doing most jobs than humans, so if you want to maintain your domestic demand and make sure people sustain their standard of living, I suggest you get out of the cold war mindset and start doing some reading about the socialism (hint nr. 2: free market and socialism are not incompatible, we've had both in northern/western Europe for long) that you so dread and concepts like basic income, because the solutions to the problems caused by the market itself acting as it should cannot be solved by the market.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
"you might call Silicon Valley executives libertarians"
Wait you were serious?
Nationalism always results in war
Humanity always results in war. What do you think is going to happen when the global community tries to pressure Saudi Arabia into permitting gay marriage? They're going to say go to hell and what will the globalists do? There are only two choices, economic sanctions or military intervention.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It's actually more about selling their product to the entire world than cheap labor. Not saying cheap labor isn't part of it, but Apple can't continue selling more products year over year if they don't open to new markets. In the end that is what really matters.
Why is the answer so black and white? Maybe there is some middle position that would work best for our country.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I never got any indication that they were anything other than collectivist, globalists.
If they were libertarians, they would have been trying to break the stranglehold the political left has on California politics.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Hey, the Union Bosses do at least a nominal amount of labor.
Nationalism always results in war
Humanity always results in war. What do you think is going to happen when the global community tries to pressure Saudi Arabia into permitting gay marriage? They're going to say go to hell and what will the globalists do? There are only two choices, economic sanctions or military intervention.
LK
Or the 3rd option: wait it out. As global demand for oil drops (and prices along with it) Saudi cash reserves have taken a massive hit lately and they have increased taxes, cut oil subsidies, and cut wages/bonuses in the past year or 2. In a world where alternative fuels grow increasingly accessible the Saudi quality of life is becoming increasingly unsustainable. If the US, UK, and France were to cut off military imports to Saudi Arabia as well, the country could easily collapse in the next few decades.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
These things are not mutually exclusive at all. "Left" does not mean you want a communist central leadership. "Right" does not mean you want a fascist central leadership.
-I- want global coorperation for our global problems, and I want as much freedom as possible without destroying the world in exploding anarchy.
Do I need to explain this further? Labels mean nothing, as everyone has a different meaning attached to it.
What? Fascists are worse than Commies? Are you from the 1940s?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Back when I was a kid the saying was "If you're 20 and not a commie, you have no heart. If you're 30 and still a commie, you have no brain".
Yes, I am actually THAT old...
It's kinda funny, though, how this actually flipped by 180 degrees by now.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm looking forward to a haircutting machine just like in the Jetsons, lower a hood over your head, listen to it hum for a few minutes then... Presto! A new do!
We'll call it the Flowbee 2.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Which year was it when we found out that she was a serial-killer-idolizing textbook sociopath?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The reality is that "libertarians" originally, and in the European context, means something like "democratic socialist", or at any rate a left-leaning socialist philosophy. In the U.S. in the 1960's, this meaning was highjacked by thinkers like Milton Friedman who held a religious advocacy of the rights of capital over men. I mean, it takes a giant leap of logic to conclude that capital does NOT seek to do exactly what you say "isn't libertarian". Despite what so-called U.S. "libertarians" think, there is absolutely no a priori reason that capital owners will do what's best in the free and moral interest of men, and likewise there is no reason to think a "free market" involves an invisible referee that ensures fair play -- that's simply religious dogma.
There is no real difference unless you constrain socialism from escalating into full blown tyranny or communism. Good luck with that
Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway & Belgium all thank you for your good wishes.
You can be a libertarian and a globalist at the same time. In fact the two are compatible. The dangerous philosophies are the authoritarian systems such as nationalism and socialism. They block people from interacting with and trading with each other based on what an authority think is best.
You can definitely be a libertarian and a globalist at the same time. In fact the two are compatible. The dangerous philosophies are the authoritarian systems such as nationalism and socialism. They block people from interacting with and trading with each other based on what an authority think is best!
True. Socialism is Communism-lite. The difference is merely in the degree. The (glorious) Collective is more important and trumps the Individual. And, as Karl Marx taught us, Socialism is merely a stepping stone to Communism.
