
Tech feudalism - alejohausner
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/05/notes-from-an-emergency.html
======
xiaoma
> _" The best minds in Silicon Valley are preoccupied with a science fiction
> future they consider it their manifest destiny to build. Jeff Bezos and Elon
> Musk are racing each other to Mars. Musk gets most of the press, but Bezos
> now sells $1B in Amazon stock a year to fund Blue Origin. Investors have put
> over $8 billion into space companies over the past five years, as part of a
> push to export our problems here on Earth into the rest of the Solar System.

>As happy as I am to see Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos fired into space, this does
not seem to be worth the collapse of representative government."_

This is an extraordinarily angry and poorly reasoned piece. How exactly are
Musk or Bezos causing the collapse of representative government? This kind of
assertion needs to be supported in a robust way rather than tossed in as a
barb.

> _" Tech culture prefers to solve harder, more abstract problems that haven't
> been sullied by contact with reality. So they worry about how to give Mars
> an earth-like climate, rather than how to give Earth an earth-like
> climate."_

Is it really that unlikely that terraforming Mars would lead to advancements
than help us better understand and take care of Earth? Of all the people to
pin climate change on, why would this guy pick on the founder of Solar City
and Tesla? Those two companies have been doing a great deal to shift energy
consumption from burning fossil fuels towards using solar power and to replace
gas-based cars with efficient electric cars.

How does someone who spends his time selling a bookmarking app and harassing
people on twitter feel justified in attacking those actually moving clean tech
forward?

> _" These big five companies operate on a global scale, and partly because
> they created the industries they now dominate, they enjoy a very lax
> regulatory regime. Everywhere outside the United States and EU, they are
> immune to government oversight, and within the United States the last two
> administrations have played them with a light touch"_

This is also false. Look at the _intense_ scrutiny Apple and its suppliers
have faced in China over environmental and labor regulations, for example. In
fact, it would be fair to say that the "big five" US tech companies face far
more scrutiny in China than either the US or Europe.

I suspect the same is true in Russia, Japan and other regions. Consider that
Japanese regulators are currently examining Apple for anti-trust action
related to its iOS/iPhone/App Store empire.

~~~
mathperson
well reasoned and well written but I am not sure I agree with the 'intense
scrutiny' apple faced. to me it seemed like bad pr that was forgotten within a
few months. could you perhaps elaborate on this point?

~~~
xiaoma
In 2011, state run media repeatedly criticized Apple in connection with a 42
page report that condemned Apple on a number of fronts. A coalition of 36
environmental groups also rated Apple last of 29 tech companies. In truth,
there were serious environmental costs to the actions that Apple (and its
suppliers) took in China. On the other hand, local businesses were not
scrutinized nearly as closely. It could be argued the difference was due to
size, but it would be surprising if protectionism played no role at all.

Since that time, Apple has made _tremendous_ efforts to improve both its labor
and environmental efforts, gotten all 14 of its final assembly sites compliant
with UL’s Zero Waste to Landfill validation, gotten over 90% of its energy
from clean sources and has even gone so far as to make sizable investments in
Chinese clean tech companies.

Links related to labor disputes and strikes are harder for me to find due to
all the western press on the issue but here are some related to environmental
issues:

[http://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2016/12/09/apple-
in...](http://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2016/12/09/apple-invests-in-
china-wind-farms/)

[http://www.cultofmac.com/442650/apples-environmental-
efforts...](http://www.cultofmac.com/442650/apples-environmental-efforts-
still-killing-it-in-china/)

User tracking:

[https://www.techinasia.com/apple-loses-court-case-cctv-
calls...](https://www.techinasia.com/apple-loses-court-case-cctv-calls-it-
security-threat)

And anti-trust:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-antitrust-
idUSKCN0WY...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-antitrust-
idUSKCN0WY4KG)

[http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/china-antitrust-crackdown-
for...](http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/china-antitrust-crackdown-foreign-
profit/2014/08/11/id/588093/)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/business/international/mi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/business/international/microsoft-
china-antitrust-inquiry.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-
longe...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/technology/apple-no-longer-
immune-to-chinas-scrutiny-of-us-tech-firms.html)

I believe this is a higher level of scrutiny than Apple faces in the US or EU.

------
solidsnack9000
I see the same problems as the author; but in very different terms. The lack
of connection to surroundings -- the lack of meaningful public goods in SF,
for example -- contributes to the detachment and other worldly obsessions of
tech leaders. Thus the pre-occupation with living forever and colonizing
space: the circle of life on earth seems narrow for those who reject its
depth.

However, this kind of escapism is not unique to tech in California. California
has been a parade of cults, hedonists and lunatics for a hundred and fifty
years or more. Tech entrepreneurs are merely lunatics whose pre-occupations
were commercializable, legal and transformative for a very large swath of the
economy. What is indicted by tech is not engineering or capitalism, but an
escapist and visionary way of life.

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mc32
>The final outcome of that election was: 65.8 million for Clinton 63.0 million
for Trump

So, populism (what Trump represents/ed) is bad, but we appeal to populism when
quoting the _popular_ vote count. It's an interesting irony.

>In their online life, Europeans have become completely dependent on companies
headquartered in the United States.[]...And so Trump is in charge in America,
and America has all your data.

So those data centers in Ireland and the Netherlands, etc. are kind of
fictional...

------
wcummings
Pretty rambling but they're right about one thing: tech workers have more
power than they realize, an idle "factory" is expensive.

