6 ms·

The New Legislators of Silicon Valley

37 points by _delirium 2y ago

soco 2y ago
Now this is a topic where I would have loved to see discussions - the role of technology leaders today, beyond the obvious...
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  Tech leaders are also business leaders and they were also vocal in the past. See Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Alva Edison. Tech leaders and businesses leaders are publicly speaking to promote their interests and their views. They always have done it. Going from this to a conspiracy theory where tech and capital are comploting together to subdue the world, shape it to their liking, while using a soviet style apparatus is laughable. Also, pretending that people on the right are just recycling leftist theories (of Adorno, Rene Girard, Gramsci) is pretty funny.
  - thatcat 2y ago
    I don't think uncle Ben or ole Tommy E were collecting information on everyone and using the control they gained from their business to implement advanced psychological techniques which manipulate perception en masse.
    - arcanemachiner 2y ago
      Didn't they find a bunch of skeletons buried under Benjamin Franklin's house? It sounds like he did what he could with the technology that was available at the time.
  - graemep 2y ago
    You do not need an actual conspiracy. A lot of powerful people with the same interests pushing those interests has the same effect.
black_13 2y ago
[dead]
DeathArrow 2y ago
>The evidence isn’t merely anecdotal. A comprehensive 2023 study tracking political donations of 200,000 employees across 18 industries revealed tech workers as uniquely anti-establishment—and trailing only the bohemians of arts and entertainment in their liberal fervor. The source of this radicalism lies precisely where Gouldner placed his faith: in what he called the “culture of critical discourse” embedded in technical work itself. Thus, the researchers discovered that non-technical employees within the same tech companies showed none of this rebellious disposition, confirming that coding itself, not mere proximity to ping pong tables, contributes to their dissenting mindset. Thankfully not all tech workers suffer from this disease.
- mentalgear 2y ago
  Sounds to me like you're a technical person who's uncomfortable discussing their work in a “culture of critical discourse”.
  - zero_shift 2y ago
    I am more favourable to OP. Taking a starting point that "everything I don't understand, and haven't been able to verify, is suspect" is pathological.
    - soco 2y ago
      Please point us where you have seen such a starting point, or why else are you bringing it up?
  - DeathArrow 2y ago
    I am comfortable discussing my work in any context, provided my peers can understand it, at least roughly.
- soco 2y ago
  The disease of wanting to change the society?
intermerda 2y ago
Has the tech industry always been this depraved? Or something fundamentally change within these people with the advent of Trumpism?
- fidotron 2y ago
  Post dot com boom, yes, but before that I think it was more of the traditional golf/cocaine/strippers/Vegas situation. The FTX horror show was nothing like as anomalous as the PR of other places would have you believe, which is one reason VCs felt so OK flinging money at them.
- cjs_ac 2y ago
  These sorts of people have always existed somewhere, but no one paid any attention to them until now. As a non-American, I'm looking forward to watching the in-fighting that will occur once their attempts to put their competing ideologies into practice start to conflict.
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    One faction will win and then you will have Russia but with more power.
- graemep 2y ago
  Not always, but the change happened long before Trump. it is also part of a wider change. Some of the ideas mentioned in the article such as subscription policing and seasteading have been around for decades. The arrogance of the wealthy goes back to the 80s, and reflects the moral change of "greed is good" replacing "money is the root of all evil" (which started long before, of course).
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  Did you not notice the last decade of the tech industry anointing itself as the one arbiter of truth and gatekeeper of human communications? Seems difficult to not noticed with how loudly that role was cheered on by those who thought it would entrench their political ideology into society forever.
markus_zhang 2y ago
I think a slightly better perspective is "new aristocrats".
- javcasas 2y ago
  "Oligarchs" is the word you are looking for.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    You are right!
  - cess11 2y ago
    The legislator-concept in the header comes from Zygmunt Bauman and has a specific meaning, elaborated on in the article, which also uses both aristocrat and oligarch profusely.
- InkCanon 2y ago
  Seeing how a lot of the people in SV tech, there is an uncanny resemblance to aristocracies like the English or old money WASP types. They go to certain exclusive schools, they work at certain companies, have certain rituals, have a "type" of social sphere, have a certain political ideology, etc.
yapyap 2y ago
> their libertarian fantasies bobbing like luxury yachts in international waters. I wouldn’t say libertarian, more oligarchical.
- trhway 2y ago
  they forgot Mars colony - libertariano-oligarchical with that Musk's salute from heart to the Sun.
yapyap 2y ago
“Legislators”, I think it’s more the opposite of that term now.
roenxi 2y ago
