www.npo.nl/tegenlicht/25-01-2015/VPWON_1232872The above link is a Tegenlicht documentary on the politics of the Silicon Valley high-tech minds. It was broadcast on Dutch public tv on the 25th of January.
Warning: venting below.
Silicon Valley refers to an area in California that produces a vast portion of the services and products associated with computers and the internet, which have taken only about 25 years to become ubiquitous, at least in the Western world: A financial powerhouse area in the modern world.
But money isn't the only thing attracted to this area. Also, geeks. Tegenlicht asked some of these "world-changers" about their politics.
From the selection of interviews, it appears that Silicon Valley is too small. Free-market libertarians, laissez-faire competitors, and do-over-revolutionaries abound. Sense made: very little.
These geeks are presented as highly competitive. People without winner's mentalities need not apply. Silicon Valley requires only the brightest and fittest minds. Ayn Rand is there in spirit. Her statement that people can be divided into makers and takers finds sympathy among the computer-coders. Makers produce all the value. Takers are parasites.
We find a man arguing that the government controls a huge share of gdp, without contributing that share in progress. Hence, government has no place in the economy of progress, and should be vastly diminished. It's the companies that drive progress, and hence the future and everything.
Another argues that the market is a perfect vessel for evaluating the performance of companies. Ideal capitalism means bad companies die, and good companies produce value. This ties in with the previous argument, as the government does not produce (enough) value according to many of the interviewed. Hence, it should take a back seat.
One group recognizes that the government won't just adjust its course by its own. They suggest we should have more competition. Only 192 countries for 7 billion people was not enough. They propose building thousands of floating cities outside territorial waters, each with their own system of government. You don't like the conditions in one country? Find one that suits you better.
In fact, Estonia is already offering "virtual" citizenship. You can apply through the internet. Competition! One starry-eyed techie has already applied. But he would retain his US citizenship, too... Wait a second, why?
Nearly everything these people say is bullshit or based on bullshit. For all the cleverness they possess in terms of coding complex products, they are operating in an echo-chamber when it comes to their politics.
The first - glaring - omission in their notions on government is the fact that big government played a key role in developing computing and the internet. Both went through the Pentagon decades before they became consumer products. Also, other even bigger governments (relative to gdp) funded the establishment of the necessary code and protocols for these systems to even exist. If the companies of Silicon Valley are really driving progress in a significant way, then the government is responsible for that.
If that single fact didn't undermine their entire thesis, then allow me to wreck the rest. The assumption that progress is all you need in an economy is false. You also need maintenance, for one. Do you clean your own offices, nerds? But more importantly: what is progress? We have "progressed" ourselves the last 2 centuries into a situation of looming environmental collapse. And when I spend half an hour a day watching facebook posts, does that make me any better? (And what do I compare it to?) The progression of technology may indeed make our way of life more sustainable and better, but we should always be critical of technology, and not stupidly elevate it to its own goal by which we measure all other activities.
The assumption that more competition and freer markets makes conditions better? Ludicrous. We are seeing that competition makes things slowly worse in the real world, if it can even be sustained - and if it breaks down into a monopoly it is even grimmer. But what about those tech companies competing against each other to produce better technology and better products every day? Sure, there are probably a handful of anecdotes to be found where people say they were motivated by competition. But even in the documentary, it is said that these geeks are not motivated by money or winning, but by creating new exciting stuff. If you develop a product just to destroy someone else's successful business, you are in fact a psychopath, are you not? Developing a product has its own rewards. Competition is the natural and unfortunate result of many enthusiastic people developing stuff at the same time, while consumers are not willing to buy everything. Cause: much development. Effect: competition. Not the other way around.
On the level of countries, we find that competition is code for lowering wages and rights. There's no reason to expect having more countries will buck that trend. And 192 "brands" is already a lot - remember that for computers we have roughly 3 realistic options generally, maybe a dozen if we look hard.
That's evidence from observation. But even theoretically, it makes no sense to say that market systems produce the best value by definition. This has all been said before, and I'm bored to even finish this paragraph. The key word in this should be "value" and it is not taken into account in a capitalistic market economy. Value, despite what economists believe, is not a measurable and comparable entity. How much is water worth, which keeps you alive, compared to a new car, which can kill you? Even among products in a single narrow product group, it is often impossible to make a choice based on value. Let's say we compare bottled water (a horrible intervention in countries which have perfectly fine publicly owned tap water). You can look at pricing, and expect the quality of the water to be equal. Or you can believe what it says on the label. This water is fresh. The other one is natural. Oh, and there's one here that's from a spring. Who says the water from the spring is better than the fresh water? Maybe the spring is polluted (as a matter in fact, many "spring" waters are more contaminated than fresh water due to less regulation. Other "spring" waters are in fact tap water, because the tap water comes from the same spring, and is then bought by or given to the bottler from the public utility that extracted it.) And all of this assumes I'm only thinking about value in terms of the quality of the product I'm intending to consume. There's also the question of the plastic bottle that I'm forced to buy. The process of production has value. Do I know anybody in the processing plant who I value? Do they separate and recycle? Are some of the employees wearing red scarves, if I happen to appreciate that?
Let's just wrap this up. These "smart" people have no clue. It's easy to believe that you can do everything, reinvent the world, and the biggest obstacle is government, when all you see around you are young people like yourself, who are producing exciting new technologies.
But it's no basis for sound political thought.
