Why Zuckerberg’s Lobby Is Collapsing Outside Of DC
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He has worked hard, but no harder than many others.
He is brilliant, but not any more than many others.
He is tenacious, but not more than many others.
He was is the perfect storm of the right place at the right time on the right thing and played his hand beautifully. But he still hit the lottery.
The idea that lottery winners are suddenly Subject Matter Experts on other things just because they have money, eyeballs, connections, or whatever is silly. Out here in the diaspora, we pay little attention to the opinions of powerball winners. Too bad the same thing can't be said for the fanboys and followers in Silicon Valley.
This was inevitable.
It's comforting to think that successful people were merely lucky, or became successful by underhanded tricks, but as I've said before, if you have to choose between two explanations and one gives you an excuse for being lazy, choose the other one.
The question isn't whether Zuck is brilliant and tenacious, but rather whether you could pick him out of a lineup of 100 similarly brilliant and tenacious people who are nonetheless not billionaires.
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
I'd contend that if a brilliant, tenacious person is doing relatively poorly remunerative things, it's because they're working on the wrong problems. Hamming writes:
"I started asking, ``What are the important problems of your field?'' And after a week or so, ``What important problems are you working on?'' And after some more time I came in one day and said, ``If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?''"
It's really easy to work on the wrong problems, either because you lack the courage to work on the right problem, or you don't know what the right problem is, or because your values don't line up with professional success. The first is regrettable, the second is hopefully temporary, and the third is fine. But if you want money and fame and all the other accouterments of success, and you're not working on an important problem, and you're not working on getting the courage to work on an important problem, and you're not trying to find the important problems - what are you doing? That's usually the situation that your hypothetical math mathematics professor is in.
"This attitude bugs me a lot. There is probably a path for every single person in this country to make a million dollars in the next year if they were just "savvy enough" to take advantage of it. It seems everyone wants to diminish Zuck's success by ascribing luck to it, but let me tell you something. Zuck executed the shit out of Facebook. Did the community and mindshare just come out of thin air?
There's no good reason to believe that Zuckerberg is lucky at all. Saying he was in the right place at the right time has this tacit assumption that if he were somewhere else at the wrong time he would have tried the same thing and fell flat on his face.
It seems because Facebook is an outlier, people feel safe talking about the luck factor, but that's meaningless because we all exist with individual circumstances, and by that measure everything every one of us does is based on luck.
Instead, I prefer to ascribe luck to things that the individual actually had no control over, such as winning the lottery."
There is luck involved with being successful, but there is also an ability to push it through. The recent comments by Bill Gates about how Microsoft did tablets way before Apple did, but they didn't have the design vision for them he did is a great example of that. I don't think the iPad would have been successful without its design, and that design wasn't "luck" it was deliberate. But the other parts of the equation were lucky (things like the PC market fading)
Computers as we know them today won't exist in the same form in 20 years, they'll primarily be powered by smart phones. But don't come back in 20 years and call this event and whatever successful company to profit on this "lucky"... it's just, who is going to execute upon this vision to make it happen? That's exactly what Apple did with tablets. They saw the future as it should be and executed upon that vision.
I think you give Apple a bit too much credit, they did well with the iPad, they did poorly with the Lisa 2 and the Newton and X-Serve. Product development from concept to product takes years. Someone can predict what they think will happen, and they can plan for it (which they do) but whether or not what they think will happen is what actually happens is controlled by forces they cannot control.
Zuckerberg did win a lottery, quite right. If there was a room of 10,000 entreprenuers flipping coins, he flipped heads 100 times.
But it is not a fair toss - after the first few rounds those still in the game are a self-selecting group of people whose own biases more accurately match the new world than the average.
So when Zuckerberg and many of those who are still tossing, makes a new bet, a new toss, the odds he is choosing a path that will prove solid in the future is better than even.
One day his biases will lead him astray, afterall, there is no rational way to predict the future accurately. But if the bet is on "technology leadership" his biases so far are useful.
This is not to say his biases apply in DC, or that his biases are already out of date, but still, if technology leadership is finding a trail through the wilderness, his biases have at least lead through a thicket and found water at least once.
Of course the guy leading the Donner Party probably could say the same thing too.
Anyway, point is, his technology bet is "America needs immigrants". His political bet is "everyone will forgive me if I fix that". He may be right on technology, and wrong on politics - which I think is the main complaint. Does not make his technology bet wrong.