This article seems to have an odd rhetorical stance against people solving problems. Things like: > Inevitably, Elon Musk, techno-capitalism’s own Zelig, also has strong opinions on the subject: in destroy-infrastructure-first wars of the future, he opined in a recent Westpoint appearance, “any ground based communications like fiber optic cables and cell phone towers will be destroyed.” If only someone ran an internet satellite company to save us! I get the impression this is supposed to be dripping sarcasm, but in a fairly literal sense it is describing the expected and productive dynamic. Musk has identified a problem and is proposing a solution. To hurry matters along he is implementing the solution whether everyone agrees there is a problem or not. How else is it supposed to work? This dynamic turned up a few times and I don't expect the author to have a productive theory for how we're supposed to organise people to effect change - I expect it will involve waiting for Democrats and Republicans to agree on something first (which, traditionally, not a process that leads to the highest of speedy successes). If we're waiting for people with no financial stake or know-how to build and promote satellite networks it could take a while.
- fidotron 2y ago
  > How else is it supposed to work? Through an ethics committee gated, peer-reviewed, consensus driven academic technocracy. They are criticizing one extreme while being oblivious that they represent the other.
  - cess11 2y ago
    I've never seen him advocate for something like that, would you mind giving a source to your claim?
    - fidotron 2y ago
      It's the Soros way, which permeates to the things he supports such as this. He went through a phase of introducing his books by claiming he's a misunderstood sociologist that is doing what he's doing (on the markets) to prove his various theories, which he developed at the LSE under Popper. This particularly applies to the concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory) . Essentially, the things Soros actually did that people hate him for (such as in the UK the episode with the pound) he claims he did to demonstrate that individuals shouldn't be allowed to do them and that especially markets cannot be trusted to be resistant to problematic individuals. Instead some overarching control mechanism must be inserted of the nature I described.
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
It's hilarious seeing HN and similar discussion groups get up in arms about the involvement of the tech industry in governance after spending the last decade endlessly praising the merger of the two. It's not like they weren't warned over and over again that this would eventually come back to bite them. That big tech wouldn't obey them as their master forever. But all too many were convinced big tech had the same values as they have so it was ok to let these companies run amuck and drive all over everyone's rights. This isn't a case of big tech flipping from Democrats to Republicans (or libertarians). It's that they never were on anyone's side but their own. For a decade they were enabled and allowed to grow their power unchecked. Now they don't need to obey anymore. They haven't flipped to the Republicans. They've flipped to themselves.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  Downvotes won't make this truth disappear nor will it absolve you of your role in enabling big tech's power. But if you want HN to keep on its path to becoming Reddit, keep downvoting without engaging in any sort of rebuttal.
gizzlon 2y ago
> .. identified the villain with brass-knuckled clarity: the decline of critical, open debate was due to the corrupting influence of concentrated power. Truer words have never been spoken. And yet… Updating his 1962 analysis in 2023, Habermas, the patrician-academic, chose to fuss over topics like “algorithmic steering”— a quaint concern akin to adjusting picture frames while the house collapses into a sinkhole. "Adjusting picture frames while the house collapses into a sinkhole" sums up much of the opposition in the US ATM However, it's not clear to me how "concentrated power" has lead to "the decline of critical, open debate" ?
DeathArrow 2y ago
Some people possess that quality which Machiavelli included in the arsenal of any authentic prince: virtù, a trait defined by a commentator of The Prince as embodied in “an individual endowed with exceptional qualities who seeks to seize reality in order to confront and reshape it, without being overwhelmed by its unpredictable unfolding (by fate).” Virtù, the supreme quality of the Machiavellian prince, is something different from Roman virtus or from virtue in ethical terms; it is an optimal composition of personality suited for a great deed, a strange blend of ingenuity, boldness, effectiveness, and foresight. Virtù is what enables a person of great stature to create their own destiny, rather than being merely a pawn of chance.
DarkWiiPlayer 2y ago
More and more I am coming to hate the term "tech elites"; it playes into the lie that these people have, themselves, any sort of "elite" status in the field, rather than the reality that they are just wealthy owners of big companies; some by luck, some by inheritance. And people like Musk are increasingly making use of this misconception to justify their opinions with fake authority, as someone who understands tech rather than someone who owns companies that employs people who understand tech. It's becoming more and more important to remind people that no, these people aren't in any way different from the rest of the wealthy owning class; they aren't smarter, they didn't pull themselves up by the bootstraps, they simply pay qualified people to make them money, and their only value to society is the capital they own.
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
Nouveau riche, generally

37 points by _delirium 2y ago

soco 2y ago

Now this is a topic where I would have loved to see discussions - the role of technology leaders today, beyond the obvious...

