9 ms·

How Silicon Valley Fuels an Informal Caste System

99 points by edward 8y ago

timavr 8y ago
It is really weird if we talk about issues from Marxist class struggle framework. Homelessness exist because rich don’t care, which is an empty argument. The better argument is that we don’t have systems in place to deal with the problem. Let’s build them.
- digi_owl 8y ago
  With blockchains and machine learning!!! /s
- 1986 8y ago
  Such systems cost money, generally collected through taxation. At least in the US, the rich have largely demonstrated that they would rather direct money towards lobbying against a rise in taxation on them, than to the taxes that would fund such a system. So at its core, "the rich don't care" isn't an empty argument, but rather an accurate assessment of one of the root causes.
  - frockington 8y ago
    As someone who has to pay taxes but not rich enough to lobby on my own I am very thankful for these citizens efforts
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    It's perfectly possible to care about an issue supported by taxation and still be opposed to higher general taxation. I'm very much pro-UBI, yet anti government waste. Too much of government acts, or at least appears to act, as little fiefdoms, employing people with relatively comfortable salaries, no market pressure, and little other controls to ensure they run tightly, efficiently, and effectively. If you want to raise taxes to only fund UBI, I'm in. If you want to raise taxes because you don't like that some monkeys have more bananas and you think society could make better, unspecified, use of those bananas, I'm against.
    - extralego 8y ago
      Your views exemplify selfish priorities and an uncaring worldview. If you care about others, let it be reflected in your behavior and people (like me) will stop doubting you. Is your issue with government in the abstract or your government? If the latter, the caring solution is to change the government through voting, vocalizing and organizing. Governments are instituted to maintain a level of civility in a society. Naturally, poverty erodes the means for civility so governments in civilized nations around the world successfully apply their government as an organization sufficient for this task. If that sufficiency falls below their approval, they repair it. If your issue concerns government in the abstract, then quite simply: you don’t care about people in poverty. If you can’t find the decency to be honest about that, then you’ve got even bigger problems. UBI prioritizes your economy, not your neighbors in poverty. Note Socialists do not support UBI and for anyone concerned that socialists simply want handouts, this should table that argument once and for all. Social programs prioritize caring for people by: - Decoupling access to basic commodity needs from the whims and woes of the market - Built-in protections from abuse. Uncaring folk like to criticize welfare cash recipients as dishonest and lazy. Social programs that avoid cash also avoid this potential altogether.
      - mathgladiator 8y ago
        Are we going to play empathy Olympics? The problem is that you can't decouple commodity needs from the market because life is suffering.
        wilsonnb2 8y ago
        > you can't decouple commodity needs from the market Why not? Isn't that what agricultural subsidies are for?
        germinalphrase 8y ago
        I’m having trouble parsing this sentence. Is this a moral argument about the value of suffering? That suffering is inevitable so lack of access the market can/should be ignored?
      - 8y ago
  - manigandham 8y ago
    Maybe consider that it's how taxes are actually used instead of just higher taxes?
  - IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
    Look at San Francisco and it's homeless population, coupled with the insane housing costs. And the continued idiocy of locating startups in the city. see https://nypost.com/2018/07/08/san-franciscos-crisis-looks-like-new-yorks-future/ https://nypost.com/2018/07/08/san-franciscos-crisis-looks-li...
prepend 8y ago
This is an odd use of of the term caste. Or even class. Both of these imply low or no mobility within social hierarchies. But I don’t think this is the case. “An Outer Party member could reach the Inner Party by chancing into an early job at a lottery-ticket company (such as Facebook or Google) or by becoming a successful entrepreneur. But that’s rare; most of the Outer Party prefers working for the Inner Party, gradually accumulating equity through stock grants and appreciating real estate.” -If you look at the bios of VC “inner party” people, very few were born VC. Many became VC based on their work experience. The quote calls this a “lottery-ticket” experience implying that there’s no free will involved with the shift between statuses. The article also calls out the difficulty of moving from service to skilled worker “outer party”-“The Service Class will likely never be able to drive/shop/handyman enough to rise to the Outer Party, at least not without additional training or skills.“ This is really odd because how else would you change status of not through training or skills? Complaining about randomness for skilled->VC and also about need for education for service->skilled seems like a mixed message. Caste means a rigid hierarchy with no ability to change or even being born into ones status and no or limited marriage between castes [0]. This is not the case based on the level of mobility into and out of status that clearly breaks the definition of caste. This old paper from 1999 shows 24% of firms led by just Chinese or Indian immigrants [1]. So obviously they could not have been born into Silicon Valley castes if they are new to the US altogether. The mobility to enter, exit, and change between these four defined statuses seems, to me, to disprove the entire premise of this article. Perhaps the article would be more accurate if addressing issues of wealth and wealth segmenting social constructs like marriage, socialization within communities, etc. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste [1] http://wwww.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_502ASR.pdf http://wwww.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_502ASR.pdf
- amarkov 8y ago
  The traditional American dream is that you change your status through making friends and simple hard work. If you're the hardest working and most dedicated Walmart sales associate, you'll quickly become a manager, and you can iterate on that at least until you're a regional director or something. From that perspective, it's weird to look in on a typical Silicon Valley company, where it's understood that only people with specific technical knowledge are qualified to make important decisions. And it's downright scary to look at Uber, where the drivers have no internal mobility even in theory.
