
New Study Indicates Silicon Valley’s Elite Are Not as Liberal as They Think - kuyaab
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/study-shows-tech-elites-are-less-liberal-than-they-think.html
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CoolGuySteve
Seems like a weird juxtaposition to me that the word “liberal” is being used
to imply the support of more government regulations when by definition those
restrictions are restricting someone’s freedoms (sometimes for the best IMO).

It reminds me of the old Norm MacDonald joke where because of abortions and
the death penalty, there’s no way for him to vote for a party where nobody is
killed.

~~~
proginthebox
Liberalism is always against an axis. As such, there are two different factors
in liberalism, Social and Economic. The so-called liberals in America Liberals
are socially liberal but economically conservative. While American
conservatives are economically liberal but socially conservative.

~~~
goatlover
So American libertarians are the true liberals?

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virmundi
Yes. The common use of the word Liberal means Progressive. Progressives, while
sounding like they want progress, want regulation of anything they don't like.
They want to regulate speech. They want to regulate the energy source that
would have prevented Global Warming, nuclear. The list goes on. Welcome to the
Liberals of modernity.

~~~
happytoexplain
My observations don't align with yours, though your writing is possibly
emotionally driven. I don't think "progressives", on average, want to legally
regulate nuclear power and speech in harmful ways. But mostly, I don't
understand the implication that progress as in "progressive" is mutually
exclusive from regulation. Can you clarify where that comes from?

~~~
virmundi
Let's take nuclear. Jimmy Carter and the Liberals of his age were against
recycling of fuel. They regulated that all spent fuel had to be stored in a
super complex system that protected humanity from the fuel. The regulations
are so onerous that to this day many power plants in the US are stockpiling
their spent fuel because we can't build a facility that actually satisfies the
requirements due to other regulations.

Another example, the Liberals want to ban hate speech. When pressed the
definition of hate speech is any speech that contradicts their own. They don't
hold to the Enlightenment ideal of discussing radical views. Instead, if
anyone appeals to science, hard science, that disagrees with one of their many
incoherent points, that person is banned from the Academy.

Finally, take SF. This city likes to describe itself as one of the most
Liberal in the country. Those same Liberals have effectively priced out the
majority of middle-class Americans. You know? The one they supposedly love.
They did this through zoning regulations. Buildings can only be so tall. You
can have only so many families per unit. They can only exist in certain
locations. All of the regulation adds up to the problems SF faces today.

In a general sense, there is also the moral regulations the modern Liberals
put on us. They continue to enforce the plantation on the black population,
and will for decades to come. Liberals hold blacks as perpetual children. They
need welfare because they are poorly educated and oppressed by the white man.
Now step back and you'll see that they are oppressed by whites: white
liberals. For 60 years or more Liberal cities like Chicago, LA, New York all
have done nothing to improve the lots of blacks. They are kept as subsistence
levels. Those Liberal bastions could have improved housing. They could have
improved education. They could have withheld resources to force a change in
the individual to learn and improve. They have done nothing. Like children,
they shouldn't marry. The Liberals have rigged the welfare laws at all levels
to destroy the home by excluding the father. Again, the list goes on. I leave
it to reader to research this on their own.

In the end the Liberal of today is the authoritarian of yesterday.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WEh51z1H_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WEh51z1H_o)

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clairity
this second comment is much more constructive than your first one, because you
criticized specific policies for their results. let's keep putting aside the
tribal and partisan language and come together to brainstorm and debate
solutions.

and yes, we need to ease nuclear regulations, protect all speech, and fix
regulations around housing (including the regulation of interest rates through
freddie/fannie).

a key fix to everything you said about the suppression of black folks (and
most of the rest of us) is a return to a progressive tax system. a few decades
ago, the US taxed the 1% at up to 90%, didn't have a separate capital gains
tax, had an inheritance tax that encouraged industry, and didn't have
corporate tax shields (along with encouraging immigration). and thus we
prospered.

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masonic

      a few decades ago, the US taxed the 1% at up to 90%
    

Almost _six_ decades ago. (Meanwhile, it was 95% in England).

The original driver of reducing rates in the US? John F. Kennedy. There's a
great speech he gave before The Commonwealth Club on this very subject; audio
is available online.

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ojbyrne
I don’t think anybody questions the fact that the “elite” (i.e the wealthy)
are conservative. The 1% generally are. But the rest of the population of
Silicon Valley generally aren’t.

