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The contemporary Left believes that wealth is valid, but only as long as you're a movie star, heir, or divorcee. Most tech billionaires are from comparatively humble beginnings, so they're declasse.
That's probably a bit stronger than I actually believe, but I think there's something to it. If you receive wealth from fitting into existing social relations, it's not something you should really criticize: status quo institutions have already discovered ways to channel and use you. If you create wealth by changing the material basis of society, you're a threat to the existing structures, and thus not just an adversary but evil. Note that even figures in traditional industries like oil barons and the Walton family receive only a small fraction of criticism as do tech billionaires, even though the tech billionaires are generally more left wing in their attitudes.
The Waltons were a liberal bette noire for decades. So were oil magnates, back when they were moving fast and breaking things.
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This is the historically normal attitude, of course- people who make something of themselves are suspect, slimy weirdos at best and demons at worst. The historically normal attitude to self made men was the way we see, like, pawnbrokers today. The wealthy who deserve their wealth are the ones who fit existing social structures, mostly by inheritance- or great deeds(athletic feats/battlefield honors/celebrity).
Society is continuing to regress with the decline of Christianity.
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That must be an American thing.
To German leftists, inheritance is the devil.
I think what they actually believe is wealth is valid as long as you're on their side. They like to claim the wealth of those they oppose is undeserved inheritance which makes those people illegitimate (Musk in particular gets this, but they also tend to do less-specific broadsids).
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Same here in Finland. And I'm not talking about some multimillion euro inheritances but just the casual "your parents were middle class and left a house / apartment to you and your sister"-level inheritance.
Funny because inheritance taxes in Europe can often be small, with the rate in Sweden and Norway being 0% and Finland maxing out at 19%.
Rates in the US max out at 40%. States take more. The federal exemption is quite large by European wealth standards however.
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Aren't most of them leftist? Hollywood is pretty left wing. Divorcees are known for splashing cash indiscriminately through the NGO sphere. It's like in China - the Party is fine with wealth so long as you uphold the predominance of the Party and obey the Party line.
Tech billionaires are thought to insufficiently uphold the predominance of the Party, they didn't ban all the right, didn't stop them radicalizing people via the algorithms. Something dodgy was happening with Russia and Cambridge Analytica and they weren't doing enough. Musk is even against the Party and so draws a lot of flak.
Tech is more valuable than oil. Tech is where minds are moulded, not just little polyethylene disposables. Oil is on the way out anyway, that was the plan, the oil companies were supposed to pivot to clean energy projects or 'green hydrogen' or something. There's no replacing the technology sector!
They did, though. Or are our memories that short?
Tech billionaires like money/power/impact first and foremost, but their natural inclinations are toward Democrats. The party strategy should have been to continue and strengthen the alliance of the early and mid Obama era. Information would be controlled, every one of the various progressive causes could have gotten their handouts and more, Pax America would rule the world undisputed, and everyone would be much, much richer.
I meant 'that's what they think' in that paragraph.
Donald Trump was still on twitter until 2021! T_D was a thing. In the back of my head there's also this Arctotherium essay where he talks about the closure of the internet and, surprisingly, gives Zuckerberg a little credit for pushing back a little bit: https://substack.com/home/post/p-209852382
But there was a lot of banning going on, for sure. We're all the way out here after all, not banned per se but suppressed on reddit.
Is "we didn't ban the sitting / former President of the United States yet" really an appropriate example of how lax the censorship was?
Ah, the classic 2021 Yglesias tweet:
I'm not sure if I've seen him comment on that one with recent hindsight.
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Not lax in an absolute or reasonable sense but lax in proportion to what some people thought.
Kamala Harris wanted Trump banned from twitter back in 2019 and wrote a letter to twitter about it. There were earlier demands too back when he was tweeting about the size of his nuclear button with regard to Kim Jong Un. Or for inciting harassment or other such things.
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Nah, your standards are too low. Their level of support is insufficient to partisans because they at least gesture at evenhandedness and classical liberal tendencies.
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As a society, we flirted with honoring labor for a few generations, but now have returned to more traditional norms. Working for money is dishonorable. It needs to be washed through at least one parent or spouse before touching your own clean, lily-white hands.
Shame, however, that we haven't also adopted more traditional attitudes towards the role of actors in society.
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