thedevilslawyer 8y ago
"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - John Steinbeck Are you temporarily embarrassed? You may not realise it, but you could be a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Do you plan to someday in the future have more money? Are you concerned that your taxes are too high, because someday you might pay too much tax. Do you ride the bus only because this year you can’t afford that luxury car you’re going to have? Do you live pay cheque to pay cheque like most people just because you haven’t had your lucky break. [0] http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/ http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/
- joefourier 8y ago
  HN might not exactly be the right audience for this message, given the nature of Ycombinator. And even on an average American software engineer salary, it's not extremely challenging to become a millionaire - you just have to be frugal and save a large percentage of your salary for a decade or two (depending on your compensation & stock options).
  - Simon_says 8y ago
    Keep in mind that a millionaire meant something entirely different when this phrase was first uttered. It'd be something closer to $10 million in wealth today. Today being a millionaire just means you won't eat cat food when you retire.
    - prepend 8y ago
      A frugal engineer on an $98k adjusted salary can pretty easily make $10M over a 45 year career. Not accounting for huge windfalls from stock, etc. The median salary for an electrical engineer was $97,970 [0]. If you invest $50k/year at 6% return you get $10M in 45 years. Of course this requires pretty massive discipline. But it’s easy in the sense that if you go to a good stem school, get a job and keep it, and don’t get sick, anyone can do it. Of course 6% is super conservative as the total return of the s&p over 90 years is 9.8% [1]. If was you could get that rate somehow, you only have to save $15k/year. Of course this is really hard in the sense of willpower, discipline, etc. And there’s certainly bad luck that make it not 100% certain, but it’s an open path to anyone in America (and other countries). Even for $10M. [0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mobile/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mobile/... [1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average-annual-return-sp-500.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...
tdevito 8y ago
I used to be an Instacart Shopper and I'm currently taking a web development bootcamp in Manhattan and now I'm on track to make more money than my parents ever did, which is a win in my book. I will do everything I can to make it the next step to the "Inner Party", but what if I don't? Does that mean I "lost at life" if I only end up Upper Middle Class? This author is trying to push a neo-marxist victim ideology onto anyone not in the "Inner Party", and it's insulting. I am not a victim of anything, certainly not some impenetrable "caste system".
- pizzetta 8y ago
  Maybe Wired knows that and all they are doing is trying to create discord in order to have more engagement and drive more views.
  - prepend 8y ago
    You make a good point. I am trying to explain old wired vs. new wired. Old wired was really trying to do something- connect people, unleash potential, whatever something they gave a damn. New wired is trying to sell more to the dwindling audience created by old wired. They may be just as smart, but wired’s old dumb stories (“The Future is Push”) were at least earnest.
- claudiawerner 8y ago
  >This author is trying to push a neo-marxist victim ideology I'm curious as to which neo-Marxists you're referring to; I'm familiar with the Frankfurt School and Zizek, though I'm not aware of anyone (either Marx or "neo-Marxists" in academia) who propose a "victim ideology". "Neo-Marxist" and "postmodernist" are frequently used as boogeymen, however.
  - eucitizen2x 8y ago
    It’s a right wing dogwhistle without any notion of nuance.
    - 8y ago
_zachs 8y ago
Dang! If only having a good learning and work ethic wasn't so hard!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
raincom 8y ago
Social classes existed before; when revolutions occurred, the composition of each class and the composition of society into classes change. Just like there are almost 50% of women in a society, the bottom social class (in terms of power, money, etc) is huge. So, whatever mobility one perceives is in the bottom class: moving from $15 hour security guard job to $150K jr dev job. People from non-American countries recognize this. However, in America, the bottom class since WWII till late 1970's, had a nice job, pension, a home, two cars, with one spouse working; this created the illusion of 'class less' society in America. When one says that there is no mobility, we are comparing the life of today with that of post-WW2 middle class era. Even if we look at John Rawls, his difference principle does not eradicate classes. Basically, that principle in one version is same as "a rising tide lifting all boats"; in another version, it is fair to lift some poor boats higher than other boats, even at the expense of the latter.
- landryraccoon 8y ago
  One reason I don’t think the caste system analogy holds is because you can’t overthrow Silicon Valley with a violent revolution. You can maybe destroy it, but it can’t be stolen. A caste system is arbitrary, a meritocracy is not. The article even admits this implicitly by saying that skills and training are necessary to be admitted to the inner party. Farmers may overthrow the hereditary monarchy because frankly the monarchs never had anything but historical accidents and tradition for their position anyway. But if farmers overthrow google who’s going to keep the servers running? Who’s going to fix bugs, manage projects, write code? The same people will end up running everything anyway, because they are the only ones who know how to do it.
nannotequalnan 8y ago
i've lived for long periods inside and outside SV, which I'll flatter myself into thinking gives me an insider and outsiders perspective. i share the author's sense of horror that SV is becoming a dystopia led by tech elite that think they're building a utopia, but literally have little to no meaningful contact with people that live two or more rungs below them on the socioeconomic ladder.