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scythe
>College-age tech students poised to enter the Silicon Valley ranks
overwhelmingly responded like their millionaire idols: liberal on social
issues, staunchly conservative on regulation.

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zorga
> liberal on social issues, staunchly conservative on regulation.

That's what liberal actually means. To be liberal in both areas it to be a
progressive.

~~~
lake99
You have it backwards. Liberal economics means fewer regulations, less federal
planning, etc. In their more "socialist" phases, China and India had the
government in control of a lot of manufacturing, trade, etc. After their
economies were liberalized, private companies had a greater say in their own
affairs (they got "liberated"). In India, the government started selling off
its factories to private owners under a liberal economic regime.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalism)

~~~
scarejunba
Funnily enough, that person does not have it backwards. It's the _article_ and
the terminology it uses from the USA that have it backwards. This is revealed
by the fact that the article claims that Silicon Valley's elite are both
"staunchly conservative on regulation" and have "anti-regulatory zeal".

So you're actually agreeing vigorously with the guy to whom you're responding.

~~~
lake99
Definitely not agreeing with GP. Progressives are not economic liberals. But
you're right, the article has it backwards too. The phrase "staunchly
conservative on regulation" seems to have a special meaning in the US that's
not applicable elsewhere. In India and Pakistan, for example, "conservative"
just means holding on to traditional religious values.

~~~
zorga
> Progressives are not economic liberals.

They are under the American meaning of the word liberal, you just don't
understand what liberal means in America. You are agreeing with me whether you
understand it or not. What you mean by liberal, we call conservative or
"classical liberal".

Liberal here doesn't mean what it means in the rest of the world.

> In India and Pakistan, for example, "conservative" just means holding on to
> traditional religious values.

That's not what it means here.

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nitwit005
> Research found that the tech elites responded with the same anti-regulatory
> zeal when questioned about other industries as well, as in a question about
> whether florists should be able to raise prices on flowers during holiday
> seasons.

Is that actually a law somewhere?

~~~
scarejunba
Odd that one would hold a price control law as particularly 'liberal'. Anti-
regulatory zeal is perfectly in line with Liberalism. Perhaps it is the names
in the US that have diverged from the original meaning.

The so-called socially liberal, fiscally conservative is just Liberalism as
conceived of by Locke and gang.

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bdcravens
I wonder if those who participated would give the same responses on Twitter as
they gave in private emails. In all communities (liberal or conservative),
there's a strong pressure to conform.

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CPLX
If course not.

It shouldn’t be a secret that the most fundamental political division of
modern times is between labor and caapital, and that Silicon Valley culture is
squarely on the side of capital.

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icebraining
Is that why they "overwhelmingly favored increased taxes on the rich and
further redistribution of wealth to poor communities" ?

~~~
CPLX
They could just be in favor of paying them fair wages and allowing them to
organize.

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narag
This is just a question of labels. Maybe having just two parties is what
creates the habit of dividing all the political ideas in two camps. But that's
absurdly reductionist.

The social-democracy has wandered worldwide from its economical foundation to
another set of causes: ecologism, feminism and identity politics. In the USA
the democrats are holding, but in Europe most socialist parties are having a
bad time.

Now Hillary (news that have been downvoted here to death) says that maybe
inmigration should be curbed to avoid the raising of populism.

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oh-kumudo
I see SV is generally very socially liberal, but when it comes to monetary
policy, the ideology behind it is still neoliberalism, thus their attitude
towards regulation isn't really hard to understand.

And under the risk of downvotes, I do think neoliberalism makes SV the SV it
is today, the industry exists because of it. Whether it will keep working or
not it is a different matter on its own, but that people tend to cling on and
won't let go what has been working isn't really that of a surprise.

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perseusprime11
They’re mostly libertarian masking as progressives

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RickJWagner
<Edit: Please ignore this post. Others made the same point earlier.>

If they align with the Democrats on social issues, but Republicans on
regulatory issues, they would seem to lean Libertarian. (Right?)

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tkyjonathan
Maybe this site should do a survey: How many conservatives friends and co-
workers do you know?

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gammateam
lol cmon, you only need to wait 10 minutes before Tim Draper says some very
right leaning things complete with party line misconceptions.

Nobody cares because you want the money, the infrastructure, the university,
the network, the lead investor

Wow a wealthy person with no input from the rest of society nor any
consequences, STOP THE PRESSES, except dont, it comes with the territory

