from Hacker News

The New Legislators of Silicon Valley

by _delirium on 4/9/25, 7:08 AM with 57 comments

• by gizzlon on 4/9/25, 10:27 AM

  > .. identified the villain with brass-knuckled clarity: the decline of critical, open debate was due to the corrupting influence of concentrated power. Truer words have never been spoken. And yet… Updating his 1962 analysis in 2023, Habermas, the patrician-academic, chose to fuss over topics like “algorithmic steering”— a quaint concern akin to adjusting picture frames while the house collapses into a sinkhole.

  "Adjusting picture frames while the house collapses into a sinkhole" sums up much of the opposition in the US ATM

  However, it's not clear to me how "concentrated power" has lead to "the decline of critical, open debate" ?

• by markus_zhang on 4/9/25, 9:25 AM

  I think a slightly better perspective is "new aristocrats".

• by DarkWiiPlayer on 4/9/25, 11:56 AM

  More and more I am coming to hate the term "tech elites"; it playes into the lie that these people have, themselves, any sort of "elite" status in the field, rather than the reality that they are just wealthy owners of big companies; some by luck, some by inheritance.

  And people like Musk are increasingly making use of this misconception to justify their opinions with fake authority, as someone who understands tech rather than someone who owns companies that employs people who understand tech.

  It's becoming more and more important to remind people that no, these people aren't in any way different from the rest of the wealthy owning class; they aren't smarter, they didn't pull themselves up by the bootstraps, they simply pay qualified people to make them money, and their only value to society is the capital they own.

• by DeathArrow on 4/9/25, 11:07 AM

  Some people possess that quality which Machiavelli included in the arsenal of any authentic prince: virtù, a trait defined by a commentator of The Prince as embodied in “an individual endowed with exceptional qualities who seeks to seize reality in order to confront and reshape it, without being overwhelmed by its unpredictable unfolding (by fate).” Virtù, the supreme quality of the Machiavellian prince, is something different from Roman virtus or from virtue in ethical terms; it is an optimal composition of personality suited for a great deed, a strange blend of ingenuity, boldness, effectiveness, and foresight. Virtù is what enables a person of great stature to create their own destiny, rather than being merely a pawn of chance.

• by yapyap on 4/9/25, 9:27 AM

  “Legislators”, I think it’s more the opposite of that term now.

• by soco on 4/9/25, 8:40 AM

  Now this is a topic where I would have loved to see discussions - the role of technology leaders today, beyond the obvious...

• by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 4/9/25, 4:41 PM

  Nouveau riche, generally

• by Mountain_Skies on 4/9/25, 10:13 AM

  It's hilarious seeing HN and similar discussion groups get up in arms about the involvement of the tech industry in governance after spending the last decade endlessly praising the merger of the two. It's not like they weren't warned over and over again that this would eventually come back to bite them. That big tech wouldn't obey them as their master forever. But all too many were convinced big tech had the same values as they have so it was ok to let these companies run amuck and drive all over everyone's rights.

  This isn't a case of big tech flipping from Democrats to Republicans (or libertarians). It's that they never were on anyone's side but their own. For a decade they were enabled and allowed to grow their power unchecked. Now they don't need to obey anymore. They haven't flipped to the Republicans. They've flipped to themselves.

• by yapyap on 4/9/25, 9:26 AM

  > their libertarian fantasies bobbing like luxury yachts in international waters.

  I wouldn’t say libertarian, more oligarchical.

• by intermerda on 4/9/25, 9:20 AM

  Has the tech industry always been this depraved? Or something fundamentally change within these people with the advent of Trumpism?

• by roenxi on 4/9/25, 9:38 AM

  This article seems to have an odd rhetorical stance against people solving problems. Things like:

  > Inevitably, Elon Musk, techno-capitalism’s own Zelig, also has strong opinions on the subject: in destroy-infrastructure-first wars of the future, he opined in a recent Westpoint appearance, “any ground based communications like fiber optic cables and cell phone towers will be destroyed.” If only someone ran an internet satellite company to save us!

  I get the impression this is supposed to be dripping sarcasm, but in a fairly literal sense it is describing the expected and productive dynamic. Musk has identified a problem and is proposing a solution. To hurry matters along he is implementing the solution whether everyone agrees there is a problem or not.

  How else is it supposed to work? This dynamic turned up a few times and I don't expect the author to have a productive theory for how we're supposed to organise people to effect change - I expect it will involve waiting for Democrats and Republicans to agree on something first (which, traditionally, not a process that leads to the highest of speedy successes). If we're waiting for people with no financial stake or know-how to build and promote satellite networks it could take a while.

• by DeathArrow on 4/9/25, 8:47 AM

  >The evidence isn’t merely anecdotal. A comprehensive 2023 study tracking political donations of 200,000 employees across 18 industries revealed tech workers as uniquely anti-establishment—and trailing only the bohemians of arts and entertainment in their liberal fervor. The source of this radicalism lies precisely where Gouldner placed his faith: in what he called the “culture of critical discourse” embedded in technical work itself. Thus, the researchers discovered that non-technical employees within the same tech companies showed none of this rebellious disposition, confirming that coding itself, not mere proximity to ping pong tables, contributes to their dissenting mindset.

  Thankfully not all tech workers suffer from this disease.