99 points by edward 8y ago

It is really weird if we talk about issues from Marxist class struggle framework. Homelessness exist because rich don’t care, which is an empty argument. The better argument is that we don’t have systems in place to deal with the problem. Let’s build them.

digi_owl 8y ago
With blockchains and machine learning!!! /s
1986 8y ago
Such systems cost money, generally collected through taxation. At least in the US, the rich have largely demonstrated that they would rather direct money towards lobbying against a rise in taxation on them, than to the taxes that would fund such a system. So at its core, "the rich don't care" isn't an empty argument, but rather an accurate assessment of one of the root causes.
- frockington 8y ago
  As someone who has to pay taxes but not rich enough to lobby on my own I am very thankful for these citizens efforts
- sokoloff 8y ago
  It's perfectly possible to care about an issue supported by taxation and still be opposed to higher general taxation. I'm very much pro-UBI, yet anti government waste. Too much of government acts, or at least appears to act, as little fiefdoms, employing people with relatively comfortable salaries, no market pressure, and little other controls to ensure they run tightly, efficiently, and effectively. If you want to raise taxes to only fund UBI, I'm in. If you want to raise taxes because you don't like that some monkeys have more bananas and you think society could make better, unspecified, use of those bananas, I'm against.
  - extralego 8y ago
    Your views exemplify selfish priorities and an uncaring worldview. If you care about others, let it be reflected in your behavior and people (like me) will stop doubting you. Is your issue with government in the abstract or your government? If the latter, the caring solution is to change the government through voting, vocalizing and organizing. Governments are instituted to maintain a level of civility in a society. Naturally, poverty erodes the means for civility so governments in civilized nations around the world successfully apply their government as an organization sufficient for this task. If that sufficiency falls below their approval, they repair it. If your issue concerns government in the abstract, then quite simply: you don’t care about people in poverty. If you can’t find the decency to be honest about that, then you’ve got even bigger problems. UBI prioritizes your economy, not your neighbors in poverty. Note Socialists do not support UBI and for anyone concerned that socialists simply want handouts, this should table that argument once and for all. Social programs prioritize caring for people by: - Decoupling access to basic commodity needs from the whims and woes of the market - Built-in protections from abuse. Uncaring folk like to criticize welfare cash recipients as dishonest and lazy. Social programs that avoid cash also avoid this potential altogether.
    - mathgladiator 8y ago
      Are we going to play empathy Olympics? The problem is that you can't decouple commodity needs from the market because life is suffering.
      - wilsonnb2 8y ago
        > you can't decouple commodity needs from the market Why not? Isn't that what agricultural subsidies are for?
      - germinalphrase 8y ago
        I’m having trouble parsing this sentence. Is this a moral argument about the value of suffering? That suffering is inevitable so lack of access the market can/should be ignored?
    - 8y ago
- manigandham 8y ago
  Maybe consider that it's how taxes are actually used instead of just higher taxes?
- IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
  Look at San Francisco and it's homeless population, coupled with the insane housing costs. And the continued idiocy of locating startups in the city. see https://nypost.com/2018/07/08/san-franciscos-crisis-looks-like-new-yorks-future/ https://nypost.com/2018/07/08/san-franciscos-crisis-looks-li...