(personally I think its foolish to fix immigration for that reason - most people want to stay where they are and still work for facebook. And that is not an immigration problem)
But in the end, there is no analogy quite right - whatever future we are heading towards its going to be a surprise. Hopefully a nice, kids on Xmas day kind of surprise :-)
Maybe some people do get a D&D reworking of the Parc Xerox maxim : "point of view adds 80 Luck points" but I just felt "lottery winner" was a bit disparaging.
While I don't disagree with you, I'll just point out that this behavior is a result of universal human biases and not anything unique to Silicon Valley. Have money? Fame? Ordinary people will care a great deal about what you say and do for those reasons alone. No kool aid required.
You can say this about literally anyone. Bill Gates? Psshh lottery winner. Who does he think he is going around and doing charity work. Anyone can do that if they won the lottery, he's not special.
See how easy it is to trivialize the accomplishments of other people?
Why do you think we are even having a conversation about Zuck? That's the same reason why he has the influence to have an impact on policy. Anything he says and does will be in the media, and he can use that power to make a difference in policy that he thinks will help the world. You might disagree, but he's in the position to do that, and its unfair to trivialize his accomplishments because of that.
The important thing is, he's TRYING to do something, whereas others won't even try because they're too scared to fail. Sure, his lobby could end up being an utter failure. But don't you think its awesome that he at least tried?
There is a big difference between going around doing charity work, and going around doing policy work. Bill Gate's charity work doesn't depend on his personal credibility, it depends on his money and his willingness to invest his personal time. Policy work inherently depends on the personal credibility of the person doing the lobbying. Therefore, it raises the question: why should we listen to what you say? And the answer can't just be: "because I have money."
You don't think he's learned a few lessons in the past 10 years that gives him some insight that's useful?
EDIT: Note that I'm not saying whether what he's lobbying for is right or wrong. I'm just saying, theres a pretty good reason to see what he has to say.
FWIW, my dad was an immigrant to America and worked hard and through much pain to get through the immigration process, and I finally just got my citizenship after 10+ years of growing up in the USA. The family has been through much suffering but I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for my dad being able to come to the States. I agree with Zuck's intentions even though he may or may not have different underlying motives.
In fact, we were all immigrants at one point, no reason to shut the door for other people now. Who gives a fuck if it drives down wages or puts more competition in the workforce. It's that versus a more open world for everyone. I'd choose the latter even if I have to take a paycut.
Insight into running a big organization? Sure. Insight into global politics? Not really.
> Who gives a fuck if it drives down wages or puts more competition in the workforce. It's that versus a more open world for everyone.
My dad was an immigrant too, and I got my citizenship about 8 years after moving here (at which point I had been living in the U.S. for most of my life). I don't give a damn about a "more open world for everyone." The purpose of a country is to maximize the prosperity of its citizens. Sometimes that's furthered by making things more open, and sometimes it isn't, but the key consideration should be the people who are already part of the body politic.
That's the only morally justifiable way of running a democracy. The people did not give up some of their freedom in order to institute government just so that government could sell out their interests in favor of the interests of other people. Those people have governments to watch out for their interests--they don't need ours to do so. Certainly, they don't want their governments watching out for our interests at the expense of theirs.
The way I look at it is that some policies are intrinsically justifiable and some are not. If a policy is claimed to benefit the nation, it is intrinsically justifiable even if the people are not necessarily totally convinced of its utility (this is the prerogative of a government within a republican democratic system). If a policy is not claimed to benefit the nation, but to benefit other people, it must be justified on the basis of the fact that the people as a whole choose to be generous in that instance.
Once they climb that ladder, their first instinct is to throw it down.
Literally thousands of students was in the right place at the right time - they had the exact same luck Zuckerberg did. But only Zuckerberg build Facebook.
Since you want to go there, your above statement is true for pretty much every human being. That makes it rather meaningless in the context you've used it.
Unfair, especially considering FB's growth over the decade. He made the place and the time and refused to get out of the storm for $1 Billion + several times. Oh, and he could've screwed up many times over the course of years. He didn't and over 1 BILLION people use /live on his site so give credit where credit is due.
It's apparent from this post that that is the truth.
For example this blogger writes as though he believes that the backlash against FWD.us is a totally organic expression of authentic opinion in the tech community. He mentions the truth in passing:
> after a list of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, boycotted Facebook over FWD.us-funded ads that praised Republicans for supporting the Keystone pipeline (below)
See, the opinion against Keystone is real, but the expression of it against FWD.us has been juiced by a significant outpouring of resources by politically savvy groups like the Sierra Club.
