So, I'll agree that wealth does not make you smarter.
I think, though, that people are missing the broader point of Scott Adams' piece: what is being said is being buried underneath how it was said. And yeah, it was pretty stupid of Tom Perkins to phrase things in a way that invites everyone to immediately focus on how he said things rather than on his actual point.
But I'm neither wealthy nor famous, and I'll come out and say this: I believe that the underlying emotional motives behind the protests in the San Francisco are the same underlying emotional motives behind the Holocaust. In both cases, you have people worried that their fundamental economic survival is threatened, unaware of why it's threatened or what to do about it, and looking for a scapegoat (techies in SF, Jews in the Holocaust) to blame for it. That does not mean that I believe there will be another Holocaust, or that the magnitude of these two is anywhere close to equivalent. But I do think it's worth focusing on the substance of people's concerns and addressing them before it becomes a situation where such concerns are warranted.
It's still wrong, and deeply intellectually dishonest. Perhaps there are similarities, but we can find similarities between many things, no? Rich, or relatively wealthy, people moving into SF are causing real problems. The ideological function played by "the Jew" in Nazi thought does not resemble this.
The reference point is wrong - I am more reminded of pro-life campaigns. A flyer made the rounds recently, identifying the residence of a Google employee and going on to describe how he had assisted the military. The implication is that this is a violent person, and violent acts against them are therefore justified. This resembles the info pro-lifers would publish about abortion doctors, implying the same - any actions taken to stop/hurt/kill this person are justified. I expect a George Tiller-like scenario to happen.
Perkins' analogy was tone deaf but, as you note, not completely out to lunch. A much more apt analogy would have been to the French revolutionaries, particularly the Jacobins. Characterizing the anti-tech protests as neo-Nazi is a stretch at best; characterizing them as neo-Jacobin isn't a stretch at all. Indeed, with the rising popularity of publications like Jacobin (https://www.jacobinmag.com), it's even a label they might wear with pride. After all, what could possibly go wrong with liberté, égalité, fraternité? Um, this? http://bit.ly/1n3dnrS
comparing it with the french revolution is appropriate in many ways. The message should be clear--if they persist in their Marie Antoinette ways, someone will pick up a brick. if that happens, we all lose, the middle class in many ways worst of all. that's why this guy upsets me to no end. I don't fault him being rich, I fault him and people like him, like the Kochs for ruthlessly lobbying for lower taxes and less support for the poor.
I kinda like the French revolution analogy as well. French revolution wasn't exactly a picnic for anyone involved either. (And it also ended up in a military dictatorship and a state of total war in Europe...I hope that that's not where we're heading, but there are a lot of historical parallels that lead that way.)
That's reductio ad absurdum. You can take pretty much any conflict between groups of people and reduce it to: Group X feels its economic survival is threatened; looks for a scapegoat in Group Y to blame for it. Conflict between fast food workers and restaurant companies, car companies and auto workers, car dealerships and Tesla, can thus all be analogized to German persecution of Jews.
Do people who are suffering and feel threatened, sometimes lash out at people who they see aren't suffering? Sure. Is building an entire editorial on this unremarkable observation a sign that your strengths lie more in spreadsheets than public discourse? Surely.
"That's reductio ad absurdum. You can take pretty much any conflict between groups of people and reduce it to: Group X feels its economic survival is threatened; looks for a scapegoat in Group Y to blame for it."
Because you are correct, because it is possible to reduce (most) conflicts down to that, it is therefore vital to realize that and come to gripes with that. We aren't going to go anywhere pleasant by ignoring the underlying issues (hatred fueled by economic disparity and jealousy) just because the scapegoats are softer targets who are more fun to pick on.
> "Tech workers [are] spending their energies figuring out how to put ordinary people out of work"
Neo-luddism. The solution is social reform, particularly focusing on reeducation and safety-nets for those who can no longer productively contribute, not smashing machines.
> Because you are correct, because it is possible to reduce (most) conflicts down to that, it is therefore vital to realize that and come to gripes with that. We aren't going to go anywhere pleasant by ignoring the underlying issues (hatred fueled by economic disparity and jealousy) just because the scapegoats are softer targets who are more fun to pick on.
If you want to talk about a particular phenomenon, don't pick the most highly charged and divisive example you can think of that in a minor way embodies that phenomenon. Perkins didn't just say something potentially offensive. He buried his point in an analogy that is, for substantially the reasons 'michaelochurch points out in a sibling comment, both historically questionable and clumsy to work with. It's not wrong to use a controversial analogy, but if you're going to throw that hammer strike, it had better ring true and pure.
