cover of episode Is Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian?

Is Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian?

2024/11/21
logo of podcast Uncanny Valley | WIRED

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

Chapters

The episode begins by defining libertarianism and exploring its origins, particularly through Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged,' and its relevance to Silicon Valley.
  • Libertarianism is rooted in individual freedom and minimal government intervention.
  • 'Atlas Shrugged' is often cited as a foundational text for libertarian ideology.
  • Silicon Valley's tech founders and investors often express libertarian-esque beliefs.

Shownotes Transcript

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IT has long been believed that silicon valley is a hot bed for libertarian ideals, but where did that idea come from? What is a libertarian? And does the set of ideologies really define the valley? This is wired, uncanny valley, the show about the people, power and influence of silicon valley. I'm Michael callori, director of conceiving tech and culture here, a wired.

And i'm laun good. I'm senior writer at wired. And i'm so shift wired, director of business and industry today on the show.

What is the relationship between silicon valley and libertarianism?

Okay, let's ease in today with a story. Home's among us has read atlas shrugged by iran that time .

story no i'm just getting um I haven't read IT I honestly a very little desire but I am curious about IT.

I have a memory of, like living in a fifth loor walk up in the east village that was like a pretty delicate department and like trying to get through alex rud for for some reason. And I couldn't finish you.

Yeah, it's a door stop. Yeah, all IT. Well, I do want to give a quick break cap of the novel because, uh, IT is often cited as a defining text for libertarians. It's about a couple of industrial alist trying to run their big companies, but the government keeps getting in the way with all of their pesky regulations. So eventually the situation gets so dire that all of the creative people, the industrialists and all of the imagination of the society, they escape to a magical valley in the west where they lived in their own society, and that stabs the world of their genius. And without them propping up society, government crumbles.

Wouldn't there something also related .

to architecture? That's the fountain head.

That's other what I tried to read clearly, my memory of that I was not great. Okay, please continue.

That's really yet. Um at the end of the book, government is basically crumbling and the society is going to be rebuilt with these new ideas about the power of the individual and low regulation and all of the themes that that we now associate with libertarianism. There's a lot of characters who give very long speeches in all of iran's books. And in this book there's a character name, john god, who gives, like, a very long speech that could basically be read as I rands philosophy of how government should Operate, or in this case, should not interfere with industry.

Okay, hh IT sounds really subbed. I wonder what it's trying to say.

So ata shrugged, had an outsize influence on the modern libertarian movement. IT was written almost seventy years ago and in the one thousand seventies, and then again in the ninety nineties, and then again in the twenty tens and twenty twenty years, libertinism has continued to be redefined. IT has splinted into factions.

There are several different schools of thought. There are social libertarians. There are right wing liberians. They're left wing libertarians. But almost all of them look to the book as the foundational text for the principles of, like, the basics of libertarian ideology, OK.

And what are the basics exactly? Well.

and is hard to give a tight definition that applies to everybody who calls himself a libertarian. But very broadly, you can say that there are three main concepts. The first one is individualism.

The idea that individuals can and should take care of themselves. They should practice individual autonomy and have total freedom. Number two is the suspicion of centralized power.

So libertarians will traditionally argue for the minimal state, a government that does the absolute bare minimum in society and is not responsible for taking care of everybody. And they are also anti thora arian OK. And in third, the importance of free markets, free trade, low taxes, all that stuff.

So we don't have to squint too hard to see why these ideas resonate in a place like welcome valley.

yes. I mean, particularly for the last two, like suspicion of centralized power in the importance of free markets. Those feel like tenets that have come up again and again and years in the tech industry, for sure.

Yeah, that's why we sort of all costs around this idea. We should do a podcast episode on libertinism because there are some high profile tech founders and investors who either identify as libertarian or they express libertarian ask beliefs and so on. The heels of this consequential president election here in the U. S, where we saw identity politics and debates over free markets come strongly into play, we thought you would just ask, what about the libertarian?

