[reddytowns]

"Tech bros" don't like their jobs outsourced to India. That's comparable to your examples, yet they are mostly upper class.

In addition, people are concerned about things that effect themselves. The elites don't care about the neighborhoods they don't live in, or the jobs they don't have to compete for.

But they do care about profit, and about getting richer. In all of the examples you gave, that motivation would work just as well as being "principled" as to explaining their allegiance to the opposite side of the issues as to that of the lower class.

If the world ends up 99.99% of us are either starving or doing jobs such as building a carbon fiber toilet for some rich guy's yacht, simply because the elite "own" everything, the world would be a worse off place, wouldn't you agree?

And, IMO, that's what will occur if we strip away all laws meant to protect the little guy.

[yummyfajitas]

I've never actually met a tech bro who objected except on HN. Everyone I've met has been fine with economic competition from people unlike them. But I could be wrong - do you have evidence that tech is even remotely as protectionist as the trump/Bernie voting masses?

The local elites don't need to compete for CEO jobs with Satya Nadella or Sunder Pichai? That's news to me.

[rtcensored]

The people you are talking about are either your coworkers or those you've met in a workplace related environment, correct? Management wants to do the best things as quickly and cheaply as possible, and anyone who speaks out about it publicly or to their coworkers would be doing harm to their career.

The same is true in any industry. On the factory floor, workers who complain loudly about immigrants working side by side them at the workplace will get them fired.

The same people who you think are all for globalization of the workforce, may also be part of the "trump/Bernie voting masses" behind closed doors.

As for the CEO jobs, there isn't a large group of voters that identify with candidates. I mean, this is getting kind of silly. Do I really need to explain why someone competing for a CEO job with an immigrant can't look to the political process to help them?

And anyway, even if I'm wrong and tech workers are for the race to the bottom, you are quibbling about minor things while ignoring my main point. Do you really think there is morality in denying the lower class a voice to help change the situation they are in? Are the laws shat out by our ancestors so great we cannot change them, even though the result turned out not to be so good? Is it like a board game, in that if you lose, it's unfair to complain because you should have been able to deduce what would happen from the beginning?

What, exactly, do you mean when you refer to the elite as "honest, moral and principled individuals" in your parent post?

[yummyfajitas]

By honest, moral and principled, I mean they don't try to exploit politics to screw over their neighbors. They just compete economically. Kind of like the article claims, and mg experience agrees with.

Some people also didn't want to get into a race to the bottom with negros. I think it's perfectly moral to deny lower class whites the right to change their situation by harming the competition.

[douche]

Nobody really cares about neighborhoods that they don't live in, so I don't see why that makes elites particularly terrible people.

I cringe when I see my customers outsource their IT to India, but that is mostly because it immediately makes my life much more difficult. There are fantastic Indian engineers and sysadmins, but they aren't the ones working the grunt jobs at these cut-rate outsourcing firms...

[reddytowns]

I'm not arguing they are terrible people. I'm arguing they are people, and like everyone else they are for their own interests. The point is that people, regardless whether their ethics are similar to the average person or not, that have too much power, can be dangerous to the world as a whole if not kept in check.

If we allow them to run roughshod over everyone else, we will be worse off because of it.