For the last forty years, we have been taught to celebrate the world of high tech and its wizards — Silicon Valley, for short. Perhaps it’s time to reassess the PR we’ve been swallowing.
There’s no doubt compact computing power and the internet have changed the world, but like all such blessings, this one is surely mixed. And great power always produces great opportunities for mischief and abuse.
“The New Yorker” recently published its annual tech edition, which did not focus on cool new devices or teen geniuses but on topics the industry is less anxious to promote, including its age discrimination practices and, in “The Disruptors,” its bias against and abuse of women.
This article offers one object lesson in the case of a company called Social Finance, or SoFi, which combined the vices of Wall Street and the Valley in one toxic workplace. Not only did its business practices include sexual harassment and abuse, but fraud, labor law violations and so forth.
The article wonders if this “bizarre mishmash of offenses” is a one off. It finds the answer in a fascinating hypothesis offered by Valerie Aurora, a diversity consultant, and Leigh Honeywell, an ACLU tech sector specialist. They have posted their conclusions online in “The Al Capone Theory of Sexual Harassment.”
It argues that, just as the murderous bootlegger was also guilty of the financial crime that eventually put him in prison, tax evasion, so sexual harassment is often only one symptom of a larger systemic disease.
“People who engage in sexual harassment or assault are also likely to steal, plagiarize, embezzle, engaged in overt racism, or otherwise harm their business” They suggest that the underlying pathology is the belief of such people that they are “entitled to other people’s property — regardless of whether it’s someone else’s ideas, work, money or body.”
The narcissistic sense of entitlement behind such thinking isn’t confined to Silicon Valley, as the cases of Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, Charlie Rose and many others indicate. But the Valley Boys have largely gotten a pass because they make cool toys we all enjoy, and because their industry, like some others including finance, are so lopsidedly male.
They have also practiced clever PR. The Jobs product introduction extravaganza, the Gates charitable giving pledge, the Bezos, Musk and Google sci-fi futurism and moonshots. And many of them embrace in a showy way socially liberal causes, like openness to gay rights, abortion rights, a welcoming immigration policy. Aren’t they making the world a more wonderful place? Thanks Silicon nerds.
But all of that masks a deep underlying libertarian, not liberal strain. They favor pro-immigration and anti-discrimination policies because it is in their interest. The industry is dependent on access to manpower from abroad. In fact, tech like finance is as anti-regulation, ruthlessly monopolistic, and rapacious as the Robber Barons of old.
Many of its success stories are built on a foundation of sweatshops and child labor, powered by tax evasion and questionable financial practices, characterized by a lack of transparency and a cavalier attitude toward intellectual property, unless it is theirs.
The Valley Boys have also presided over the creation of products that have put their users at risk. And they have habitually refused to cooperate in attempts to police the crime wave their products have powered, including identity theft, copyright infringement, money laundering, and even an attempt to steal a presidential election.
The internet has been a social good in may ways, but it has also permitted a great deal of social degradation — cyberbullying, anonymous smears, stalking, sexual harassment, slander, and the kind of toxic fake news our president mistakes for reality. The Valley Boys also deserve some of the blame for the disruption of whole industries, lost livelihoods, an erosion of social cohesion and civility.
Not to mention the grotesque increase in income inequality powered by tech and finance. You don’t have to be a Luddite to feel there’s something wrong when the $250 billion in personal wealth of three people — Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Gates — is equal to that of the bottom 50% of the population, 160 million of their fellow Americans.
Change is always disruptive, but the tech titans who have set this process in motion and profited from it deny any responsibility for the consequences, or for curing the ills their cleverness has caused.
On the contrary, they have largely opposed government regulation, oversight or restriction on their freedom, even going so far as to resist cooperating with several investigations to uncover terrorist plots or espionage.
As the Al Capone theory suggests, those who feel entitled are likely to regard themselves as above the law or social norms whether they concern sexual mores, privacy, intellectual property, taxes or working conditions.
It is troubling to realize that, as Valerie Aurora puts it, much of our economy and now our government is controlled by people sharing the same personal flaw, the idea that, “I am more important than all other people.” She finds a silver lining in this grim landscape if more people begin to raise their voice to object, saying, “It’s really helpful to have Donald Trump as President — we now all know how narcissists behave.”
I admire her optimism, but knowing how such creatures look, doesn’t mean we know how to make them stop. As long as they have power, they will abuse it, since they are incapable of shame and can afford phalanxes of legal talent, and pet legislators to protect them from the consequences of their own acts.