DeathArrow 2y ago
Tech leaders are also business leaders and they were also vocal in the past. See Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Alva Edison. Tech leaders and businesses leaders are publicly speaking to promote their interests and their views. They always have done it. Going from this to a conspiracy theory where tech and capital are comploting together to subdue the world, shape it to their liking, while using a soviet style apparatus is laughable. Also, pretending that people on the right are just recycling leftist theories (of Adorno, Rene Girard, Gramsci) is pretty funny.
- thatcat 2y ago
  I don't think uncle Ben or ole Tommy E were collecting information on everyone and using the control they gained from their business to implement advanced psychological techniques which manipulate perception en masse.
  - arcanemachiner 2y ago
    Didn't they find a bunch of skeletons buried under Benjamin Franklin's house? It sounds like he did what he could with the technology that was available at the time.
- graemep 2y ago
  You do not need an actual conspiracy. A lot of powerful people with the same interests pushing those interests has the same effect.

black_13 2y ago

[dead]

DeathArrow 2y ago

>The evidence isn’t merely anecdotal. A comprehensive 2023 study tracking political donations of 200,000 employees across 18 industries revealed tech workers as uniquely anti-establishment—and trailing only the bohemians of arts and entertainment in their liberal fervor. The source of this radicalism lies precisely where Gouldner placed his faith: in what he called the “culture of critical discourse” embedded in technical work itself. Thus, the researchers discovered that non-technical employees within the same tech companies showed none of this rebellious disposition, confirming that coding itself, not mere proximity to ping pong tables, contributes to their dissenting mindset. Thankfully not all tech workers suffer from this disease.

mentalgear 2y ago
Sounds to me like you're a technical person who's uncomfortable discussing their work in a “culture of critical discourse”.
- zero_shift 2y ago
  I am more favourable to OP. Taking a starting point that "everything I don't understand, and haven't been able to verify, is suspect" is pathological.
  - soco 2y ago
    Please point us where you have seen such a starting point, or why else are you bringing it up?
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  I am comfortable discussing my work in any context, provided my peers can understand it, at least roughly.
soco 2y ago
The disease of wanting to change the society?

intermerda 2y ago

Has the tech industry always been this depraved? Or something fundamentally change within these people with the advent of Trumpism?

fidotron 2y ago
Post dot com boom, yes, but before that I think it was more of the traditional golf/cocaine/strippers/Vegas situation. The FTX horror show was nothing like as anomalous as the PR of other places would have you believe, which is one reason VCs felt so OK flinging money at them.
cjs_ac 2y ago
These sorts of people have always existed somewhere, but no one paid any attention to them until now. As a non-American, I'm looking forward to watching the in-fighting that will occur once their attempts to put their competing ideologies into practice start to conflict.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  One faction will win and then you will have Russia but with more power.
graemep 2y ago
Not always, but the change happened long before Trump. it is also part of a wider change. Some of the ideas mentioned in the article such as subscription policing and seasteading have been around for decades. The arrogance of the wealthy goes back to the 80s, and reflects the moral change of "greed is good" replacing "money is the root of all evil" (which started long before, of course).
Mountain_Skies 2y ago
Did you not notice the last decade of the tech industry anointing itself as the one arbiter of truth and gatekeeper of human communications? Seems difficult to not noticed with how loudly that role was cheered on by those who thought it would entrench their political ideology into society forever.

markus_zhang 2y ago

I think a slightly better perspective is "new aristocrats".

javcasas 2y ago
"Oligarchs" is the word you are looking for.
- markus_zhang 2y ago
  You are right!
- cess11 2y ago
  The legislator-concept in the header comes from Zygmunt Bauman and has a specific meaning, elaborated on in the article, which also uses both aristocrat and oligarch profusely.
InkCanon 2y ago
Seeing how a lot of the people in SV tech, there is an uncanny resemblance to aristocracies like the English or old money WASP types. They go to certain exclusive schools, they work at certain companies, have certain rituals, have a "type" of social sphere, have a certain political ideology, etc.

yapyap 2y ago

> their libertarian fantasies bobbing like luxury yachts in international waters. I wouldn’t say libertarian, more oligarchical.

trhway 2y ago
they forgot Mars colony - libertariano-oligarchical with that Musk's salute from heart to the Sun.

yapyap 2y ago

“Legislators”, I think it’s more the opposite of that term now.

