Big Tech's Hypocritical Wokeness May Soon Backfire | Newgeography.com
"Not long ago, in our very same galaxy, the high-tech elite seemed somewhat like the Jedis of the modern era. Sure, they were making gobs of money, but they were also “changing the world” for the better. Even demonstrators against capitalism revered them; when Steve Jobs died in 2011, the protesters at Occupied Wall Street mourned his passing. Increasingly, Americans no longer regard our tech oligarchs as modern folk heroes; today companies including Google, Apple and Facebook are suffering huge drops in their reputations among the public. Social justice, for some The tech oligarchs make a big show of their social “wokeness.” They play up on gender issues, despite a wicked record of sexual harassment at companies like Google and across the “bro culture” of the male-dominated valley. Worse still are issues of class. The Bay Area, as CityLab put it, has devolved into “a region of segregated innovation” where the rich wax, the middle class declines and the poor suffer increasingly unshakeable poverty. Over the past decades wages for African Americans and Latinos in Silicon Valley have fallen during the boom while much of the work, up to 40 percent, has gone to temporary immigrant workers, the modern-day equivalent of indentured servants. Of course, the oligarchs rely on immigrants to work as low-wage janitors, dog walkers and restaurant workers essential to their high-amenity economy. Not surprisingly they have been among the fiercest critics of President Trump’s immigration policies. This fits into their image, cultivated, for example, by Jeff Bezos mouthpiece The Washington Post, as principled defenders of democracy and human rights against the would-be dictator in the White House. Yet these pronouncements obscure remarkable hypocrisy. Time, owned by oligarch Marc Benioff, rejected its own readers’ poll, which favored making the Hong Kong protesters “person of the year,” and instead gave the honor to Greta Thunberg. This will bolster the Salesforce.com founder’s green bona fides but also protects the company’s growing presence in China. It seems there’s no conflict between advocating wokeness in America while supporting repression in China. If tech-rich Taiwan, which just voted strongly against pro-mainland candidates, ever thought it could look to Silicon Valley for support, they should look again." Amazingly, the new totalitarians are willing to lie clearly and openly. These people have created new serfdom in neo-feudal California, Oregon, and elsewhere and they slander President Trump, who has been breaking down the walls of the new serfdom through lower unemployment and higher wages for lower and working-class people. Where the new totalitarians rule Blacks, Hispanics, and lower-wage workers toil under exorbitant housing costs and inflated costs of living. The lives of the new serfs are hardscrabble and unpleasant. At the same time, these new totalitarians crow about the policies they want, which will make the lives of the lower-income, the Blacks, and the Hispanics better. Oh, piss off! If you want the lives of these people to be better, stop demanding policies like urban growth boundaries, which make their lives demonstrably more expensive and worse. This is not difficult. More importantly, stop vilifying the President who is making the lives of these people better, demonstrably. This goes beyond "accidental" or "unintentional" it is an intentional policy designed to create and enslave the masses. The new totalitarians want to rule you, to make all of us serfs in their new feudal hell. The design is to make you an appurtenance to the land, which they own, so you become mere property. So, where does Kotkin think this is all going? "Despite an increasingly large lobbying and public relations effort, the oligarchs are in danger of squandering their once near universal political support. Some 70 percent of Americans, notes a recent Pew study, believe social media platforms “censor political views.” In California, just over the past year, the percentage of voters thinking tech firms need to be more heavily regulated has been rising to over 70 percent in both the Bay Area and Southern California. Progressive clothing no longer protects them from populist fire. Presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have spoken against the oligarchs’ quasi-monopoly status as well as the poor treatment of low-end workers in Apple’s Chinese sweatshops, something referenced by Ricky Gervais at the Golden Globes, or Amazon’s warehouses here at home. The yawning gap between the tech elite and the worker bees has helped foster growing socialist and union movements within these companies, and not just at warehouses. Tech workers may be well paid, but they have no bargaining power, and their higher salaries are largely swallowed by high housing prices and taxes. They act increasingly as high-tech proletarians, anxious to throw down their own bosses by contributing most to populists like Sanders and Warren. Given these pressures, the tech firms may just dig in their heels. After all, they are well on their way to buying most of the major publications in the country, and gaining control of the culture industries as well. Ultimately the oligarchs must hope that the masses do not defect to the rebel alliance before their rule becomes so entrenched it cannot be reasonably challenged." Well, it is difficult to not agree with this, but I don't think investing in the dying media will be a lifeline, more likely the rope to an anchor. Hold tight; it is a long way to the bottom! Tech companies, which are not standing on a platform of invasion of privacy, theft of privacy, censorship, and other draconian policies, could survive the coming blowback. That means Apple, as far as I can see. But the social media companies, Google, and others are probably in their last years on the S&P 500. Companies on the S&P last about 30 years, the progressives believe these companies are eternal, but they last only one-third of the average long human life of 80+ years. It is becoming quite clear that we are at the edge of a great change in the American society, the economy, the culture, the economic model, as well as how we organize business and government, how we protect individuals privacy, and who owns our selves, our work, our intellectual property, and much more. The United States organized the revitalization and renewal of the US economy, the European economy, the Japanese economy, worldwide international relations, the creation and implementation of the international financial institutions, fought the Cold War to a win, destroyed the Soviet Union, belled the Chinese Communist Party, and shrunk worldwide poverty rates from nearly 60% of the world's population to 10% between the end of WWII and today. We laid the essential groundwork for all of this in the first 10-15 years after WWII. I expect we will do the same this time after we resolve the current crisis stemming from the Culture Wars. The change when it comes will be fast and furious. As I have oft said, every 80 years, there is a battle between liberty and totalitarianism. This has been the historic cycle going back into antiquity. I do not expect it to resolve anytime soon. The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny While I expect the forces of liberty to win, that should not be taken for granted. If they lose, it will bring a new dark age with decades or centuries-long devolution back into new feudalism. If the forces of liberty win, we should see the next step towards a significantly better life for not just we humans but all life on Earth. The question is, will we be enamored of the bauble of socialism with its wide smooth road into serfdom, and hell? Or, will we take the more difficult but more rewarding path to further individual liberty, more personal responsibility, based in republican constitutional governance, free-market economics, property rights, the right to pursue personal happiness, reformed religions? An election looms this fall, choose wisely.
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