Tom Perkins has died
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It was a fantastic read. Taught me much about the man, early SV life and, of course, yachts.
Haven't read it yet but I have a copy on my bookshelf. I suspect it may give me some insight into his deeper, less public psychology.
https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Single-Zillionaire-Tom-Perkins/dp...
>In 2014, the Wall Street Journal published a letter by Tom Perkins, a billionaire venture capitalist: “Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich.’”
RIP.
The shorter that transition the better, I always say.
I recall the incident below, and I'd like to reflect on it (in positive light, I refuse to speak ill of the dead).
"...he compared the “progressive war on the 1 percent” to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany."
There is without a doubt a problem with the growing divide. But still, the wealthy are humans too, many who have struggled to obtain their position. Many wealthy people are trying to fix the problem of the divide. A growing problem I see is desire to persecute the wealthy, or lump them all into one "evil" class. That is really throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because I think the majority of wealthy people are honest and trying to do good, as opposed to the few dishonest and corrupt individuals among them.
Edit: A lot of people will see the comparison to Jews as ridiculous, but IMO it is not entirely far-fetched. The Jews were an easy target for persecution because they were successful when most others were not (which many attribute to the Jewish work ethic). See: http://writing.uncc.edu/student-writing/nazi-propaganda-effe...
Obviously, I don't think his comparison was referencing genocide, but instead the growing attitude that hates success rather than celebrates it.
Furthermore, the comparison between saying something mean about people in an income bracket and throwing a whole race of people into gas chambers is beyond offensive. If nothing else it trivializes and normalizes genocide.
The hatred of the Jews has its roots in the blood libel and conspiracy theories but basically boils down to the hatred and suspicion of an "other." Successful Jews were doubly hated because it was evidence of the conspiracies: of course Jews couldn't become wealthy by being Fine Upstanding Germans like Hermann Schmitz.
The economic based hate came from the accusation that they Jews were stealing money from hard-working citizens. This belief was grounded in the fact that despite the depression followed by recession in the early 1930s that crippled the German economy, Jews were relatively well off financially. Because of this, Jews were seen as greedy money mongers who were obtaining their wealth illegally, even though their fortune came from the practice of money lending.
Many Germans believed (wrongly) that they were winning WW1, and should have continued to fight– that they were betrayed by their (allegedly socialist, allegedly anti-German) leaders in accepting the Treaty of Versailles. This is the Stab in the Back myth.
This was blamed on the "others" in society the above poster mentioned. In particular, the Jews– in part for their perceived connection with Bolshevism and with international finance, as you mentioned. They were thus the "other" on which the very exclusionary German conception of a "People's Community" was based!
So you're on to something, but as you suggested, the above poster is pretty right. Thanks for reading!
Personally, for some issues I feel it's important to be sure that we know what we are talking about.
Speculation can lead to widespread misunderstandings. That's no big deal when talking about the latest Chrome update, but it is for serious issues. And consider that in this case and in many others, so many people have suffered based on misunderstandings (sometimes deliberate ones) and people spreading them. For me, it makes a few hairs stand on end!
If success is defined as not working, but parasitically living off the labor time of those of us who do work, as heirs and VCs and their LPs do, then yes, there is a hatred of "success". We who work don't need heirs parasitically living off our work and sweat.
I don't see this happening in any substantial way but most importantly, I don't know. What I am sure of is that we need some data indicating a problem exists before we start thinking about its cause and consequences; otherwise it's just speculation built upon the foundation of more speculation about something that may not exist, and if it does exist it may be completely different than what we imagine.
I can think of a story where it doesn't exist, FWIW: Americans love success and praise the wealthy. Many working class people support the Republican Party, whose policies generally are aimed at helping the wealthy (e.g., reduced tax burdens), and its current billionaire presidential candidate who openly celebrates his wealth. A famous book from a few years ago was "What's the Matter with Kansas?", asking why these people apparently vote against their economic self-interest.
I don't have an academic study on it or anything, but maybe someone has done that. A quick google reveals stuff like: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-hate-rich-people
We have no idea on how common it is. Common, in your experience is just an anecdote (and humans, including me, are bad at subjectively judging things like that).
>Liberals are baffled and infuriated that poor whites vote Republican, yet voting on tribal grounds is a feature of all multi-ethnic democracies, whether it's Northern Ireland, Lebanon or Iraq. The more a majority becomes a minority the more tribal its voting becomes, so that increasingly the Republicans have become the "white party"; making this point indelicately got Pat Buchanan the sack, but many others make it too. ...