This is not an organic uprising by Silicon Valley. It's one set of professional politickers (anti-Keystone) successfully leaching off the PR of another (FWD.us). It happens all the time. But it can be hard for idealistic people to spot because they tend to perceive one side of an argument as more authentic, natural, or real, than the other--leading them to underestimate the role of professional organizers in a given trend or action.
Its completely counter to logic, the purpose as lobbying as it is today is when a small sized population with extreme financial resources want to influence specific legislature.
If you want to influence legislature and you dont have big disproportionate finances at your disposal, dont turn to lobbying. Why a Zuckerberg, or Page, etc have turned to this is one thing... why joe developer with say 100K in the bank is jumping on board is beyond irrational.
Number 2, when you are buying politicians, doing it in public view is bound to have negative 'PR' moments, you are buying politicians. Hello. There is a reason this is done in private.
Its completely counter to logic, the purpose as lobbying
as it is today is when a small sized population with
extreme financial resources want to influence specific
legislature.
Isn't hiring organised, experienced people who know how to do this politics stuff what lobbying is? Surely lobbying doesn't just mean ladling out gobs of cash to corrupt legislators?
If you're a programmer and want to donate to people defending your interests in the political realm, consider EFF instead.
Successful movements focus on ideas, not people. FWD.us is too focused on people.
If you only think about your own interests in a narrow sense, you will be continually steamrollered by those with broader minds and agendas.
Nothing.
> how are Facebook's interests served by campaigning for an oil pipeline?
They aren't.
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Facebook is only tangentially related to FWD.us. Its the political project of Mark Zuckerberg.
The stated goal of Facebook in this is to push for immigration reform. Elite Republicans are, all told, fairly pro-immigration reform. They don't need convincing. The "base," however, is virulently anti-immigrant (the same is true to a lesser extent of the less-educated white and black portions of the Democratic base as well). Running ads praising Republican politicians for supporting immigration reform is not going to be effective and more likely than not would cost them votes.
If Zuck wants to make sure he has their support for his policy agenda, he's got to have something of actual value for them. It's not going to be votes, but it has to be something you can easily convert to votes. Money is that, but you can't just spend money on anything and expect to automatically get value for your dollar.
> Facebook is only tangentially related to FWD.us. Its the political project of Mark Zuckerberg.
Somewhat, but Zuck started it so that he could get access to more cheap foreign engineering talent to help build Facebook.
If nothing else companies could hire and train unskilled workers themselves (this is how the military solves their particular problem even with poor earning power, low respect and autonomy as issues).
If the government didn't have such a massive impact on the bottom line of industries, there wouldn't be an incentive for companies to lobby. As it is now, a few million spent on lobbying is a bargain for favorable laws for your industry.
Is the project infallible? No. But I would think twice before jumping on the bandwagon to oppose it categorically because of what people are saying on Facebook and Twitter. While I'm not privy to behind-the-scenes details, I've witnessed first-hand and been very impressed by the project's commitment to safety.
For example...FWIW, Lindsey Graham was a key supporter of PIPA, the Senate version of SOPA: http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/G000359
Spend the millions in each of the State capitals, as openly and as locally as possible. The state senators are unlikely to have seen such attention, and most importantly, State law is still law.
Washington seems to be a good place for the outward face of the USA to speak from, but seems not so hot for fixing internal problems.
Passing an constitutional amendment along the lines of the parliament act so that an elected president can you know actually get on with running the country woudl be a good idea.
I remember one us politician saying on the BBC that the unreformed House of lords was better that the US House
If you have the same law passed in 49 states, how do you tell the difference between that and a federal law?
But a bigger problem is the way they are handling the immigration issue. They seem to be contracting ONLY HB1 Visas. And ignoring many other [immigration] issues that more Americans care about; like migrant workers; guest worker programs (mostly for healthcare and agriculture); a clear path to citizenship, etc, etc.
My other problem with this PAC is they aren't focused. They are backing ANWR and Keystone? Neither have anything to do with immigration. So it's clear they are trading favors for cash. Ok standard politics. But why not back Marriage Equality or the end of the Drug War, or Feeding the poor - educating the poor?
I mean is Zuckerberg about to become the next Koch brother?
Both the article and the top comment on HN seems to be infected with borderline conspiracy theories.
The cynical favor-trading approach of FWD.us isn't for everyone... but maybe A/B testing will show it works better for achieving the tech industries' goals.
