Summary
In 2017, tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin supported progressive causes, yet over time many shifted toward pro-business, conservative stances.
Changing economic conditions, capital crunches, and reduced growth diminished the appeal of progressive policies, prompting tech firms to prioritize profit and market dominance.
Biden’s aggressive regulatory actions, including antitrust cases and wealth tax proposals, further alienated Silicon Valley, significantly intensifying its shift toward conservative support.
Such realignment poses significant political challenges, forcing Democrats to urgently reconsider policies and strategies while balancing public interests against ever-growing corporate influence.
Money
That’s all
Why can’t all big tech be like valve?
Because they Don want some money.
They want all the money forever.
The super rich have a mental illness
Why can’t all dictators be benevolent? Why can’t all cops be paragons of virtue?
You can’t create a system of incentives that drive people towards terrible behaviours and then expect them to behave well in spite of those incentives. That’s living in a dream world.
So because of people being shitty one can’t hope for people not being shitty?
I think a good example proves that people are capable of such a thing, and still be very well of, without added incentives.
Money.
“always has been”
That’s a lot of words when ‘greed’ would have sufficed.
It’s not even greed… just pragmatism with no morals to keep the companies in check.
Exactly. Look at our “news” industry, built on supposedly the critical function of journalism. When $ is the output and $ becomes the input, it can easily be steered to antisocial ends. Medicine, higher education, they’ve all been distorted and corrupted by profit motive.
The issue with ascribing everything to personal greed is that it leads people to think the solution is to turn to companies with more benevolent executives, when the problem is really an institutional one that requires institutional changes.
Capitalism is systemized greed. It is exactly the right word.
I didn’t say it was wrong, I said it leads people to seek the wrong solution.
At least if you present it as a one-word summary, without an accompanying explanation that would be substantially longer than the thing you’re claiming to summarize.
Why do you think people are coming to Lemmy for solutions to the systemized greed we call capitalism?
Sociopaths.
They didn’t “turn right” , they were always right-wing
They just dropped the pretense.
Vox is utter shit. The fact that this isn’t obvious to them or their bone headed readership is telling. The jist of the article seems to be, “That makes sense, I understand why they would do something like this. It is totally rational!”
Manufacturing consent.
I’m just happy more people are talking about it. but yes the article could certainly have been shorter
Why do rich people support Republican politicians, more at 11. /s
“Turned”
The way towards centre from left is to the right.
This article doesn’t mention what I think is the key difference: Democrats’ hostile regulatory environment against Crypto. I bet all of these Tech Bros bought Bitcoin and Ethereum early, and are sitting on a huge stash of it. Hell, we know Musk personally pumps Dogecoin every chance he gets. Some regulation is necessary in the space, but Biden’s SEC was going way too far.
So, you have all these yoyos with extra money, and Citizens United which says it is speech. Is it any wonder they steered the money toward the guy who would let them do whatever the hell they want?
Some regulation is necessary in the space, but Biden’s SEC was going way too far.
Could you please elaborate on this? In what ways did they go too far?
I’m curious about that as well.
The SEC wanted to consider every bit of crypto a security. But most securities are issued for the purpose of raising money. So, a company makes a formal offering of shares, or debt, and that is all regulated. The investors are essentially participating in whatever the company is doing.
Cryptocurrencies with Blockchains aren’t like that, though. It’s not a cooperative enterprise where everyone is making a profit. It’s released on a set schedule according to the protocol. Anyone can join in the mining/staking process simply by having the right equipment (and in the case of staking, enough of the coin to qualify). Furthermore, you can buy and sell coins without participating in the underlying mining/staking mechanics. So it’s not a common undertaking at all, it really resembles a currency or commodity.
The SEC went hard after US exchanges like Coinbase for selling “unregistered securities”, while not really defuning it all that well, and without actually giving exchanges a process to register even if they wanted to.
Now, I will add that there exchanges also all sell shitty tokens like $TRUMP. Those are different, because they are governed by a smart contract riding on top of a Blockchain. They are a layer removed from the Blockchain they are riding on. There is no utility there; the utility is all in Ethereum or Solana or whatever Blockchain enabled the shitty token.
The SEC could have done everyone a lot of favors by simply saying “Blockchain coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum are commodities, Shitty ERC-20 tokens (or their non-ethereum equivalent on other chains) are securities and need to be registered before being traded in the US”. If they provided a web form and charged $100 per shitty token, they might even make enough to fund all the crypto enforcement when those shitty tokens inevitably get pump-and-dumped. ($TRUMP will get dumped, too, eventually.)
