The enshittification of Silicon Valley
Paul Krugman this morning considers that because “we live in a corrupted democracy in which wealth buys power,” our political discourse is driven by “crazy ideas.” One source of those crazy ideas — the sitting president’s name appears nowhere in Krugman’s comments — is Silicon Valley. Once upon a time, the public saw tech gurus as benificent. But that has changed. They have changed. Wealth that buys political power changed them. Once pro-Democrat tech scions have swung hard right as their public images sank.
Krugman references Wall Street’s post-financial collapse “Obama rage” as an analog:
Were the Masters of the Universe really that angry over Obama calling them “fat cats”? Or was their outrage performative, aimed at heading off tighter financial regulation? Yes.
The antipathy toward Obama came even as Obama’s team foamed the runway for banks in crisis. Their anger at being called out was strategic but also real, Krugman argues, suggesting “nothing makes a privileged man angrier than criticism of his privilege.”
Big Tech’s swing to the right was more gradual but more extreme. They’ve gone from looking like Time Lords to The Doctor’s alien enemies bent on galactic conquest and domination.
The Biden administration made some efforts to regulate tech. In part this reflected a perception that the big players had turned their focus from innovation to exploiting their locked in customer bases — a process memorably described by Cory Doctorow as enshittification. In part it represented growing awareness of the psychological and social harm often associated with internet use.
And like Wall Street tycoons a decade or so earlier, tech bros responded with rage. Was this rage performative, a warning to politicians who might be tempted to support regulation? Or was it genuine outrage at the idea that anyone might criticize their brilliance and benevolence? Yes.
Because their gleam is tarnished they’ve lined up behind Donald Trump. Look for ‘privilege’ in the dictionary and find his picture.
Krugman concludes:
But here’s the crucial point: Their rage wouldn’t matter if their wealth weren’t so vast and we didn’t have a political system so corrupted by money. In a more equal society with a less corrupted democracy, people expressing the views we’re hearing from the likes of Peter Thiel or Marc Andreesen would be treated as cranks. In fact, they’d probably be hiding their opinions.
Such talk nearly got venture capitalist Nick Hanauer’s 2012 TED talk on income inequality banned from the Internet. The Atlantic posted its full text. Hanauer’s sin? Pulling back the curtain to reveal that the men working the knobs and levers to create an illusion of godhood were but privileged assholes who insisted on being treated as gods.
Great wealth had gone to their head, Hanauer suggested, and convinced financial moguls that they were Übermenschen, “‘job creators’ at the center of the economic universe,” as he put it.
… and the language and metaphors we use to defend the fairness of the current social and economic arrangements is telling. For instance, it is a small step from “job creator” to “The Creator”. We did not accidentally choose this language. It is only honest to admit that calling oneself a “job creator” is both an assertion about how economics works and the a claim on status and privileges.
And nothing makes a privileged man angrier than criticism of his privilege. But the Tech Lords’ enshittification is not merely their own doing. What once was a democratic republic grew complacent, taking for granted the freedoms and flatter economic distribution that emerged after WWII. That spreading equality sparked the social and political reforms of the 1960s. Before we grew too comfortable with the new dispensation of freedoms, a conservative backlash to them emerged during the Reagan revolution and since.
The 1990s tech boom promised to restore to the people some of the power lost to the rich from the growing wealth gap. Instead, Big Tech got bigger mountains of assets and the big head, shifting the center of political power away from Wall Street and toward Silicon Valley. Wall Street wants all the wealth. Silicon Valley wants that and more. The Tech Lords want the world. Donald Trump just wants to be emperor. We empowered them all.
Recall, before becoming The Doctor’s arch nemesis, The Master was once himself a Time Lord.
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