prepend 8y ago

This is an odd use of of the term caste. Or even class. Both of these imply low or no mobility within social hierarchies. But I don’t think this is the case. “An Outer Party member could reach the Inner Party by chancing into an early job at a lottery-ticket company (such as Facebook or Google) or by becoming a successful entrepreneur. But that’s rare; most of the Outer Party prefers working for the Inner Party, gradually accumulating equity through stock grants and appreciating real estate.” -If you look at the bios of VC “inner party” people, very few were born VC. Many became VC based on their work experience. The quote calls this a “lottery-ticket” experience implying that there’s no free will involved with the shift between statuses. The article also calls out the difficulty of moving from service to skilled worker “outer party”-“The Service Class will likely never be able to drive/shop/handyman enough to rise to the Outer Party, at least not without additional training or skills.“ This is really odd because how else would you change status of not through training or skills? Complaining about randomness for skilled->VC and also about need for education for service->skilled seems like a mixed message. Caste means a rigid hierarchy with no ability to change or even being born into ones status and no or limited marriage between castes [0]. This is not the case based on the level of mobility into and out of status that clearly breaks the definition of caste. This old paper from 1999 shows 24% of firms led by just Chinese or Indian immigrants [1]. So obviously they could not have been born into Silicon Valley castes if they are new to the US altogether. The mobility to enter, exit, and change between these four defined statuses seems, to me, to disprove the entire premise of this article. Perhaps the article would be more accurate if addressing issues of wealth and wealth segmenting social constructs like marriage, socialization within communities, etc. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste [1] http://wwww.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_502ASR.pdf http://wwww.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_502ASR.pdf

amarkov 8y ago
The traditional American dream is that you change your status through making friends and simple hard work. If you're the hardest working and most dedicated Walmart sales associate, you'll quickly become a manager, and you can iterate on that at least until you're a regional director or something. From that perspective, it's weird to look in on a typical Silicon Valley company, where it's understood that only people with specific technical knowledge are qualified to make important decisions. And it's downright scary to look at Uber, where the drivers have no internal mobility even in theory.

thedevilslawyer 8y ago

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - John Steinbeck Are you temporarily embarrassed? You may not realise it, but you could be a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Do you plan to someday in the future have more money? Are you concerned that your taxes are too high, because someday you might pay too much tax. Do you ride the bus only because this year you can’t afford that luxury car you’re going to have? Do you live pay cheque to pay cheque like most people just because you haven’t had your lucky break. [0] http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/ http://www.temporarilyembarrassedmillionaires.org/

