4 ms·

Employee donations shows over 99% bias towards Democrats, in some top tech corps

10 points by nudpiedo 4y ago

nudpiedo 4y ago
I way almost shocked when I first saw it, all democracies of the world, and human rights, forbid discriminating people by their political views, and some of those companies, if not all, are even public. I do not think such level of bias can be achieved by any kind of casualty, there must be some kind of selection or purge of employed people, which makes it a discrimination as wrong as racial or gender discrimination. Hope to know your thought, as the weight of those companies in society is undeniable high, some of them impact directly society's culture.
- jfengel 4y ago
  [You asked the question, and I'm answering as impartially as I can. If this runs contrary to dang's policy, I apologize.] There's a joke that reality has a well-known liberal bias. At least, it used to be a joke. As with Poe's Law, it has become increasingly difficult to tell. As one Republican political commentator put it this year, "Democrats have lost their way, but Republicans have lost their minds." There are many Republican policies that are simply delusional. Not merely differences of opinion, but clearly at odds with reality. And not merely crank extremists, but leadership at the very highest levels. Furthermore, these policies often manifest in very hostile ways. The only way to support them is to believe the Democrats are actively engaged in attempting to destroy the United States. As you can see on HN and elsewhere, they express this in uncivil ways. Because of this, it's not surprising that companies would tend to hire people who don't reject basic science and basic human rights. And further, that they won't hire people who disrespect the rest of their staff. This is difficult, because we want to believe that the parties simply represent different value systems. There may even have been a time that it was true. But today, that assumption leads to false equivalences. Well-educated, more-intelligent-than-average techies will not be evenly distributed among political parties when one party is explicitly rejecting the intellectual tools that smart people use to distinguish truth from falsehood. I believe Musk's tweet is an exaggeration -- another example of his party's willingness to reject reality and substitute their own when it suits them. But I don't doubt that Democrats are massively overrepresented. And that's not a bad thing if smart people prefer their policies.
  - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    There's this natural starting point that politics are created equal and so it's unusual that people with more brainpower would skew more toward one politics than the other. But it's simply that neither of those are true. Almost every right-wing position I can think of is like the knee-jerk reaction a child would have toward that given issue. "Trans SCARY and WEIRD and BAD. God REAL. Taxes BAD; GTFO and let me build a private castle around myself with my money cuz there's no point in giving back to society. Hustle harder, ignoring that it's 99% luck and a byproduct of the system. Gays ICKY. Treehugging is LAME. Guns are COOL. Isolationism on the world stage is BASED who cares about that shit over there lmao." It's no surprise that people with more education go the other way.
    - tatrajim 4y ago
      If you rely on caricature to assess social reality, you will find ample confirmation for your beliefs. Upon reflection, you might possibly wonder, though, why many Chinese, including a number of my friends and colleagues in Beijing, Hangzhou, Kunming, and Hong Kong deeply envy Americans for the 2nd amendment and wish they had access to firearms to address issues in their lives. As a antidote to parochialism, consider living abroad for decades and reading news outside the English-language bubble.
    - nudpiedo 4y ago
      I am sorry to be the one telling you that, but apparently you are believing parody as reality. It does happen in all countries that some media only show the dumbest people and opinions and a complete group as if these would be a representing majority of that group.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    > The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-...
oldpop 4y ago
All that chart shows me, as a European, is that tech employees tends to choose between one of the two right-wing parties that dominate US politics.
- tatrajim 4y ago
  Actually, there are three now, one of which is anti-war, a policy position that apparently is too "right wing" for Europeans to accept?
  - oldpop 4y ago
    What is the third?
sharemywin 4y ago
What issues from the republican side would a tech worker want to support? Especially the republicans that ran in the midterms(with an actual plan besides let's troll the dems)
- nudpiedo 4y ago
  why not? US population seems to be 40 to 60% for each side, oscillating during the years.
- josefresco 4y ago
  Lower taxes for the rich?
  - sharemywin 4y ago
    the rich already have lower taxes. if your talking upper middle class maybe but that would probably just shift the taxes on to the lower middle class and poor. which would lower their spending power. so you'd drive up asset prices and lower consumer spending.
    - josefresco 4y ago
      I'm not advocating for the strategy, I'm suggesting a possible reason why a tech worker would vote or support a US Republican. They probably make more than your average American, and therefore have a financial incentive to support a political party promising lower taxes.
      - sharemywin 4y ago
        I think that's part of the issue this election cycle they weren't really offering that.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    many rich people at bigtech got there through national funding in science and engineering. They conclude that taxes, which helped fund their education, could actually be a good thing as it helps us grow the next generation of geniuses. I also met many people who had fled the midwest because they found it intolerant- gay people, democrats, etc. They like the Bay Area (home to many of the bigtechs) because it's much more liberal.
josefresco 4y ago
Now do Tesla and SpaceX Elon...
- tulio_ribeiro 4y ago
  The list does include Tesla. Additionally, discussing the political alignment of employees at Tesla and SpaceX is not relevant to the topic that, if you've been paying attention to the current events, is about content moderation on social networks.
tulio_ribeiro 4y ago
In the US, tech companies tend to support Democratic policies and candidates. This probably has to do with their focus on issues like net neutrality and immigration reform, which align more with the Democratic party. Also, I don't think that political donations necessarily reflect a company or its employees' political beliefs, because generally a small group of employees at a company are responsible for a high percentage of donations. To the Democratic party, in this case. Which means that the frequency distribution for employee donations probably are long-tailed, with a relatively small number of employees making a large proportion of the donations, where the majority of employees make no political donations, and a small number of employees make a disproportionate number of donations.
- nudpiedo 4y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out, percentage and amount of donations are probably not a good metric to determine the amount of employees of each political opinions.