Those who prefer other approaches should start their own activism group, working the same shared issues, within their preferred framework. A 1-2 punch, and trying a diversity of strategies, is most likely to achieve success.
In the tech industry's world there's no such thing as:
- compromise or shades of gray
- computer-related crime
- a actual public servant, or an honest judge
- competing industries (only "old dinosaurs")
and you could keep going with examples. The worst part is that most of the time the tech industry is actually right, but as it stands they can't even get onto the field, let alone make forward political progress. It doesn't matter how morally right you are if you refuse to work with stakeholders to get a bad law fixed.
I feel like a lot of technological new money behaves like women in gangs. How so? Well, many sociologists have found that women who join gangs are more prone to violence and cruelty than the men; they go overboard in "proving themselves" and miss the fact that gangs are mostly about business, not cruelty and machismo (which are necessary, at measured but sometimes severe levels, to protect an illegal business; but otherwise undesirable) for their own right. Why? Of course, it's not that women, across the board, are more that way. It has more to do with the small set of people who join criminal gangs, and the fact that the even smaller set of women who join end up getting into a try-too-hard pattern.
We see a lot of so-called "technological leadership" falling into historically-common new-money patterns of right-wing politics and bad workplace cultures (fast firing, closed allocation) because, instead of replacing the old elite, they become a caricature of what they were supposed to be pushing out.
On the whole, the resurgent right-wing business elite of the Welch era (1977-95) was worse than the politically centrist old-board northeastern elite it replaced. And it seems that the "technology elite", when they go into business proper (i.e. personnel matters, not merely new product development) and politics is even uglier than that one. They aren't right-wing because it's not "cool" to be conservative, but they're politically apathetic and can be played by more skillful operators in both parties.
So now I'm going to reveal the secret about "technology leadership". They aren't either. Mark Zuckerberg may be an exception; he's too young and too successful to have a refined skill at the judgment of character, so I'll give him a pass, because he seems to be a good guy in spite of his visible mistakes. But most of the people who have swept in and become the "fundable" (now MBAs with connections, who have outcompeted true technologists for VC and tech-press attention) don't really care about technology. They just heard that "tech" has a lot of people who (a) add a lot of value, but (b) are so deficient in social skills and negotiation that it's a cake-walk to take advantage of them. That attracts sociopaths into the upper reaches of "our" industry (no longer ours in any real way) who come in (always as boss-level implants) because they hear it's full of easy pickings and who stay because it turns out to be true.
Technology people want to help an issue, like immigration reform, and instead of saying, "Who are the best people working on this issue, that I can support with money and time and media?", they say, "This is not fixed, therefore everyone working on it is worthless, and I will start from scratch and show them how it's done.".
If tech giants can do for immigration reform what they've done for education, I am quite confident that in ten years all borders will be closed and all first generation Americans forcibly exiled.
You show true wisdom, the first thing anyone should do when trying to solve a problem is ask a question(s). I myself have practiced in Immigration Law, and if anyone engages me in conversation about what I would do to "fix" immigration or generally about what I would do with immigration reform, I immediately ask what they think is broken or needs reform, then I can address their concern. The one general rule I can say is treat people with dignity and respect, undocumented immigrants may be in violation of the law, but they are not criminals (unless of course, they are actual convicted criminals), there is an amazing book on this point called Storming the Courts regarding the period we maintained Haitain Refugees at Gitmo to avoid them making a claim for Asylum - and initially the US military treated the refugees like prisoners of war, until another commander took over and before he left he gave all his possessions to the refugees including the shirt off his own back. As far as what I really believe, having nothing to do with reform, is that the US has always had "second class/quasi-citizens" and the US always will have that class - it just so happens undocumented immigrants make up the majority of this class at this time in US history.
Then what, precisely, is the definition of a "criminal" if not someone who violates the law?
The sodomy laws in Texas were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003; do you consider everyone who had anal sex in 2002 in Texas to be criminals?
Sodomy laws may be stupid, but that does not change the fact that until 2003, numerous people were guilty of committing the crime of sodomy in the state of Texas.
