These people ultimately see themselves as the elite and those who have misgivings about their work as "less than". To oppose things like mass tech surveillance and mass unemployment through AI isn't just a thing born out of concerns held by many people, it's a literal attack on the order of nature. If your concerns were worth anything, you'd be sharing it with them at an esoteric corporate-backed technology foundation retreat or at a Mar-a-Lago lunch, but you're not.
If you're a billionaire, your class interest in protecting capital usually overrides social interests and alliances.
It's not uncommon either. Ernst Röhm comes to mind, but there are plenty of contemporary examples too.
There are good leftists who do big tech work (the main detraction of the HN crowd who don’t want to feel guilty over their salaries), it’s just that none of the ones I know are active in cesspools like these. They’re too busy living in a modest home and spending their excesses on people’s rent, bills, necessities, and generally uplifting others since they no longer need anything themselves. My interaction with the HN crowd is that most would balk at the idea of using their funds to support others’ fundamental necessities, and yet that is far more leftist than anything any SV profiteer has previously pushed for.
The fact that articles like the one submitted are increasing should alert you that the working poor do not see overpaid techbros as on their side, no matter how much they claim they are.
What I can’t square is why they (probably correctly) don’t see overpaid techbros as on their side, but they do see their bosses, and others even more alienated from their lives and struggles as in their side.
As an aside, I had friends who had to declare bankruptcy during DotCom 1.0 because of stock options and the Alternative Minimum Tax. This could have been fixed with legislation but it always seemed like the DC inside-the-beltway crowd saw the whole thing as class treachery and refused to intervene.
I'd say that anyone who cavorts with the likes of Thiel and Yarvin are under the far-right umbrella. And a huge number of SV elites are more than happy to sit at the same table, quite literally.
I have so, so many more citations. Agreeing with Miller that leftism should be forcefully eradicated. Calling people on benefits parasites. Modifying Grok when it spits out un-MAGA facts that offend him. Blaming trans people for mass violence.
(And people who know him say the climate thing was nothing more than PR to begin with.)
Like the factory towns of the pre-digital era, when it's good it's great, but when they leave, innovate away, or move on it can leave those behind feeling cheated.