I agree. The issue is not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with such examples, but because such examples cause people to get themselves worked up into a tizzy and miss the point. Picking those sort of examples is therefore a good way to be ignored.
I am nevertheless concerned by what I perceive to be the idea that such examples are inherently wrong, not merely ineffective.
Agreed its similar to the well know quote "Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools" where some progressives in the 19th century embraced antisemitism blaming jews for the ills of capitalism.
I don't think Tom Perkins was thinking of the San Francisco protests in his letter, and if he was, then he is delusional as to the current state of class relations in the US. Protests in one city over problems that are not endemic to the entire country (skyrocketing housing prices, for example) are not a rational justification for accusing the opposition of Nazi attitudes. Protests aside, inequality is a major problem in the US right now, and Perkins' response is out of touch with reality.
he actually mentioned the SF protests in his interview with bloomberg, so you would be correct about his delusions.
I quote:
Now I used the word because during the occupy of San Francisco by the Occupy Wall Street crowd, they broke the windows in the Wells Fargo Bank. They marched up through our automobile strip on Venice Avenue and broke all the windows in all the luxury car dealerships. And I saw that. I remembered that the police just stood by frozen. And I thought, well, this is how Kristallnacht began. So that word was in my mind, but I did – I don’t necessarily need to read from this letter, but if you’re interested I can."
Interesting, thanks. I would consider the plight of the poor and inequality in the US to be of larger concern than the terrible, terrible effects Occupy and these protests are having on the fragile rich.
He has a point (yes, it's scapegoatism), but the counterpoint is that these protests are pretty marginal. They're news because they're unusual.
Making extreme comparisons exaggerates the seriousness of the issue. This is nothing compared to what people who do genuinely controversial work have to deal with all the time.
I believe that the underlying emotional motives behind the protests in the San Francisco are the same underlying emotional motives behind the Holocaust.
What. The. Fucking. Fuck. You could not be more offensively wrong on this one.
In both cases, you have people worried that their fundamental economic survival is threatened, unaware of why it's threatened or what to do about it, and looking for a scapegoat (techies in SF, Jews in the Holocaust) to blame for it.
No. What fueled the Holocaust was not economic anxiety. That probably drove the acceptance of political extremism in general. But behind the Holocaust was a belief that some races were immutably inferior and should be extinguished in the (abused) name of "eugenics".
Before Hitler, Germany wasn't any worse in terms of racism than other European societies. There were respected and prominent people in the U.S. and Great Britain with the same disgusting views. Still, you cannot seriously argue that what turned mid-century Germany into a mass murder machine was economic anxiety. It was racism.
"Techies" (I fucking hate that word) are not a race.
Take a "techie" out of the Valley and confiscate his Google Glass and he's just a computer programmer and no one has a problem with him. Move him to a city without a dysfunctional housing market (say, to Austin or Portland) and he's likely quite welcome. On the other hand, being ethnically Jewish is not something a person can change.
No one hates "the rich" as some immutable class. Aside from criminals (who are motivated by greed, not hatred) virtually no one targets anyone for violence because he is rich. What people are reacting to is behavior-- often, really shitty behavior that even most people in tech despise. Behavior, unlike bloodlines, can be changed.
"Techies" are being asked to stop being assholes. Jews in Nazi Germany, on the other hand, had armed men coming to kill them, and if they tried to escape or hide in attics, the people who assisted them were also killed.
thanks for saving me the time of writing this reply. I'd add that billionaires are not being prevented from marrying non billionaires, nor are they being forced to walk around with patches signifying their possession of an attribute <i>that cannot be changed</i>. To that end, no one's suggesting we create forced work camps where billionaires are put to death. No, what people want is a fairer system. And people like Tom Perkins and this poster can't seem to separate the two.
For such smart people, some of the people on hacker news are just stupid. For the last time, the analogy doesn't work, it's inappropriate, and those who persist in this line of thinking really should have their heads examined.
I think, though, that people are missing the broader point of Scott Adams' piece: what is being said is being buried underneath how it was said. And yeah, it was pretty stupid of Tom Perkins to phrase things in a way that invites everyone to immediately focus on how he said things rather than on his actual point.
But I'm neither wealthy nor famous, and I'll come out and say this: I believe that the underlying emotional motives behind the protests in the San Francisco are the same underlying emotional motives behind the Holocaust. In both cases, you have people worried that their fundamental economic survival is threatened, unaware of why it's threatened or what to do about it, and looking for a scapegoat (techies in SF, Jews in the Holocaust) to blame for it. That does not mean that I believe there will be another Holocaust, or that the magnitude of these two is anywhere close to equivalent. But I do think it's worth focusing on the substance of people's concerns and addressing them before it becomes a situation where such concerns are warranted.