[abalone]

Collusion is small potatoes. The real "free market" hypocrisy is that Silicon Valley was created by government spending. Still plays a huge role today.

Really disappointed more authors don't take on that topic.

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.

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).

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.

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.

[hackerboos]

The word Libertarian was coined by french anarchist (libertarian communist) Joseph Déjacque.

In the US the word libertarian would be better replaced with neo-liberal.

[AimHere]

I think that the original use of the term was as a synonym for anarchist, because anarchism had been outlawed.

Libertarians have to call themselves something - I figure they can keep the word 'libertarian' and old-school libertarians can keep calling themselves anarchists or, if they believe in some sort of government, 'libertarian socialists' (which is also a fun phrase to drop in front of the more ill-educated right-libertarians). The nearest alternative to libertarian in current use is 'anarcho-capitalist' which is problematic for right-libertarians in that most of them believe in some sort of government ('Anarchists who want the police to protect them from their slaves') and problematic for anarchists who think that the capitalist employer/worker relationship is entirely incompatible with any conception of anarchism.

Neo-liberal is already in use for more conventional political outlooks, as other posters have pointed out.

[dantheman]

or perhaps: classical liberal

[rat87]

A neo-liberal is just someone who is strongly pro free-trade and possibly some lowered/standardized regulation of business(although not universally, possibly(but not always) formerly or currently associated with center-left(or at least center-left from a US perspective)

[conanite]

)

[Quequau]

I've settled on Neo-Feudalism

[rayiner]

American libertarianism predates libertarian socialism or anarchist libertarianism. Its rooted in the thinking of Thomas Paine, etc. In any case, its what the word means in American speech. Just like "biscuit" is a fluffy soft baked good and not a cookie.

[abalone]

No, the current American meaning does not trace back to the founding fathers. Thomas Paine espoused many socialist ideas such as common property and economic equality. These are indeed core tenants of true classical libertarianism.

The term "Libertarianism" was appropriated in the mid 20th century by radical capitalists and completely eviscerated of its meaning. They turned a blind eye to the authoritarianism and centralized power of corporations. Even Adam Smith (another classical libertarian, pre-capitalist thinker) warned about this.

[mistakoala]

That's an outrageous slur on biscuits!

[rayiner]

Fun fact: KFC in Australia doesn't have biscuits. They have rolls. I was besides myself with distress.

[mistakoala]

Whoa. This is already confusing. Biscuits at KFC?

[rayiner]

http://www.kfc.com/food/sides/biscuits.asp

[mistakoala]

Ohhh... Scones.

[adam-a]

We're talking about a British article on an international forum, I think it's fair to not assume an American perspective and vocabulary.

[sp332]

Thomas Paine was British most of the time :)

[jonathansizz]

Except for dog biscuits.

[chestnut-tree]

"The real "free market" hypocrisy is that Silicon Valley was created by government spending. Still plays a huge role today."

My opinion of Twitter has gone down after I learned they were given $22 million in tax breaks. This was in exchange for charitable work in San Francisco. Although the company has done some charitable work, the amount is a fraction of the cost of the tax breaks awarded them.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinesharrock/the-twitter-document...

The most ridiculous quote from the above article:

"The company also disclosed it spent over $750,000 on food items, all bought within 50 miles of the office in order to support local businesses, which it said constituted a sort of charity."

[abalone]

That's a bit of a different issue. To be clear what I was referring to is direct public investment in high tech development. Agencies like DARPA and billions more in government procurement of nascent commercial tech.

Tax breaks can certainly be seen as a form of public investment. But the $22M figure for the Twitter tax break is a bit of a fantasy.

That was supposed to be a break on local payroll tax to the city of SF. Think about that.. I doubt any company in the history of SF has paid $22M in local payroll tax. That would be absurd. So where did the $22M figure come from?

Turns out there was a change passed a few years ago in between the dotcom booms that added stock option gains to the definition of "payroll". Since there were no startups happening at that time, nobody paid attention to this obscure change in local SF law. And it was never enforced and to my knowledge has no corollary in any startup-rich city. (Because it would be insane and drive out all startups.) So that's where someone came up with a "$22M" calculation.. by taxing the gains on early stage employee stock options. Even though the city bears no risk like early stage employees do.

If you were to just look at paycheck amounts as "payroll", Twitter's tax break would be valued at far less than that.

To be clear I don't think Twitter should have gotten a total tax holiday and anyone who thinks they would've moved to Brisbane is a fool. I think the city should have just un-done that dumb stock option tax.

[erichocean]

Agencies like DARPA and billions more in government procurement of nascent commercial tech.

While this is true, it has nothing to do with supporting commercial enterprise. Not even a little bit.

DARPA funds stuff because it costs the military less money in the long run to do so. That's it, nothing more. It's the military, and they want advanced stuff. So they pay for it, and they do so as economically as they can. That means funding research.

FWIW Every last penny DARPA had spent on research until then was more than paid back during the first gulf war due to the logistics improvements that came from software. DARPA has (and continues to have) enormous success relatively to the money it spends. It is absolutely not some form of corporate welfare, as you seem to imply.

Same with the Internet. DARPA does what they do for themselves, i.e. for the military. That private enterprise takes what they learn doing research projects for the military and runs with it doesn't even enter into the calculation of whether DARPA would do what it does. It's not some kind of benevolent tech incubator spending Uncle Sam's dough on worthy commercial causes.

I guess what I'm saying is that "government" doesn't do anything to help the technology sector, and whatever help they do get is completely inadvertent. The government wants the best military they can get for the money, and that means that agencies like DARPA fund research, because it achieves that goal.

Furthermore, it's not government at large, it's the military, and its entirely so that the military can do a better job with the funding citizens are giving them. I, for one, think they're doing reasonably well and specifically believe that the money DARPA spends is very well spent, and would still be well spent even if generated $0 in secondary economic activity.

[abalone]

What you're saying is true except for the claim that it has "nothing to do" with supporting commercial enterprise. The fact remains that Silicon Valley is a product of these billions in government spending and wouldn't exist in anything like its current form without it.

What we're both describing is the Pentagon system. The pretext for investment in high tech is that we need it for defense. And then we can just give it away to the private sector because, hey, it's like military surplus.

But it's highly unlikely Silicon Valley would exist without the hundreds of billions in government investment in core high tech. The government invests in nascent tech at a much earlier and riskier stage than venture capital, often billions over a period of a decade or more. There's also the critical role of (usually military) procurement in creating a market for early tech. This is orders of magnitude riskier and broader scale than any private VC fund.

You're biggest error I think is in missing the bigger picture of how this creates a (rather disturbing) feedback loop into war policy. Doing this all through the pretext of military spending means that the public has less control over how taxpayer funds are invested in the economy and the private sector can capture all the profits, using the logic that you articulate. But it also means that we have to keep finding new enemies and waging wars to keep the Pentagon system running.

[screature2]

I remember a recent Forbes article highlighting the importance of the relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley.

Hmm... ah yes, here it is:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2014/01/24/why-silico...