I think your position is shared by many if not most, but that does not make it a crime, it just encourages and justifies treating undocumented immigrants as criminals. For example the wikipedia article you cite, cites section a.) of 8 USC § 1325 - Improper entry by alien, but if you actually read the code it continues to section b.) it continues...Any alien who is apprehended while entering (or attempting to enter) the United States at a time or place other than as designated by immigration officers shall be subject to a civil penalty of— (see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325)
>Immigration is not criminalized; illegal immigration is
It is not criminal. It is civil in nature, just like a speeding ticket is not criminal it is civil but results in fines. The imprisonment is a little misleading, because undocumented, or even documented, immigrants facing removal proceedings (deportation for the layman) can be held in "detention centers" during the proceedings, so while in fact they are similar to jails or prisons, legally they are not. I have even had cases where my client was staying at a hotel (paid by the government) during the removal proceeding bc the detention center had no more open beds. The reality is many immigrants are eligible to "elect voluntary removal" if they can purchase their own travel out of the country and generally the Government agrees and allows them to voluntarily depart without having to go through the proceedings/detention.
>"Criminal", the noun, is defined as "A person who is guilty of a crime, notably breaking the law."
The key is guilty of a crime, but immigration status is not a crime it is a civil issue.
I'd tend to look at code which has survived a million years with the same respect and concern a scientist approaching a boa constrictor.
As someone who struggled to find his place socially throughout school, it's infuriating to see a bunch of ex-high-school-bullies get installed as managers and do nothing but play the political game and push their employees to burn-out levels because they don't care to understand the effort that goes into writing software. All the while they just sit in their fancy offices shmoozing with the other parasites, embarking on shaky "biz-dev" deals that never come to fruition, and generally getting zero work done in exchange for embarrassingly high compensation.
Based on what I've said about VCs, one might think that I despise them. Far from it, actually. The ones I've met, I like. However, I think they are bad judges of character and fund some awful people.
The difference between me and 99% of business people is that I know that I'm not a great judge of character. I'm probably average at it, but that's not saying much. It's like saying, "I'm average at national security"; if you don't have a rare stopping power, you're exposed. I wouldn't bet my career on someone (beyond typical management) without having that person meet some people who I think are better judges than I am.
Unfortunately, most people are highly confident in their judgment of character despite a lack of talent for it, and that's dangerous. Especially when they hand our power over, like when we're at a company and our decent-human-being-but-overextended founder/bosses install evil middle managers.
You seem like a very insightful person. This is exactly how this happens.
I feel like we sold our birthright.
We did, and for what?
One in a thousand of us gets to be to be a billionaire, and the other 999 suffer declining autonomy, less interesting work, less stable employment conditions, and a psychotic housing market driven not by engineer compensation, but by the zillion VPs of NTWTFK (Non-Technical-Who-The-Fuck-Knows) who cash out their equity before it becomes toilet paper and can afford to bid up, into the mid-seven-digit range, what were supposed to be middle-class houses.
We can take our industry back, but it won't happen in VC-istan.
It all depends on what you want, and unless you read this website with a grain of salt you are just playing into it.
HN is about the big score. Sure, sometimes there are insightful articles on building a business but really this place is all about big ideas, big funding, big acquisitions, and the corresponding big cashout. The long-tail business that makes money and provides a service for it's customers is really what is valuable, and you can still be a millionaire.
I think a lot of the young developers think too much of the results - money, women, cars, houses, toys - and not what it takes to get there.
I'd like to see a continued interest in the "big ideas" and technological advancement, without the big-money obsessions that make our generation so exploitable. Real machine-learning work == made of awesome. $850 million acquisition == who gives a fuck?
You're NOT a poor, helpless worker being exploited by a ruthless 19th century steel-magnate with a monocle and a top-hat, you're a member of the most empowered generation of the most empowered professional class in the history of mankind, full stop.
If you somehow feel you're in a situation that needs fixing, then, especially as HN reader, you know exactly what to do.
Indeed, I do, and I am doing it. Others, however, need the guidance of the sentiments we express here. It was for them, and for our industry, that I expressed this thought. If you follow michaelochurch, he's like the Angry Patrick McKenzie. He also has a flare for the dramatic. But the purpose is to raise the visibility of ideas, and to express agreement and disagreement. I have a similar track. I would like so see our industry move in the direction of entrepreneurship/leadership and away from servitude. Again with the hyperbole, but helps the message hit home. ;)
You've gotta flip your situation around. Try to be someone they can't do without. That's the acquihire game. Instead of being a resume monkey, go make something (useful? popular? at least popular with useful people.) then sell yourself (and n employees) to a company for $30 million dollars (you, as founder, of course keep about $20 million, $10 million goes to investors (?), and your employees each get nice $30k "retention packages" at the new employer).