>The Economist recently asked if the Tories had a “race problem”, but it may just be that democracy has a race problem.
That said, as someone who has inadvertently made over-the-top comparisons myself when something bothers me greatly, I don't think he deserved the backlash he received. The problem with the PC movement is that context is completely lost. If you interpret everything you see and hear literally, as the PC crowd does, you will find yourself outraged several times per day over nothing.
He was trying to say that there is a mob mentality when it comes to the richest people in the US. The public seems hate them but have no real justification for it. In that sense, hatred of the rich is no different than the hatred displayed by racists, anti-Semites, and other such closed-minded groups. The results of that hatred aren't as extreme - at least not yet - but the hatred itself is based in the same ignorance and flawed thinking.
And I don't blame people, its human nature, but I am thankful I've reached a point where I can take a deep breath and think about what someone has said before issuing a gut reaction. :)
In what context would his comparison of the rich 1% and the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany make sense? The 1% rule. The Jews were historically persecuted and derided and faced discrimination... real discrimination, not mean words.
The "mob mentality against the rich" is inconsequential. The rich and privileged by definition hold all the cards. You can say mean things against them -- well, as much as the mass media in their power will allow you, anyway -- and what does it matter? They are still rich and you're not. This is like saying that it's mean the slaves are saying bad things about their masters; or that it's mean that the peasants are insulting their king, who after all takes care of them. It's ridiculous. Not only do the rich have everything, we also have to be careful not to offend them? We also have to admire them as heroes?
The public has "no real justification"? Really? Besides this being a tiny group of people who hold the vast majority of wealth and power?
You're making my point for me. If you take that statement literally, it is clearly over-the-top. There are other over-the-top statements in common use today that when taken literally would evoke extremely emotional reactions. Example: "I just went in there to talk to her and she bit my head off". If you took that literally, you might respond with horror or outrage that someone had bitten your friend's head off, and confusion over how they had their head bitten off just moments ago and yet somehow had it sewed back on in time to relay their horrific experience to you. When it came to light that your friend was referring to being yelled at and did not actually have their head bitten off, family members of individuals that have died from decapitation might organize protests against your friend for comparing being yelled at to the terrible deaths that their loved ones experienced. There would be calls for him to be fired from whatever job he had. How far should we carry this?
Tom Perkins didn't literally mean that rich people are being rounded up and killed. The PC crowd, however, apparently had nothing else to be outraged about that week, and jumped all over it, saying that he somehow considered his plight to be similar to that of Jews in Nazi Germany. His point was that the general public has an irrational hatred of the rich, just as the Nazi hatred of Jews was irrational.
I get he didn't mean the rich 1% are being rounded up and gassed, I'm not that literal. This is not an emotional reaction. What I'm asking is in which context does the comparison make sense? Forget about the holocaust... in what sense is persecution of a powerless class comparable to being angry at the rich and powerful? In what sense is criticism of the marginalized comparable to criticism of the entitled?
If the only ground for comparison is "well, they were both about people being angry at other people" I'd say the comparison is so weak as to be stupid. People were right to find it offensive.
Tom Perkins didn't literally mean that rich people are being rounded up and killed.
For the sake of discussion: How could an apparently intelligent man pull such an insanely stupid and offensive analogy?
Being Jewish I thought his remark was extremely offensive and an insult to the millions of people killed by the nazis. It is totally and uttely inexcusable.
My rage has nothing, whatsoever, to do with the "pc crowd", which seems to be employed whenever some rich or important person talks shit and then tries to justify it in his or her non-apology (I'm sorry that you're offended about my statement kind of apology).
That's certainly true, but if you're a poor person the actions of the dishonest few has a far greater impact on your life than anything the good, honest rich people do, because the dishonest ones (generally speaking) do things that are exploitative of poor people. Poor people don't hate success per se, but they hate success when it's at their expense. I imagine the honest rich people also hate that sort of success. I hope so anyway.
Ashkenazi Jews also have an average +1SD IQ advantage that has contributed to success of Jews in cognitively demanding fields.
See, e.g., Harpending's work http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbi...
The WSJ article can't be linked (access will be restricted), but clicking from Google's search results will allow you to read it.
- https://www.google.com/search?q=progressive+kristallnact+coming&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8