roenxi 2y ago

This article seems to have an odd rhetorical stance against people solving problems. Things like: > Inevitably, Elon Musk, techno-capitalism’s own Zelig, also has strong opinions on the subject: in destroy-infrastructure-first wars of the future, he opined in a recent Westpoint appearance, “any ground based communications like fiber optic cables and cell phone towers will be destroyed.” If only someone ran an internet satellite company to save us! I get the impression this is supposed to be dripping sarcasm, but in a fairly literal sense it is describing the expected and productive dynamic. Musk has identified a problem and is proposing a solution. To hurry matters along he is implementing the solution whether everyone agrees there is a problem or not. How else is it supposed to work? This dynamic turned up a few times and I don't expect the author to have a productive theory for how we're supposed to organise people to effect change - I expect it will involve waiting for Democrats and Republicans to agree on something first (which, traditionally, not a process that leads to the highest of speedy successes). If we're waiting for people with no financial stake or know-how to build and promote satellite networks it could take a while.

fidotron 2y ago
> How else is it supposed to work? Through an ethics committee gated, peer-reviewed, consensus driven academic technocracy. They are criticizing one extreme while being oblivious that they represent the other.
- cess11 2y ago
  I've never seen him advocate for something like that, would you mind giving a source to your claim?
  - fidotron 2y ago
    It's the Soros way, which permeates to the things he supports such as this. He went through a phase of introducing his books by claiming he's a misunderstood sociologist that is doing what he's doing (on the markets) to prove his various theories, which he developed at the LSE under Popper. This particularly applies to the concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory) . Essentially, the things Soros actually did that people hate him for (such as in the UK the episode with the pound) he claims he did to demonstrate that individuals shouldn't be allowed to do them and that especially markets cannot be trusted to be resistant to problematic individuals. Instead some overarching control mechanism must be inserted of the nature I described.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago

It's hilarious seeing HN and similar discussion groups get up in arms about the involvement of the tech industry in governance after spending the last decade endlessly praising the merger of the two. It's not like they weren't warned over and over again that this would eventually come back to bite them. That big tech wouldn't obey them as their master forever. But all too many were convinced big tech had the same values as they have so it was ok to let these companies run amuck and drive all over everyone's rights. This isn't a case of big tech flipping from Democrats to Republicans (or libertarians). It's that they never were on anyone's side but their own. For a decade they were enabled and allowed to grow their power unchecked. Now they don't need to obey anymore. They haven't flipped to the Republicans. They've flipped to themselves.

Mountain_Skies 2y ago
Downvotes won't make this truth disappear nor will it absolve you of your role in enabling big tech's power. But if you want HN to keep on its path to becoming Reddit, keep downvoting without engaging in any sort of rebuttal.

gizzlon 2y ago

> .. identified the villain with brass-knuckled clarity: the decline of critical, open debate was due to the corrupting influence of concentrated power. Truer words have never been spoken. And yet… Updating his 1962 analysis in 2023, Habermas, the patrician-academic, chose to fuss over topics like “algorithmic steering”— a quaint concern akin to adjusting picture frames while the house collapses into a sinkhole. "Adjusting picture frames while the house collapses into a sinkhole" sums up much of the opposition in the US ATM However, it's not clear to me how "concentrated power" has lead to "the decline of critical, open debate" ?

DeathArrow 2y ago

Some people possess that quality which Machiavelli included in the arsenal of any authentic prince: virtù, a trait defined by a commentator of The Prince as embodied in “an individual endowed with exceptional qualities who seeks to seize reality in order to confront and reshape it, without being overwhelmed by its unpredictable unfolding (by fate).” Virtù, the supreme quality of the Machiavellian prince, is something different from Roman virtus or from virtue in ethical terms; it is an optimal composition of personality suited for a great deed, a strange blend of ingenuity, boldness, effectiveness, and foresight. Virtù is what enables a person of great stature to create their own destiny, rather than being merely a pawn of chance.

DarkWiiPlayer 2y ago

More and more I am coming to hate the term "tech elites"; it playes into the lie that these people have, themselves, any sort of "elite" status in the field, rather than the reality that they are just wealthy owners of big companies; some by luck, some by inheritance. And people like Musk are increasingly making use of this misconception to justify their opinions with fake authority, as someone who understands tech rather than someone who owns companies that employs people who understand tech. It's becoming more and more important to remind people that no, these people aren't in any way different from the rest of the wealthy owning class; they aren't smarter, they didn't pull themselves up by the bootstraps, they simply pay qualified people to make them money, and their only value to society is the capital they own.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

Nouveau riche, generally