The Political Education of Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

The Political Education of Silicon Valley

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33 points0xbxd23 comments

> If you plot those values on the matrix of conventional US politics, there appears to be a contradiction: The tech elite want an activist government, but they don’t want the government actively restricting them.

Fringes aside, I think that sums up everybody. The difference is that most regulation doesn’t directly impact the average Joe.

> I think that sums up everybody.

I think that sums up everybody that doesn't understand how effective governments work. Regulations are an intrinsic part of them and the libertarians know that. That's why they're against them. It's a lot easier to create tax loopholes when you don't have thousands of regulations to worry about.

Libertarians don't want to pay taxes in the first place because they believe they can buy equivalent or better service for the same price or cheaper on the free market and stop overpaying for services that are useless or actively harmful, like e.g. most of FDA regulation, zoning, building codes, etc. How does that relate to tax loopholes at all?

"useless or actively harmful, like e.g. most of FDA regulation,"

You should be careful with such sentences. Maybe it's ok to say "some" but saying "most" is nonsense and dangerous.

I wasn't making a statement, I was describing the Libertarian point of view, regardless of my own.

Sorry for not reading your comment closely.

"Everybody" is overstating it. Many see think the opposite of "activist" isn't "inactive" but "prudent and principled".

Nobody disputes that government should be enforcing peace, contracts, providing defense, etc. That sort of thing is necessary and prudent. But the enforcement needs to happen fairly and according to clear rules. The enforcers need to be accountable. And often the citizen needs more than just a ballot box to push back on corrupt government.

To bring it back to tech, rules are not evenly written, let alone enforced. Why is electronic mail treated differently than mail? Why are hosts pressured to drop horrible people from their customer lists, but not phone companies? Why is it OK for tech companies to keep records for government consumption, but not car dealers, libraries, supermarkets, etc.?

Seems to me a lot of people who support a regulation will be doing what the regulation calls for anyway - so they'll be subject to it, but it'll have no impact.

If I support banning alcohol, I probably don't drink alcohol myself. Hell, it'd be pretty hypocritical if I did.

(There are exceptions, of course - if I supported changing the side of the road we drive on, I'd wait for a change of law before acting on my beliefs!)

TLDR: They're liberals, in the classic, The Economist sense of the word.

From an American point of view the word "liberal" and "public healthcare" work together? From a German perspective that's the opposite area. In the traditional German system we would call that "left". But now that the "right" is growing again, an objective observer will notice that they, too, are interest in a strong social system as core of a internally strong government policy.

Only very few Germans would call themselves "libertarian", so for an international discussion it would probably also be good to hear your distinction between liberal and libertarian.

Classically liberal is a term that predates libertarian, and is distinguished from American liberalism. Thus the modifier

What causes confusion is that both the Democrats and Republicans descend from the Enlightenment political philosophy called Liberalism - the same is true of Labour and Tories.

I didn't completely grasp this for a very long time despite understanding 'American Liberals' were not the same as 'Classical Liberals' - it's not intuitive.

To prevent confusion the etymology is the same as the word "Christian". Both Catholics and Protestants are Christians. Sometimes one will claim to be more 'Christian' than the other but that is beside the point: to a non-Westerner they're the same group. The same is true of the word "Liberal". Democrat Liberals, Progressives, Conservatives, Republicans, Libertarians - these are all species of Liberal.

What this means may be found controversial by some people.

This would mean in the West, or at least in the Anglosphere political authority is typically wielded by two competing variants of the same political philosophy.

I find this interesting because that is not at all what is advertised.

For years I thought the differences between China's One Party State and the West were plain to see but now I think the distinction is less obvious. Going back to my Christianity analogy, it may be an argument over The Holy Trinity - both completely different and also the same simultaneously.

Is the West a Two Party System with one faction? Is China a One Party System with multiple factions? If so what's the real difference or is there a real difference?