joefourier 8y ago
HN might not exactly be the right audience for this message, given the nature of Ycombinator. And even on an average American software engineer salary, it's not extremely challenging to become a millionaire - you just have to be frugal and save a large percentage of your salary for a decade or two (depending on your compensation & stock options).
- Simon_says 8y ago
  Keep in mind that a millionaire meant something entirely different when this phrase was first uttered. It'd be something closer to $10 million in wealth today. Today being a millionaire just means you won't eat cat food when you retire.
  - prepend 8y ago
    A frugal engineer on an $98k adjusted salary can pretty easily make $10M over a 45 year career. Not accounting for huge windfalls from stock, etc. The median salary for an electrical engineer was $97,970 [0]. If you invest $50k/year at 6% return you get $10M in 45 years. Of course this requires pretty massive discipline. But it’s easy in the sense that if you go to a good stem school, get a job and keep it, and don’t get sick, anyone can do it. Of course 6% is super conservative as the total return of the s&p over 90 years is 9.8% [1]. If was you could get that rate somehow, you only have to save $15k/year. Of course this is really hard in the sense of willpower, discipline, etc. And there’s certainly bad luck that make it not 100% certain, but it’s an open path to anyone in America (and other countries). Even for $10M. [0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mobile/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/mobile/... [1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average-annual-return-sp-500.asp https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

tdevito 8y ago

I used to be an Instacart Shopper and I'm currently taking a web development bootcamp in Manhattan and now I'm on track to make more money than my parents ever did, which is a win in my book. I will do everything I can to make it the next step to the "Inner Party", but what if I don't? Does that mean I "lost at life" if I only end up Upper Middle Class? This author is trying to push a neo-marxist victim ideology onto anyone not in the "Inner Party", and it's insulting. I am not a victim of anything, certainly not some impenetrable "caste system".

pizzetta 8y ago
Maybe Wired knows that and all they are doing is trying to create discord in order to have more engagement and drive more views.
- prepend 8y ago
  You make a good point. I am trying to explain old wired vs. new wired. Old wired was really trying to do something- connect people, unleash potential, whatever something they gave a damn. New wired is trying to sell more to the dwindling audience created by old wired. They may be just as smart, but wired’s old dumb stories (“The Future is Push”) were at least earnest.
claudiawerner 8y ago
>This author is trying to push a neo-marxist victim ideology I'm curious as to which neo-Marxists you're referring to; I'm familiar with the Frankfurt School and Zizek, though I'm not aware of anyone (either Marx or "neo-Marxists" in academia) who propose a "victim ideology". "Neo-Marxist" and "postmodernist" are frequently used as boogeymen, however.
- eucitizen2x 8y ago
  It’s a right wing dogwhistle without any notion of nuance.
  - 8y ago

_zachs 8y ago

Dang! If only having a good learning and work ethic wasn't so hard!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

raincom 8y ago

Social classes existed before; when revolutions occurred, the composition of each class and the composition of society into classes change. Just like there are almost 50% of women in a society, the bottom social class (in terms of power, money, etc) is huge. So, whatever mobility one perceives is in the bottom class: moving from $15 hour security guard job to $150K jr dev job. People from non-American countries recognize this. However, in America, the bottom class since WWII till late 1970's, had a nice job, pension, a home, two cars, with one spouse working; this created the illusion of 'class less' society in America. When one says that there is no mobility, we are comparing the life of today with that of post-WW2 middle class era. Even if we look at John Rawls, his difference principle does not eradicate classes. Basically, that principle in one version is same as "a rising tide lifting all boats"; in another version, it is fair to lift some poor boats higher than other boats, even at the expense of the latter.

landryraccoon 8y ago
One reason I don’t think the caste system analogy holds is because you can’t overthrow Silicon Valley with a violent revolution. You can maybe destroy it, but it can’t be stolen. A caste system is arbitrary, a meritocracy is not. The article even admits this implicitly by saying that skills and training are necessary to be admitted to the inner party. Farmers may overthrow the hereditary monarchy because frankly the monarchs never had anything but historical accidents and tradition for their position anyway. But if farmers overthrow google who’s going to keep the servers running? Who’s going to fix bugs, manage projects, write code? The same people will end up running everything anyway, because they are the only ones who know how to do it.

nannotequalnan 8y ago

i've lived for long periods inside and outside SV, which I'll flatter myself into thinking gives me an insider and outsiders perspective. i share the author's sense of horror that SV is becoming a dystopia led by tech elite that think they're building a utopia, but literally have little to no meaningful contact with people that live two or more rungs below them on the socioeconomic ladder.