I think what 'forgottenpass was probably getting to was the idea that a regular joe doesn't know much the difference between the all-glorious tech company 'Google' and the tech guy 'Khosla'. Right now Khosla is making all of SV tech place and beyond look bad. Khosla is in some way coloring the perceptions of all tech people, all tech companies, etc. in the hearts and minds of regular joes. It's kind of the way people work - not that there's anything wrong about being ill-informed, a lot of folks don't have time and resources to get good information. We just have to work with what we've got -- and I think this is one of the reasons we should strongly denounce Khosla's douchebaginess and make normal people understand that we're not all like him.
The categories in play here are wrong. It's not tech that leads people like Khosla to appropriate what should be public property; it's extreme wealth. The distinction should be between billionaires and everyone else; Khosla's peer group is oil barons, hedge fund managers, and Saudi princes, not startup founders.
> The categories in play here are wrong. It's not tech that leads people like Khosla to appropriate what should be public property; it's extreme wealth.
That's just grossly twisting and simplying things to get a view that you like. It is tech that produces extreme wealth [1]. Google's Brin and Page, MS's Gates, FB's Zuckerberg, Oracle's Ellison, etc. They're all companies that're there and being driven by and with extremely wealthy individuals at the helm. If Page and Brin were doing similarly douchebaggy things, I would be completely okay with folks blocking Google buses. How else do you get attention and reparation of your woes these days when you've got little else that you can practically do?
[1]: The most pernicious variation is that new one known as the 'sharing economy', which is all about easy rent-seeking and exploiting society by profiting from externalities.
Of the top 20 billionaires on Forbes ranked list, 6 are from tech, if you call Michael Bloomberg a tech billionaire (I would). Your argument gets even weaker as you widen the window to 30 or 40.
Take all the billionares from tech form the Forbes list, and try to distill out the egregious actions of that pool of billionaires.
Now rope the oil barons, Saudi princes, ball bearing magnates, Koch brothers, and Wal-Mart founders up, and distill out their egregious actions.
Prediction: the tech founders will be marked by things like "donating all their money to charitable foundations", and the rest of the billionaires will be known for things like "organizing efforts to disenfranchise large blocs of voters".
Furthermore, your jab at "the sharing economy", which I have qualms with as well (punch my name and "Airbnb" in the search box below; or, do the same with "Uber") is a red herring. Whatever you might think of Uber, their founders aren't restricting California beaches.
Do you know that the Koch brothers are actually pretty big philanthropists? The way you and I are going at this, we're getting nowhere. Of course extreme inequality and oil barons are bad (I'm all for highly progressive taxing schemes to rectify that problem), but tech and tech giants are not without some serious stains -- tactlessly spending millions on weddings (destroying ecologically sensitive areas, cutting down trees without permits), being a culturally homogeneous monolith that keeps "others" away, etc. etc. Clearly both tech and extreme wealth disparities are problems. We can do something about the tech part though -- don't work for them, denounce them for their immoral behavior, try to convince the regular folks that we're just working 9 to 5 to put food on our kids' plates, etc.
Yep, I'm glad you could see where I was going with that, I had a hard time finding the words to use. And while Khosla's out of touch with the community dick move is HUGE, it does cast suspicion over the rest of the people in tech. And plenty of them are perfectly willing to confirm it with much much smaller, out of touch dick moves.
I think it's like people see some bankers triggering a financial crisis, and some bankers taking home huge bonuses, and decide bankers are assholes.
Likewise for politicians, cops, CEOs, lawyers etc.
Fortunately, the reputation of us techies isn't yet as bad as the reputation of bankers, politicians and lawyers! Just as well, as it's not clear to me that we have the will or ability to improve or manage our collective reputation.
If you're ever in Mountain View and walk by the Google campus around 4-4:30p, you can witness the vast network of Google buses picking up their colonist cargo ready for dispersal throughout the Bay Area. It's not just one or two buses, the road is literally backed up with them, each with a little LCD display to let you know what town or neighborhood they're going to. It really is a sight to behold. I can understand why locals view them as an invading army.
If you're ever near Sindelfingen (Germany), take a look at the buses at shift changes.
More than twenty bus companies are shuttling workers to and from the factory.
And it's no big deal. Of course you curse them when you happen to be in traffic right behind several of those, but they evoke no hatred in the populace, but even some kind of pride.
But, of course, there's not much jealousy involved when it comes to Daimler. Everyone knows someone working there. And the workers there don't generally carry the stigma of being filthy rich.
Google is more elite, I guess.
But the problem is certainly not the buses or the traffic per se.
> I can understand why locals view them as an invading army.
I can't. The comparisons to colonialism are laughable, at best. Tech employees are predominantly Americans who chose to live in Silicon Valley. So apparently moving within your own country and establishing a lasting presence (including friends and family) in your home is colonialism and military invasion now?
What exactly makes tech workers not locals? Many tech workers have lived in the Valley for over a decade. I surely hope that's long enough to establish that they are, in fact, locals.