There's a strange perspective distortion where the differences are either enormous or minor but it's hard to tell which - I speculate that metapolitics has a Lovecraftian quality to it where it might not be possible to understand without going insane. :)

The west has always been open about having a single political philosophy. We fought an entire cold war to make sure that capitalism beet communism. Even today, the west is still openly democratic, and desires to support that political view globally (not as much as it desires stability and wealth, but all else equal, it will support the democratic option)

In the US, liberal and libertarian refer to opposite ends of the spectrum. Libertarian is the same as a “classical liberal” (what you might think of when you hear the word) and liberal means something left of moderate. Ex: Barak Obama is a liberal, Ron Paul is a libertarian.

>Libertarian is the same as a “classical liberal”

I always thought libertarians were a mix between conservative and liberal, because they opposed progressivism sometimes (when it involved spending money and regulating anybody) and supported it whenever it involved abolishing regulations.

OP was referencing Liberalism as a political movement in the UK[1]. This grew as a left of centre party in opposition to the right-of-centre Tories and was formed with the idea of changing traditional values and practices (such as limiting the power of the monarch).

"Classical liberals were committed to individualism, liberty and equal rights". There beliefs in no way had a problem with public healthcare, but would have issues with curtailing free speech, or a curtailing of free enterprise. Today I think a classic liberal would be in the centre of the political spectrum.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

So liberals are basically libertarians. But smart.

It's complicated:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

Libertarianism seems to lack some of the contradictions that liberlism seems to suffer from (freedom and equality will at some point exclude themselves)

Still, since Liberalism tries to find a balance in its inherent values, Libertarianism seems to be dogmatic without any further depth. Dreamy technocrats or wishful anarchists, who would get angry if labeled as such.

The US is indeed different here, but I would stand to my opinion, that Liberals generally have far more thought-provoking arguments.

"(freedom and equality will at some point exclude themselves) "

I don't think that freedom and equality of opportunity exclude each other any more than freedom excludes itself. Frankly I would go one further and say that equality of opportunity is freedom, and that rules impinging on equality of opportunity is impinging on freedoms as well.

It is not a contradiction that freedom can exclude freedom. My freedom to own land excludes your freedom to do what you want with it, etc.

Reducing equality to equality of opportunity is already a huge concession in favor of freedom.

> equality of opportunity is freedom

Until you get restricted, because you posses an opportunity others are lacking and in consequence, it gets taken from you.

> My freedom to own land excludes your freedom [...]

This is an example of freedom colliding with itself, but arguing this case is much easier, since both get exactly the same rights and therefore an equal amount of freedom that cannot be maximized any further. It is a lot harder to to balance freedom and equality.

Granted, there are a lot of cases where increased equality increases freedom. This is why I think that liberals are generally smarter.

"Reducing equality to equality of opportunity is already a huge concession in favor of freedom."

I see the other 'popular' equality, equality of outcome, as, in it's most extreme form, a complete totalitarian nightmare, that doesn't hold freedom back, but completely annihilates it.

"Until you get restricted, because you posses an opportunity others are lacking and in consequence, it gets taken from you."

Why would this inevitably lead to you having an opportunity taken from you, rather than working to extend this to others. This is much more realistic as to how the world works. I don't have my opportunity to work taken from me because someone is unemployed, instead they are helped to get opportunities to work (help with education or transport etc).

I think the important step is to say, that we can't have unlimited freedom (or opportunities) for everyone in society, but that trying to reach as much as possible is a worthwhile cause. And that, of course, the devil is in the details.

> freedom and equality will at some point exclude themselves

depends strongly on the POV I'd argue. I think I know what you mean: If you don't enforce equality by taking away freedoms naturally an inequality will emerge.

One could also argue that this desired freedom doesn't exist, because the moment you have that imbalance you automatically have a large group of people who suffer less freedom due to less wealth/power.

One might even argue that limitations can create freedoms. Because murder is usually a crime that is punishable by law, it is much easier to create non-violent business in modern, western countries. Few people would say that they are less free because murder is taken out of most people's equation.

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