Nope, not the actual Karl Marx' version of it. But, whether the means of production are ostensibly private owned or in outright government possession is of no importance — a distinction without difference — when the government can control any aspect of the production it chooses to. And it can, through that vastly giant loophole of "sensible regulations" you allow it to have.
It works exactly like that. There is not argument for nationalizing public education, that can not also be made — indeed, is already made — for nationalizing public health care, or public housing, or public Internet service provision, public science, music and other arts.
Some countries are further along down this path — to their patently obvious detriment — than others. Like I said, a matter of degree, a quantitative rather than qualitative difference. The greater the share of the GDP, that is spent by the government, the greater the degree of Collectivism in the country...
Who the fook are you to "sensibly regulate", what I am doing in my house or what sort of thing I sell to willing buyers?
Yes, it is awfully scary, that despite being the most murderous school of thought known to humanity, the branches of Collectivism (Fascism, Socialism, Communism) continue to appear attractive to a substantial proportion of population... You'd be appalled to meet an asshole in a KKK-outfit, but a far more dangerous asshole in a Che Guevara T-shirt hardly raises an eyebrow. Indeed, I suspect, I may be conversing with one on Slashdot right now...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
People who think they might get rich through luck have a legitimate fear that the current system would make them poor again. If I'm going to get a one-time windfall and have to make it last, of course I don't want a large portion to go to taxes. If I can do something that adds value continuously so I always have income, then I'm not so concerned.
To generalize, either you believe that all of your success is 100% due to your own brilliance and hard work, with almost none of it due to luck or any help you got from anyone else, in which case you end up on the Libertarian/Republican side of the chart. Or you believe that even though you worked hard you also got a lot of benefits from society and got some lucky breaks along the way ... and feel like you should pay it forward, in which case you end up on the Democratic/Socialist ... side of the spectrum.
Yeah, this is nonsense. You don't have to believe that you are entirely responsible for your own success to be an individualist (Libertarian or Republican). "Paying it forward" just takes a different form: private charity rather than public services. Along the same lines, collectivism does not imply that you are in favor of contributing personally; it's all about getting other people to pay for the programs you think should be available. Sure, you'll (probably) be paying those taxes you lobbied for along with everyone else... but there was nothing stopping you supporting those programs privately, out of your own funds, if that was what you wanted. The only reason to bring in the power of the State is to force others to participate.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
They sure need them, because their Collectivism is killing them and their performance is pathetic. For just one sign, consider the fact, that these countries (with the possible exception of Finland) haven't been bombed/destroyed in the WW2. Which means, their standards of living ought to be, if Socialism really was so grand, well above that of the US. It is not — not even in Norway, for all their vast oil exports propping up the GDP.
And that's despite their spending much less on military — to the point, the otherwise decrepit Russia can overrun them in a matter of weeks.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Don't forget that "globalist" is normally used by neo-Nazis to mean "Jew." These codewords go back a long way, to before our involvement in WWII. If somebody is "globalist" they don't have the nation's interest as priority #1. That makes them not True Americans (TM), which is nearly indistinguishable from inhuman beasts. That's one of the reasons the KKK used "America First" as a slogan. The notion of Jews (and Catholics) being beholden to not-America (Israel, the Vatican), was easy to latch onto.
You realize you're just making young people more and more curious about what's in these forbidden books? Trying to portray people as "colossal asses" looks like you're trying way too hard to persuade people not to read. I'm no libertarian, but the fact is, Ayn Rand's books make effective arguments against self-destructive altruism, the kind we're seeing way too much of nowadays. The arguments are good ones and make sense, which is why you're trying to use emotional arguments to persuade young people from exposing themselves to them. They might be convinced, you see.
People who are honest about learning want to expose themselves to all points of view. Even the wrong ones. Especially those. Otherwise you end up in an ideological echo chamber, and that is a one-way ticket to fascism.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
"Paying it forward" just takes a different form: private charity rather than public services.
History proves private charity doesn't work. Look at France, or Russia, or China, or any other place with a socialist revolution. Private charity has never been illegal anywhere, but people still starved or died of treatable disease. Eventually people will have had enough and put the rich and powerful to the guillotine. If you don't want to end up headless, pay into the social safety net.