Since it’s a presidential election year, no one is interested in California except some of us who live here. Our primary is too late to matter and we’ll be reliably Democratic in the general election.
So one of the best articles I’ve read about California politics in a long time is likely to go mostly unnoticed: Timothy Lee at Vox with “Libertarian but very pro-government”: the distinctive ideology of Silicon Valley. It may be happening first in California, but the rest of you will see it soon too.
Lee interviews valley writer Greg Ferenstein, whose ongoing work you should read at The Ferenstein Wire. The interview is good enough, but it ducks the most important part of Ferenstein’s work, which is how different his “Silicon Valley Democrats” are from the party mainstream.
First, from the Vox interview:
If you’re used to thinking about politics along conventional left-right lines, the Silicon Valley
ideology Ferenstein sketches might initially seem like a mass of contradictions — it’s simultaneously anti-
regulation and pro-government, libertarian and pro-Obamacare. But Ferenstein argues that these views start to
seem more coherent once you understand the unique perspective of technology elites….Timothy B. Lee: What’s a Silicon Valley Democrat?
Greg Ferenstein: Silicon Valley represents a new political category. It’s like libertarianism but very
pro-government. Silicon Valley is used as a synecdoche: a region that represents a broader demographic of urbanized, professional liberals.…Silicon Valley Democrats want to make people in general educated and entrepreneurial, rather than
singling out disadvantaged groups and regulating capitalism to protect them…Which candidate or potential candidate comes closest to representing a “Silicon Valley Democrat” point of view?
GF: I would say Michael Bloomberg is the closest to the Silicon Valley ideology. I did a poll of
technology CEOs and found that about 41 percent favor Bloomberg. Clinton is a distant second with 28 percent. She is a weak frontrunner among Silicon Valley elites — mostly because she’s wavered on key issues that are important to them, like free trade and charter schools.TBL: Which historical figure comes closest to representing the Silicon Valley Democrat perspective?
GF: Theodore Roosevelt. Progressivism — meaning modernism — jumped from the Democrats to the
Republicans in the early 20th century… The word progressive then got co-opted by the labor movement and populist movements a few decades later.…By far the most important issue to Silicon Valley is education. … One of the popular ways that
Silicon Valley wants to disrupt the education system is by creating their own. … One of the not-so-secret
secrets about this new industry of educational startups is they’re really creating an alternative, without teachers unions
In an earlier generation these people would be Rockefeller republicans, but that species is extinct, the Republican party is insane, and the tech moguls must look for their political influence in the Democratic party. Progressives be warned.
Ferenstein’s website seems to include the outline and beginning of a book; I haven’t read nearly all of it
yet but what I have read I think is incisive, accurate and scary. I don’t often hang with the valley elites
that he’s talking to, but I attended Stanford, have worked in tech for over 30 years, and I bet I’m within
two degrees of separation of some pretty wealthy people.
This is the article Vox linked to: What the Democratic Party Will Look Like When Silicon Valley takes over
Silicon Valley’s political endgame: the path toward overhauling the Democratic Party and orienting our lives toward innovation…
The split in the Democratic party began with Bill Clinton’s “New Democrat” coalition in the early 90s,
but has been gaining power as the tech industry eclipsed labor unions as a larger donor to liberal candidates and causes…—
It is no longer the case that Democrats are the party that embrace change and Republicans grip desperately to the past. While most liberals embrace cultural change (i.e., gay marriage), Democrats are
bitterly divided over economic change and disruption.The kinds of Democrats who go to college, get an entrepreneurial career or move to a big city?–?those
who embrace a relatively unpredictable life?–?want an entirely different role for the federal government:
they want the state to invest in modernization, with more high-skilled immigration, expansive free trade
agreements, and performance-based charter schools.
Economically they’re libertarians, but they don’t embrace the leave-me-alone ethic socially; instead they’re fans of the nanny state. I think “we’re all in this together” is a great philosophy; I cannot accept this definition of interdependent, that I owe it to him to go on a diet.
“We are an interdependent society?–?one’s obesity and/or diabetes affects how much I pay for health
care,” ~ Andrew Fischer, startup co-founder, Choozle, a consumer behavior analytics company
And while the ones who talk politics have learned that they have to be polite about “safety net” policies,
the reality is that they have little sympathy for those who fall through the cracks. This recent anti-homeless rant by a San Francisco tech bro is not unusual. The tech elite are not people who I hear talk in religious terms, but I see their philosophy as basically Calvinist. They are smart, they do work very hard, and they really don’t respect people who make bad choices or don’t work hard.
This is one of the graphics from Ferenstein’s website that I find particularly valuable for seeing how
differently they see the political spectrum.
There’s so much in there that bothers me that I won’t even start, except to note that at the top you find
“meritocracy”. That is their big word; the problem is that they believe it exists now. Fairness and equality
are disparaged as goals of the “Protectocrats”. If their companies don’t happen to hire any blacks or
hispanics it absolutely MUST be because there aren’t any qualified blacks and hispanics applying. Or people
over 50. Or why women might get hired but not promoted. They just don’t have the skills. [You need to hear a SW VP say it to fully appreciate; on that last word his voice really did go up a fifth.] They talk about the “creative class” (the only time they’ll use the word “class”) the same way Mitt Romney talked about “makers”.
—-
There’s lots more, and it’s a vision that I think should bother a lot of Democrats. There’s damn little
social justice in this vision, nor much room for the traditional constituencies. There is nothing the Tech
“Democrats” hate more than labor unions, and any racial viewpoint is close behind. Bernie Sanders is
criticized for talking too much about class and not enough about race; the Tech “Democrats” don’t want to
hear about either.
In my view, the “Tech Democrats” are a different kind of conservadem than the old Blue Dogs; the Bay Area’s
tech money isn’t from the defense industry and they don’t have much to say about foreign policy except loving free trade.
I live at ground zero of this phenomenon. The Bay Area was one of the last preserves of the moderate
Republican, but now votes 2/3 Democratic. Which forces everyone who wants influence, including those who
aren’t very liberal, into the Democratic party. Here in CA-17 the 2016 election looks to be a rematch of the hard-fought 2014 contest between old-school labor Democrat Mike Honda and the tech-favored Ro Khanna. This is a problem because of California’s awful Top 2 Primary law, which means that since the Republican will get fewer votes than either Democratic candidate, the two Democrats meet again in the general election.
It’s the problem of the two-party system that these people have to try to take over the only party that almost has room for me.