People end up making $875 million dollars because they become symbols. They become seen as giant symphony conductors forcing the unwashed masses to act harmoniously — without them, there would be no Success, therefore they deserve most of the reward. We all know Success is foresight and direction, not physical labor. All labor is replaceable cogs and should be priced to the floor. Executed Vision has infinite demand and severely limited supply.
Our birthright, if we can state it so audaciously, is understanding how things work and building new solutions the general public can't make on their own. These days, normal brilliant tech people get squeezed out of economic validity from two sides. On on side, there's an influx of strong personality tech people who want all the glory for themselves and they end up exploiting the quiet brilliant tech people. On the other side, there's strong personality non-tech people who swoop in and think they can "control" or "manage" or "direct" quiet brilliant tech people towards greatness (because they have Vision and quiet brilliant tech people just sit around staring at little colored dots all day long).
But, in actual non-HN-everybody-is-a-change-the-world-founder reality, most quiet brilliant tech people are, on balance, not interested in organizing and building crush-the-world corporations. They're sitting around spewing off enough wasted potential to fuel six entire earth economies until they are picked up and organized together into a coherent operation. But, they will be paid 1/10th to 1/1000th of their actual value to the corporation, economy, and world.
(also amusing, if you paste this into google (no quotes) you get a pg article ("How to Make Wealth") as the second result: I am simply a mine from which some smart business guy with some capital leverage can delve and extract value.)
(1) $3-6 million per engineer, with investors, founders, and executives getting most of that money. Most of these don't get rich in the VC-istan sense, but they get enough money to buy a house. Founders join Those Who Have Completed An Exit and are now seen as real human beings by VCs.
(2) engineers get hired as contractors, which is a 12-month interview process with better results than the front-door process (75%, as opposed to 45% with a real introduction and sub-1% on a job site) and might make back the ~$50k they lost by working below market salary.
Acqui-hire is bad but it's not quite a failure. It means the founders get paid, and the engineers get about the same payoff as they would have had in a corporate job. (Whether it's good or bad for them comes down to the assimilation process; it's usually somewhat negative.) It does, however, mean that the engineers get screwed relative to the startup promise (of being an executive, or rich, or able to do the most interesting engineering work, some day).
The safety switch is like the old game of "Would you rather have $100 now or a 5% chance of $1000 in four years?"
The failure mode is the truth of public markets are absolutely closed to new entrants unless you are selling a mass market physical product or if you have over 500 million monthly users on some web service.
Given the diminishing marginal utility of cash, a few million dollars RFN is tastier than a few billion dollars when you are $age+7 years old. We can always try again later, right?
I'm pouring a few years of my life into creating a product
That's a great point too. A lot of people get very endeared to their products and companies. Their companies are them. Other people make companies only as vehicles to flip and cash out. It's up to you. They aren't compatible viewpoints though. The company-is-part-of-me people see the make-it-then-flip-it contingency equivalent to people who only have babies to extract government benefit checks.
My view is that the Welch era isn't over--the right-wing business elite have just turned their focus to tech now that there is some money to be made. I think Zuck is completely out of his element here, and FWD.us is on track to getting played by savvier establishment forces.
As Johny Rotten said "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
And it's a frustrating situation, because it turns many ordinary, otherwise law-abiding Americans into tacit criminals, consciously or unconsciously hiring undocumented workers to do basic stuff like wash the dishes or mow the lawn. And the illegal workers live in fear and don't participate in the processes they should, like getting driver's licenses.
A sensible visa system could address the supply side by giving a legal mechanism for a sufficient number of workers, reducing demand for illegals, and would allow those newly legal workers to participate without fear as residents, if not citizens. It would reduce crime and stress.
First time I've heard it articulated this way. It rings true to me and would explain an awful lot.
| They just heard that "tech" has a lot of people who (a) add a lot of value, but (b) are so deficient in social skills and negotiation that it's a cake-walk to take advantage of them.
People assume that if you are technically minded then you lack social skills. A lot of people lack social skills, some are technical and some are not. We should break that prejudice.
"Such a waste of talent. He chose money over power - in this town, a mistake nearly everyone makes. Money is the Mc-mansion in Sarasota that starts falling apart after 10 years. Power is the old stone building that stands for centuries."
I wonder if this lobbying group thought that by throwing a little money their way they could persuade the Republicans to stop being Republicans. Instead the Republicans dragged Zuckerberg down with them and probably capsized FWD.us. There aren't any moderate Republicans, at the end of the day none of them are going to support what Zuckerberg wants with immigration reform and this whole thing seems fantastically naive.