What about won't anybody think of the liberty? So what do we find out laurin? But have you learned about libertinism in its place in this economy of silicon valley? Well, I might try .

to a place where, though, and I both happened to have spent some time, stanford university, you may have heard of IT, my mike, as rolling as eyes, right? We'll just refer to IT. Is that little college down to palo? gi? And when I say I marched down paralo, so what I really mean that I did a match of research online, and I found something called the stanford in psychology, dia of philosophy, that offered a definition of libertarian m. And it's some of what you said, mike, that libertarians take individual freedom as the paramount political value. This definition also said that while people can justifiably be forced to do certain things, most obviously to refrain from infringing the liberty of others, they cannot be coerced to serve the good of other members of society.

What does that actually mean? Like you can't be forced to pay taxes to support someone else's program.

Yeah, I think a lot of IT has to do with taxes. And just the idea of small government in general, like a minimal state that doesn't prop up the welfare state. One good example of this that libertarians often sight is the criminal justice system, like we throw a lot of money into the criminal justice system in the united states.

And if we did not do that, and we didn't incarcerate people for their lives, then families would be more secure, people would be able to lift themselves out of poverty more easily. Another example that libertarians often sight is the education system, most of which is funded by the government and the states. And in libertarian, an view, and i'm sure a lot of people's views, doing a poor job of educating our children.

And if we did a Better job of educating our children than they would be less likely to commit crimes and fall into poverty and they would go on to have lucrative jobs that can provide. So it's it's less about like just not funding programs to take care of people or more about redoing the way the government Operates and props up all the systems that are fundamentally flawed. Ed.

I also think the part about how you cannot be coerce to serve the good of other members of society from a sociological perspective, if not like a high minded philosophical perspective, I think that that means that you can do kind things for your neighbors or help them out in a pinch if you feel that that's the right thing to do, but that ultimately that should not be topped down assistance that you ouldn't be relying on the government for that.

Yeah, okay. So in short.

libertarians typically endorse something like a free market economy um and they usually look at the way contemporary democratic states redistribute wealth as something that is unjustified. It's it's a form of coersion that they're not on board with. What's interesting is that this phone, sophy, was first published online in two thousand and two. And then there is a note that says in twenty twenty three, this was one quote, substantially updated, which kind of get the point of the episode right. The philosophy of libertarian m has yeah .

and like the quote unquote modern libertarian movement of the one thousand nine hundred seventies was really a reaction to the rise of the welfare state, right? That idea that the government is redistributing people's wealth. And I mean, obviously the internet has changed a lot about that.

But how has IT changed? Where are we? Where are we now? Like in twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five?

Well, I think in order to get to where we are in twenty twenty four, we have to go back to the mid twenty tens, around twenty seventeen, which is when the mass caucus was formed. Ah this is a caucus that began to push the libertine party further to the right. Some people have described them as edge lords, and it's kind of a break away from the more high brow, intellectualized, economically focused free enterprise class of libertarians.

There tends to be a little bit more hostility towards the state in the fed, but they're also some progressive issues like LG b to q rides or supporting immigration or abortion that they feel they should get less emphasis. Basically, there are now factions of libertinism that are a lot more anti woke. And a lot of this I was reading in reason magazine.

What is reason magazine? It's essentially .

like a monthly trade mag for libertarians. So don't you worry, might the libertarians have their own magazine? Ah it's run by the reason foundation. IT was founded back in the sixties. Its tagline is free mines and free markets.

In the early two thousands that actually did this done that I wish wired thought of, uh, according to wikipedia, subscribers to reason magazine once received a personalized issue that had their name and a satellite photo of their home or their workplace on the cover. IT was like a customize cover for all of their subscribers. And the whole idea was to demonstrate the power of public database. The reason has been covering this shift in libertinism, and we've got in some push back to for their coverage. But the fundamental idea is that some of the the og s right, the true lovers of libertinism, believe that, like the individual is best suit to make their own decisions about how to live, that there should be minimal government intervention, whereas some of the new factions have adopted the messaging of a nationalism, and nationalism is ultimately collectives.

okay. So I feel I can finally starting to see how this change has been over in the silicon valley, how so like not just the concept of individuals making their own decisions, but the idea that silicon valley should make its own decisions and definitely not the government, and also like the shift that were about with libertarianism getting more conservative than like embracing the anti woke mentality. That shift has been something that silicon valley elites have been talking about very, very loudly for the last couple years, right?