10 points by nudpiedo 4y ago

I way almost shocked when I first saw it, all democracies of the world, and human rights, forbid discriminating people by their political views, and some of those companies, if not all, are even public. I do not think such level of bias can be achieved by any kind of casualty, there must be some kind of selection or purge of employed people, which makes it a discrimination as wrong as racial or gender discrimination. Hope to know your thought, as the weight of those companies in society is undeniable high, some of them impact directly society's culture.

jfengel 4y ago
[You asked the question, and I'm answering as impartially as I can. If this runs contrary to dang's policy, I apologize.] There's a joke that reality has a well-known liberal bias. At least, it used to be a joke. As with Poe's Law, it has become increasingly difficult to tell. As one Republican political commentator put it this year, "Democrats have lost their way, but Republicans have lost their minds." There are many Republican policies that are simply delusional. Not merely differences of opinion, but clearly at odds with reality. And not merely crank extremists, but leadership at the very highest levels. Furthermore, these policies often manifest in very hostile ways. The only way to support them is to believe the Democrats are actively engaged in attempting to destroy the United States. As you can see on HN and elsewhere, they express this in uncivil ways. Because of this, it's not surprising that companies would tend to hire people who don't reject basic science and basic human rights. And further, that they won't hire people who disrespect the rest of their staff. This is difficult, because we want to believe that the parties simply represent different value systems. There may even have been a time that it was true. But today, that assumption leads to false equivalences. Well-educated, more-intelligent-than-average techies will not be evenly distributed among political parties when one party is explicitly rejecting the intellectual tools that smart people use to distinguish truth from falsehood. I believe Musk's tweet is an exaggeration -- another example of his party's willingness to reject reality and substitute their own when it suits them. But I don't doubt that Democrats are massively overrepresented. And that's not a bad thing if smart people prefer their policies.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  There's this natural starting point that politics are created equal and so it's unusual that people with more brainpower would skew more toward one politics than the other. But it's simply that neither of those are true. Almost every right-wing position I can think of is like the knee-jerk reaction a child would have toward that given issue. "Trans SCARY and WEIRD and BAD. God REAL. Taxes BAD; GTFO and let me build a private castle around myself with my money cuz there's no point in giving back to society. Hustle harder, ignoring that it's 99% luck and a byproduct of the system. Gays ICKY. Treehugging is LAME. Guns are COOL. Isolationism on the world stage is BASED who cares about that shit over there lmao." It's no surprise that people with more education go the other way.
  - tatrajim 4y ago
    If you rely on caricature to assess social reality, you will find ample confirmation for your beliefs. Upon reflection, you might possibly wonder, though, why many Chinese, including a number of my friends and colleagues in Beijing, Hangzhou, Kunming, and Hong Kong deeply envy Americans for the 2nd amendment and wish they had access to firearms to address issues in their lives. As a antidote to parochialism, consider living abroad for decades and reading news outside the English-language bubble.
  - nudpiedo 4y ago
    I am sorry to be the one telling you that, but apparently you are believing parody as reality. It does happen in all countries that some media only show the dumbest people and opinions and a complete group as if these would be a representing majority of that group.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  > The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-...

oldpop 4y ago

All that chart shows me, as a European, is that tech employees tends to choose between one of the two right-wing parties that dominate US politics.

tatrajim 4y ago
Actually, there are three now, one of which is anti-war, a policy position that apparently is too "right wing" for Europeans to accept?
- oldpop 4y ago
  What is the third?

sharemywin 4y ago

What issues from the republican side would a tech worker want to support? Especially the republicans that ran in the midterms(with an actual plan besides let's troll the dems)

nudpiedo 4y ago
why not? US population seems to be 40 to 60% for each side, oscillating during the years.
josefresco 4y ago
Lower taxes for the rich?
- sharemywin 4y ago
  the rich already have lower taxes. if your talking upper middle class maybe but that would probably just shift the taxes on to the lower middle class and poor. which would lower their spending power. so you'd drive up asset prices and lower consumer spending.
  - josefresco 4y ago
    I'm not advocating for the strategy, I'm suggesting a possible reason why a tech worker would vote or support a US Republican. They probably make more than your average American, and therefore have a financial incentive to support a political party promising lower taxes.
    - sharemywin 4y ago
      I think that's part of the issue this election cycle they weren't really offering that.
- dekhn 4y ago
  many rich people at bigtech got there through national funding in science and engineering. They conclude that taxes, which helped fund their education, could actually be a good thing as it helps us grow the next generation of geniuses. I also met many people who had fled the midwest because they found it intolerant- gay people, democrats, etc. They like the Bay Area (home to many of the bigtechs) because it's much more liberal.

josefresco 4y ago

Now do Tesla and SpaceX Elon...

tulio_ribeiro 4y ago
The list does include Tesla. Additionally, discussing the political alignment of employees at Tesla and SpaceX is not relevant to the topic that, if you've been paying attention to the current events, is about content moderation on social networks.

tulio_ribeiro 4y ago

In the US, tech companies tend to support Democratic policies and candidates. This probably has to do with their focus on issues like net neutrality and immigration reform, which align more with the Democratic party. Also, I don't think that political donations necessarily reflect a company or its employees' political beliefs, because generally a small group of employees at a company are responsible for a high percentage of donations. To the Democratic party, in this case. Which means that the frequency distribution for employee donations probably are long-tailed, with a relatively small number of employees making a large proportion of the donations, where the majority of employees make no political donations, and a small number of employees make a disproportionate number of donations.

nudpiedo 4y ago
Thanks for pointing that out, percentage and amount of donations are probably not a good metric to determine the amount of employees of each political opinions.