Collusion is small potatoes. The real "free market" hypocrisy is that Silicon Valley was created by government spending. Still plays a huge role today.<p>Really disappointed more authors don't take on that topic.<p>I don't like the author's definition of "classic libertarianism" though. Classic libertarianism is anarcho-socialism. Liberty in all spheres of life: the personal, the political, the economic. Opposition to all forms of tyranny and concentration of power.<p>What the author is describing in the article is American "Libertarianism" which came about in the mid-20th century. It adopted the term from libertarian socialism but cleansed it of its critique of authoritarianism in the economic sphere (corporations are dictatorships).<p>It's as though a royal servant came up with a philosophy of "liberty to do whatever you want with your kingdom" and the royals embraced it, along with anyone else who aspired to it. It's a corruption of the term.<p>But the idea that anyone in Silicon Valley is an honest Libertarian (in the American sense) is ridiculous, given the massive amount of state spending that supports it.
This article clearly elaborates that the author doesn't understand either the philosophy or ethics of libertarian (or actual free market) economics. From what I can tell, the author may have not have even read cursory basics on Wikipedia about such.<p>This header:<p>"Google, Apple and other tech firms likely colluded to keep their workers' wages down." then concludes: "So much for that libertarian worldview"<p>That assumes incorrectly that willful collusion is somehow anti-free market, or anti-libertarian. The free market has absolutely no position on collusion, except that force may not enter into economic transactions. If two parties choose to collude to set prices, the free market has no opinion on the matter as such; if they set prices incorrectly in the process of judging the market, they will lose. That is basic free market ideology.<p>A free market doesn't outlaw or in any way forbid collusion. Nor is it considered immoral in laissez-faire doctrine to agree to freeze or suppress wages across an industry. The use of force (eg to prevent workers from leaving their job for a better paying one) to control workers would be considered immoral and illegal. Otherwise, it's the responsibility of the worker to pursue a job that properly compensates their talent, not the responsibility of the business owner to overpay the worker (and if the owner isn't properly compensating the worker, and that worker leaves, the owner loses).<p>As a response to wage collusion by business owners, in a free market workers also have the right to collude to attempt to inflate wages; owners also have a right to fire every single one of them in response. Whichever group judges correctly about their value proposition, wins.<p>One can then move on to debating the merits of laissez-faire Capitalism versus other systems; or libertarian ideology; or 19th century free market economics. The author however is far off base in understanding even where the conversation would begin.
This article is stupid. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs are all Democrats and Obama supporters. Most valley leaders are.<p>The reasoning of the article laid out explicitly: Peter Thiel is guilty of hypocrisy because (democrats) Larry Page and Steve Jobs failed to live up to Peter Thiel's libertarian principles.<p>[edit: CEO of Adobe, also involved in this mess, is a Democrat and selected by Obama to be on his PMAB.]