And the other thing that I think really resonates, the silicon valley, is the idea that the individual who has like the great mind and the great creative drive should not be stayed. They should not be held back from creating and building the founder mindset, right. That person who is just like dedicating their entire life to getting rich and changing the world, they should. They should be given free rain to do that.

Time to build, mike.

that's right. Time to build. And like really that's I think that's why ali shrugged resonates with so many classic, amusing, amusing air quotes in a capacity classic libertarians just because it's about that drive of like the individual to push society into a Better place without the government stepping in and taxing them in regulating them and tell them that they they can do that. Um and it's interesting that the anti woke shift that you talked about, laun, is something that has been going on for decades because iran, who lived until the early eighties, saw this right wing sort of faction of libertarianism emerging and he spoke out against IT. Interesting yeah he called them hippies of the right.

Oh interesting. There's so so much go opting going on in the .

dentist politics. okay. So to bring him back to today. The shifting definition of libertarian an ism is happening as general views of the government .

have been changing, right? Yeah and especially changing in last election cycle, you could say, but we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to look at how many of these ideas have become concrete and silicon valley through concepts like currency and sea setting and automation and basic income. So we'll be right back.

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Welcome back to on Kenny valley. Let's start with who we know actually identifies as libertarian and what that means to them. So we ve got a few people to talk about. So we I want you to offer us because I want to tell us about Peter till OK.

Finally, a topic I do feel uniquely confident. So Peter till is one of the most well known people in the space in silicon valley. He's probably best known as the person who go found paypal with elon mask, the so called paypal mafia. Exactly in the media he is known as the person who helped sue gocco into the ground but to me he'll always be the person who was writing shot on with elon mask when they crashed musk uninsured my clearing f one on santal road and I don't think .

there's a more sick valley sentence that ever been utep on this podcast.

Provably not. I don't think we get off that one. But tiles also a self proclaimed libertarian, which has LED to his embrace of things like CPO and sea steddy, which is kind of like autonomous flooding communities that exist outside government jurisdiction, and more recently has embrace of writing political candidates like J. D.

Van and black masters. 嗯, OK, not just candidates now, but our incoming VP. Uh, see, studying. We have to go off in a little tension.

Where would the boat be parked? Is that what it's called? dot? What is what is this? What does that mean? anchored?

Think yeah less they float into government jurisdiction, which is very antiseptic.

Like what part of the sea?

I think if you go out about thirteen miles.

okay, okay. So it's not like you would be surfing one day and you would like stumble upon puter till sea setting community.

You know, when you go on a cruise and you get far enough out that they allow you to gamble.

I've never been on a cruise, but this is good to know. okay? So it's like that you get far .

enough out and the laws don't apply anymore.

Okay, okay, got IT. Well.

law. Who who is some others in .

this crowd is someone else who we should mention biology stream of us, son. He's an investor who in twenty twenty three announced his own fund with the a the goal of of developing new libertarian society and um he would call these network states, which doesn't sound ominous, also involved in this fund uh brian armstrong, the CEO of coin base Angeles cofounder naval ravi fed Wilson was involved in this apology and there are a lot of strong cyp do ties here. But the whole idea that there will be these bitcoin based groups, you based on open source and peer to peer and internet values and missed some reporting on this and vote that the ultimate goal is to to create new communities that have their own experimental versions of institutions, but once again, run by private companies.

you know, we said we couldn't come up with a more silicon valley sentence, and then you said bitcoin based groups based on open source and prepare. So well done to you.

It's hard to follow like in a podcast like I feel you have to see these ideals are written out and do some jumps in your mind to fully understand what's what's happening here. I'd listened to um something called the protestant libertarian podcast ahead of the episode to try to prepare, and I kept stopping and going back fifteen seconds and look really listening and truly trying to grasp what this is all about.

And that's a reporter folks. okay. Um for no reason whatsoever. I'm just going to say there's a retroactive allegedly that applies to everything we just said about these men a movie none. So my understanding is cyp to is attracted of libertarians because in theory is a way to get around government back like fia currencies, right? You can trust in the block chain versus a centralized authority figure .

yeah and it's also very transparent, right? And that's something that appeals to anybody who's interested in personal liberty. They want their simple to be fully understandable and transparent.

