Comment by cderwin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cderwin | Hacker News Reader

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You say that, but take a look at the HN thread on Peter Thiel's prospective gubernatorial campaign[0]. It's needless to say the idea of a Thiel governorship was not very popular.

This isn't to say the criticism found there is unreasonable, just that it's not special. People in science and people in tech can get involved in politics, but most of the political issues out there are not scientific or technological so support for them will break down on ideological lines, not technocratic ones. The case of Peter Thiel isn't special, i.e. a conservative member of the tech community would not prefer Richard Stallman to Marco Rubio, just as a progressive member of the tech community would not prefer Peter Thiel to Jerry Brown.

If you want technocracy, I would suggest encouraging tech-minded folks to move to the public sector rather than run for office. Personally I would oppose that, as I think most tech talent would be somewhat wasted there.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13401358

Hardcore libertarianism is the exception, not the norm in tech. Tech tends to float in big cities and as such is naturally liberal. A lot of the successes of early tech startups is in part due to liberal hiring policies welcoming women, gays, and minorities who otherwise had a hard time working or getting hired at the old conservative shops like IBM.

Its the weirdos who gave us the Apple // and the Mac. Not the button down conservative culture Thiel represents. I'm not sure its even fair to call Thiel a tech industry person. He's very much now a financier and investor. He's not making the future, he's worrying about what stocks to short and who to invest in.

> Hardcore libertarianism is the exception, not the norm in tech. Tech tends to float in big cities and as such is naturally liberal.

Wow, do I see a generation gap here.

Close your eyes and picture the nation in 1990. As you pointed out, tech tends to float in and around big cities. But we're in 1990. The cities are at rock bottom. Crime all over. Poverty. Horrendous disfunction.

Anyone living in the cities back then could be excused for blaming the situation on the hard-pressed staff of the executive branch at the various levels of government. And since a techie's first impulse is "let's automate this/route around this/code around this", there was in deed a lot of hardcore libertarianism.

But then the cities started to recover. And recover. And recover. And the clipboard-wielding liberal functionaries trying to hold things together, well, they started to hold things together.

But old attitudes die hard. Still a lot more libertarianism floating around than you think.

> The cities are at rock bottom. Crime all over. Poverty. Horrendous disfunction.

You should read less Trump tweets and more facts. The GDP, salaries, etc in big cities is very impressive. There's a reason the tech innovations and big startups don't come from nowhere Wyoming and instead come from urban centers.

Today they are. In 1990, it was a very different picture.

> Its the weirdos who gave us the Apple // and the Mac. Not the button down conservative culture Thiel represents.

I don't think that's fair. First of all, in some sense Thiel is one of those "weirdos" you mentioned above as a gay man. But that aside, the more modern versions of those enterprises -- google, facebook, uber -- were all funded by that "button-down conservative culture". It is hard, if not impossible, to call the success of those enterprises as anything but cooperation between "the weirdos" and people like Thiel.

And it is of course ridiculous to say that Thiel isn't genuinely a member of the tech community: if partners in ycombinator aren't genuine members of the tech industry, then who is? Just the engineers?

Depends what your focus is. If your focus is playing the stock market or IPO game, it doesn't really matter what industry you're in. You're merely an investor.

Yes, I think this anti-engineer culture at work at HN is ridiculous. Its the people building the future and having a vision for it who matter. Not the bankers who write the loans/buy stock/buy equity. That what Thiel's role is, pretty much just what banks used to do for businesses, except the SV way is no collateral just equity.

I think we greatly overplay the importance of the money men and let them steal credit from the engineers and founders.

> "the weirdos" and people like Thiel.

He stopped being one of the weirdos a long time ago. He's the establishment the weirdos now have to fight against.

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