Not sure where this myth of libertarian Silicon Valley comes from. They're very, very left with the exception of business regulations. Business regulations is a big one, but they're very fond of taxing the wealthy more to fund social programs such as universal healthcare and services for the poor. It's unfortunate that they typically aren't for more regulations, but I'm not expecting democrats to check every single "left" box -- people are allowed to vote democrat without believing everything I want them to.
Proof:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/technology/silicon-valley-politics.html
Mostly it comes from looking at what they
actually produce. Invasive advertizing built on creepy surveillance, regressive social networks that are designed to turn people into pure capitalist batteries and overpriced juicers.
Seriously how can people in Silicon Valley look at the current state of this country and legit think "You know what this world needs? Another fucking mattress company!"
It's an incredibly insular, non-diverse, community that quickly amassed enormous power. Even in the best case scenario, with people who set out with the best intentions, that is a recipe for disaster. The basic tenants of how our society communicates was completely refashioned by a bunch of white dudes. That's why they never even began to consider how to handle harassment or manipulation. It never occurred to them.
Silicon Valley is a prime example of how social structures matter more than individual beliefs. Yes, if you poll people, on an individual basis, their answers will tick plenty of the "left boxes",
but if you plug them back into the machine, the things that they actually produce diverge pretty wildly. The money that drives things and the way that decisions are made matters more than the individual.
The reason why Twitter and Facebook are so reticent to confront the fact that a huge portion of their users are actually bots armies is because, in a way, bots are their ideal users. Easy to understand and easy to monetize.
At least Wall Street is more honest about what they do. (And again, if you polled Wall Street employees, you would get results that check more of those "left boxes" than their output would imply.) Both Wall Street and Silicon Valley are driven by the same motivations, the only difference is that Silicon Valley deluded themselves into thinking that their new tracking cookie is nobly changing the world.
Palmer Luckey was not an outlier. There is a reason why he was immediately welcomed into that community with open arms even though he had no qualifications. There is a reason why the douchelord who wrote that Google diversity memo felt safe sharing those opinions with his peers. There is a reason why that memo circulated Google for weeks and there is a reason why Google only acted on it when it became public.