We talk to through some of the people who identify as libertarians in silicon valley. So let's dig a little bit deeper into how the ideology fits into silicon valley IT. right?

IT feels like there are these ideas coming from people who aren't unnecessarily libertarian with the capital l, but they is about some of the beliefs of IT.

Yeah, I think to start out, we should touch on mark Anderson's twenty twenty three self publish manifesto. The technical optimist, Anderson, is a software engineer. He is coiner of netscape and also cofounder one of the most prominent venture capital firms in the valley.

And dress and herods, or a sixteen C. S. IT, sometimes called at its core. This manifesto, or blog post, is an argument for the acceleration of tech novation and development. In this view, tech is life, tech is happiness.

And tech solves, like all of the world's problems and the concepts in the man of us. So are very libertarian. There are things like growth is progress. The things that help growth are population growth and technology, naturally. And IT says things like we believe in free markets and but they're the most effectively to organize a technological economy. And IT also really links people who are interested in content, moderation or a sustainability or trust and safety as being kind of anti progress and anti everything the manifesto stands for.

Interesting though I um with something like I don't just contact moderation right or sustainability esg. We report on these issues within tech companies a lot but like broadly would like what do those mean and why would those be anti growth? Yeah.

my understanding is that would trust some safety or content moderation. They see these groups as really standing in the way of progress and slowing down the product development psycho. When we're thinking of trust and safety and particular, those teams are the ones being like what we need to understand how the product is going to impact users.

And I think you could have the view that trust and safety is actually a core part of the product development cycle. There's a phrase that I like a lot that content moderation is a product. And the thing you can like sell that will make your company more valuable. But they really don't seem to .

see IT that way. Um interesting and the the sixteen six manifest went pretty .

viral yet learn even on thread people .

were posting about IT. I refused real time, but I ask to believe I went viral on threads. People just copying and pasting IT is like click by and not attributing .

IT reposting their lindon post.

Yeah, I think a lot of people are making fun of IT just because I came across this as quite popular. Uh, you know, a lot of the ideas were very self important.

right? I feel like a lot of the taxi OS onest ly do kind of agree with. And I have this mindset. And then, like everyone else, was like the way this is written.

Oh my god. I mean, IT opens with lies. We are being lied to.

You know how? Earlier in the show, I said I went back to stanford university, I mine, and opened to the big book of philosophy to define libertarianism. After that, I simply took a ten minute john up the road to santin road and opened the bible there. And the bible is actually mark endresen manifesto.

and IT just says lies like, I mean.

the other thing about IT that really rankle people was the fact that IT IT defines who the enemy of the technology timidly. And it's the person who is pushing for ethics. It's the person who is pushing for IT. Let's slow this down and take this carefully so that we don't screw up royally, right?

Which I feel like the ethics teams do really take issue with because they're like we're not trying to slow IT down. We're trying to be embedded in the product development cycle like help IT and help you make bunning ultimately rape.

But from the perspective of some venture capitalists, they believe that having unfeared growth allows them to literally grow the economy and therefore create more jobs. And this is all this is all good things.

You and one of the most cited parts of the manifesto is the idea that technology can solve all of the world's problems and that if you stand in the way of technology growing, that you are like actively killing people really.

Ah I don't remember that part of that I might have blocked IT out. interesting. And these are investors who you will sometimes see them say they're not necessarily just investing in a company.

They're putting their belief in a certain entrepreneur. They feel very confident that the leader of the startup, the person who's pitching the idea like that, they can execute, they can see IT through. And that, in a way, goes back to the holiday of individualism. M.

too right? I mean, they also don't mention editors anywhere in the manifest, but oh my god, I certainly feel like they would help.

Yeah, there's a lot of ideas. There are a lot of beliefs. In what way is these beliefs being put into action?

I mean, I feel like U B, I or universal basic income is one way we know that saillant is involved in a kind of experiment to like see what happens when you give people a fixed amount of money every month. This idea has been popularized with various political candidates. Like, what if the government handed out a little bit of cash and allowed people to spend IT on whatever they want versus having like a traditional welfare state?