The author, Dean Baker, has a very narrow view of what libertarianism is and isn't. I'm a left-libertarian. I take a great deal of inspiration from the libertarian activist Karl Hess, who developed the language of the 1% versus the 99% in his 1975 manifesto, <i>Dear America</i>:<p>"1.6 percent of the adult population owns 82 percent of all stock, and thus actually owns American business and industry. In a very real sense, that tiny 1 percent of the population faces the other 99 percent across a barrier of very real self-interest. That tiny 1 percent has been accumulating more as the years go on, not less. The key to that accumulation is assuring that the people who make up the other 99 percent are sharply restricted in what power and privilege they accumulate."<p>Again, that was written by an American <i>libertarian</i>.<p>Libertarianism is a <i>family</i> of philosophical viewpoints, that runs the gamut from the "Libertarian socialism" of Noam Chomsky to the "Geolibertarianism" of Henry George to the craziness of the "Tea Party."<p>It's noteworthy that Ayn Rand denounced libertarianism. I was excommunicated from the Objectivist club in college for espousing libertarian anarchist views.<p>It's also noteworthy that Tea Party founder Karl Denninger renounced the Tea Party, saying it was co-opted by the Republican Party, which shifted its focus to "Guns, gays, God." He sums up his feelings toward the Tea Party, saying:<p>"Tea Party my ass. This was nothing other than The Republican Party stealing the anger of a population that was fed up with The Republican Party's own theft of their tax money at gunpoint to bail out the robbers of Wall Street and fraudulently redirecting it back toward electing the very people who stole all the f---ing money!" Source: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/karl-denninger-tea-party_n_770108.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/20/karl-denninger-tea-...</a><p>Someone who's really interested in the variety of libertarianism ought to start with the Wikipedia article at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism</a>
While I frankly believe that libertarians are idiots and will drag society and social progress into the victorian age (hey, opinion, ok?), I think its important to point out that Steve Jobs @ Apple was not in any way one.<p>I don't believe for a minute that he cared about how much people made and was far more concerned with either employees leaving with secrets, or more likely annoyed that a revolving door of employees between his company and others took <i>time</i> away from getting his projects completed.<p>Apple has no problem paying people, but if they're trying to complete something for particular market opportunity, they probably don't want to waste time bringing new hires up to speed.
This kind of "free-market libertarianism" involves systematically winning asymmetric zero-sum games against labor: free for me, not for you [1].<p>[1] <a href="http://publicsphere.org/2014/02/02/the-asymmetric-zero-sum-game/" rel="nofollow">http://publicsphere.org/2014/02/02/the-asymmetric-zero-sum-g...</a>
I like how top comments are arguing about what "Libertarianism" is and that author does not know what it is 100%.<p>Yet they are completely ignoring the main point of this article - big companies pushing down wages.<p>lol
Free market includes the freedom to conspire for lowering wages down like includes the freedom from workers to decide where they work or even compete with those companies.<p>Having said that, we don't live in a free market, the economy is ruled by central banks who do central planning, thanks to free money for them, taken from the rest of us.<p>In the technology sector, we live in a world with business and software patents, and with lawsuits costing millions, which makes competing against the big guys harder and harder for little guys.
I love this notion that Silicon Valley billionaires can all be painted with the same brush. Truly, if there was ever a group of individuals known to celebrate conforming to the thought processes of others, this is it.
Everybody only belive in the free market if they benefit. Nobody wants a free market, everybody wants direct handouts or whatever else.<p>As long as there is a third party that can be made to help you, you will. The only reason there exists a relativly free market in the first place is that there is a balance between diffrent 'powers'.<p>Everybody individually would benefit from some policys in there faver but there are few policys that help everybody.<p>As soon as one groupe gets to much power (meaning political influance) the get a handout (Sugar Farmers, US Steel ...).
The free market is all about fighting for your own self interest. The purpose of government is to ensure those members with special power or position are not able to extort those advantages.<p>ANYONE in their position would do this. It's not a matter of belief or politics or even ethics. It's a matter of oversight. The people responsible for <i>providing for</i> the free market have failed to protect relatively less powerful market players.<p>Let's stop pretending that the "free market" isn't a dirty nasty place.
In other news:<p>- kids believe in extra cookies at snack time<p>- dogs believe in steak and not dry kibble in the dog bowl<p>People (and animals) like things that they perceive to benefit them. How is this even news?
This seems strange, as it's a little removed from the folks doing most of the complaining, no?<p><i>This case is striking on many levels, the most obvious being the effective theft of large amounts of money by some of the richest people on the planet from their employees. </i>
Silicon Valley has nothing to do with a free market, those companies make ridiculous profits for one reason, intellectual property. And IP is in complete opposition to the free market.
I heard many young people try very hard to get an unpaid volunteer / intern job in UN headquarters. They need to pay their own rent and food out of their own pocket to work for UN for nothing. How crazy is this?<p>UN must be libertarian! Damn!