Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

As technology takes over American lives, literally in the case of Facebook, I wonder if voting Republican tomorrow isn’t the best way for Americans to #Resist total domination by their smug rich Silicon Valley overlords. The titans of Silicon Valley often seem to infer from their wealth that they have special insight into how a society should be organized and how non-wealthy, non-important people should conduct their lives (see Lean In for example, and “Guy with a ‘Whites Only’ sign in his conference room tells others not to discriminate”). Having created one of the nation’s highest tax states (#6 in percent of residents’ income devoted to state and local government) that operates perhaps the worst-performing school system (nytimes) in an environment of racial inequality (“California is the center of American racism?“), these folks feel confident in preaching proper government organization to the ignorant non-Silicon Valley masses. While presiding over enterprises whose employees overwhelmingly identify as white or Asian men, the CEOs prate in the media about how other companies should hire and promote employees who identify as non-white/non-Asian women. If they think not enough reporters are listening, they simply buy the media (see below).

Even on business subjects, these folks have essentially no useful experience to relate. If you’re manufacturing car parts or providing landscaping services or running a restaurant, how is it useful to hear from the CEO of a company that has had, essentially, a monopoly for 5-15 years? The regulated Bell System monopoly had its drawbacks, but at least Americans were spared from having to purchase and read books by its managers offering purported secrets of their success. Nobody who ran a business exposed to competition was forced to watch a Bell System executive being interviewed on TV with fawning questions about how he or she had made the company so profitable.

Anecdote at the lower end of the wealth spectrum: a (white) friend who studied at Stanford and lives in Berkeley traveled to Ohio to canvas African-Americans in Cleveland to encourage them to go to the polls and vote for Hillary (Trump ultimately won). The majority of people who opened their doors told him that they didn’t expect a Hillary presidency to make them better off than would a Trump presidency. He might have concluded from this that black Americans rationally evaluate their interests and vote accordingly. Instead he concluded that black Americans were dumber than he had anticipated.

The election of Donald Trump was helpful in deflating some of these sermonizing billionaires, but the Insufferability Index seems likely to rise if Democrats win a lot of mid-term seats. Could it be that the best reason to vote Republican, therefore, is to quiet down the Blowhards of the Bay for a couple of years? Trump makes them angry, but a hate-filled Silicon Valley Master of the Universe might be less annoying than a self-sastified one?

[This advice is purely for readers. My own ballot here in Massachusetts is dominated by Democrats running unopposed. There are essentially no options for incorrect voting.]

Related:

• “Lean In: Women can move up the career ladder as soon as men change” (billionaire advises women to have lots of sex with with “bad boys” then settle down with a boring schlub who “wants an equal partner”; full quote “When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner.” (imagine if a billionaire guy offered analogous advice but with the genders reversed!))
• “Salesforce Billionaire Marc Benioff Agrees to Buy Time Magazine” (NYT, 9/16/2018); see also “The Hypocrisy of Marc Benioff & Co.” (3/30/2015)
• “Hillary’s Biggest Fan Is Buying The Atlantic Magazine” (regarding billionaire-through-marriage Laurene Powell Jobs)

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From a coastal elite venture capitalist friend on Facebook:

When these 5,000+ migrants inevitably arrive at the US / Mexico border and begin to force their way across, what if we rallied 10,000 Americans who value refugees to stand peacefully at the border between them and whichever armed military division Trump brings out to stop them, as an act of civil disobedience?

His virtuous friends cheer him on:

Count me in if you organize people/dates/locations. Or if you need a $$ contribution to help make it work.

I highly recommend supporting Al Otro Lado. They helped with previous refugee caravans and do exactly this work fighting for the right to seek asylum. They particularly fight border patrol at the Tijuana crossing refusing to let people even present themselves for asylum. … Basically, the administration is trying to eliminate asylum entirely.

I’ll go

I gave my standard reply

The good news for these able-bodied ambulatory folks is that they are entitled to free housing, free food, free health care, and a free smartphone as soon as they arrive (“The Contracting States shall accord to refugees lawfully staying in their territory the same treatment with respect to public relief and assistance as is accorded to their nationals” — Article 23 of the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees). But how is it fair to those who are too sick, too old, or too disabled to make the trip? If we are truly good-hearted, shouldn’t we put an Airbus A380 on the Honduras/Boston route to bring in 1,000 elderly wheelchair-bound refugees daily? Surely folks in Massachusetts will do a better job caring for these unfortunate souls than will the cold-hearted Trump voters of Texas.

The elite post-gooder (not really a “do-gooder” since he hasn’t done anything to help the migrants yet):

in my opinion it’s only their human right to be able to enter when someone here does have housing or work to offer them.

Me:

Your notion of rights of refuge conditional on “work to offer them” is at odds with the UN convention to which the U.S. is a signatory. There is no requirement for a refugee to work, any more than there is a requirement for a native-born American to work. And if you want to make this conditional on housing, then you would accept no immigrants at all. The U.S. needs 7.2 million more apartments and houses just for the lower-income residents who are already here. See https://nlihc.org/press/releases/9493

Him:

there’s tremendous demand for labor and plenty of housing availability if you just look beyond major metro areas. Why else do you think they all want to come here? No one really becomes happy by living on welfare or in shelters for long. People generally want pride of providing for themselves. And this is where there are plentiful jobs, especially if we get rid of the misguided minimum wage laws.

I pointed out that, regardless of wanting “pride of providing for themselves,” roughly 73 percent of immigrants from the countries that are contributing to the current caravan actually were collecting welfare in 2012 (source). Also that there does not seem to be a tremendous demand for unskilled since states raising minimum wage results in a reduced number of employed low-skill workers (2015 economic study).

Him:

I don’t understand your last point at all. Of course increasing the minimum wage drops employment levels, that’s basic economics. I personally want to see a repeal or at least a major rollback of minimum wage laws, less welfare, and more immigration which will keep wages low, and therefore further decrease the cost of locally produced goods and services and make their local consumers better off. I also generally want to see lower wages in the US and higher wages in places like Honduras. That would make the world better in my opinion and would ultimately reduce the need for caravans. More open borders is consistent with more free markets, in addition to being more just. I do however see the short term dilemma this philosophy poses for democracy. The ultimate answer is less power in the nation, more at the very local level, and also more at the world level, but this is a very long term ambition.

So the Bostonian’s plan for helping Hondurans requires only that the 50+ million Americans currently on welfare (Census 2015) make a huge financial sacrifice and also that blue collar workers in the Midwest accept reduced wages.

It is tough to understand why a blue collar Midwestern might be skeptical of the coastal elite’s commitment to his or her interests…

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