Yeah and IT doesn't seem like a very libertarian idea to just give for the government to just give people money. But if you think about IT, you can see how it's attractive to the libertarians because like he said, zoe IT is a replacement for the welfare state. IT also um reduces some of the friction that happens when you have ultra wealthy people in society because if the the people who are like if if you have a widening rich poor gap, the people on the poor side of that gap, if they have all their basic needs being met by universal basic income, then that allows the people on the rich side of that gap to accelerate their growth as much as they really want without, you know a lot of the social pressure and laws getting in the way of redistribution of wealth.

Scale.

sale, make your same. This isn't purely altruistic c unfortunately.

no. Also, I mean, we should point out that silicon valley is really interested in technologies that introduced automation into business. And if you're intu ced automation into business, it's gonna result in people losing their jobs. Universal basic income provides a safety net for those people and again, allows those working on automation technologies to accelerate the work that they are doing without worrying about putting millions of people out of work.

You sound a little bit like a not .

necessarily technical pessimist.

IT feels like the technical .

utopian cities are part of this too, like they're not explicit liberating an ideal but they sort of .

our we should talk .

about those yeah last year in your times, I think we've all about the story. They reported on this secret eight hundred million dollar plan from silicon. Needs this included investors like injury also read halfman, Michael mortes, Loring power jobs, the collison brothers, uh, the irish entrepreneurs s who run strike the holy deals that they were gonna d an entirely new city from scratch in salona county, california.

Have you been there, mike? I've ve never been. It's about two hours northeast of what we are in the way I .

ve driven through out without knowing that I was drive through IT.

Okay, yes.

so is nothing.

O O K. So the idea that there, onna, build a whole new city there from scratch, and from a practical perspective, you know, the area is very expensive. There isn't a lot of housing.

We have trouble building housing. So maybe, you know, expanding this area isn't a bad idea. But as the times pointed out, this whole thing has its roots and you know time to build free enterprise thinking.

There is also a proposal by White combinator several years ago, which is the start of incubate and conferences go um trying to also turn M D land into this new society. We talked about sea steadying, the sea setting institute um basically building a new society and like lily pads with concrete blocks or whatever IT is. So yeah once again we can't say for sure how many of these folks are like hard core iran fans. But this is the modern twenty twenty four silicon valley version of this like free enterprise, free thinking, cyber space will save us all type ideology.

I mean, when we're talking about the utopian society and its building more housing in the big area, honey.

i'm all for yeah I think that they have run into some road bumps with this project was at the nearer times reported, but I am guessing it's not the last will hear of IT.

yes. And if this project IT doesn't get off the ground.

another one will for sure eventually maybe we'll be moving. There will be the local press.

So for a very long time, the prevAiling thinking in silicon valley has been one that meritocrat rules, right? The person who earns their position through the execution of their ideas is the one who should be given more power and more resources to continue growing their ideas. So how does that concept of murdock racy in silicon valley sort of overlap with libertinism?

Yeah, that's a good question. This goes back about a decade now. But there's this reporter, jodie canter. SHE was working on a story about the stanford c class of one thousand ninety four and all of the bold names from that cohorn who we're pretty much responsible for the modern internet economy and this included, uh, an entrepreneur in venture capital named David sacks.

Some of you may know who he is from recent twitter election discourse, but uh he famously wrote in an email to joy the meritocracy is one of his quote, quote, core values. And he said that when he has hired and promoted women, IT was because they were the top candidates, that he chooses the best person for the job. He wants to Foster culture of excEllence within his companies and not as sort of the idea of marital racy in a nutshell, that you're just going to hire the best people who could do the best job and you're not going to take any other considerations.

Sax, for what it's worth, also rote for the stanford review, which is a conservative, libertarian campus newspaper. And guess who will sort IT for that? You Peter tail? Oh.

Peter would be quite a but I think .

we're getting back to this idea that mattock acy is a little bit of a myth, particularly in silicon valley. I think we all know of examples where IT is not always the most talented, smartest, most hard working person that finds their way to the topper into a Better life. There's all kinds of chronister nepotism, you name a, that happens in silicon valley and in other institutions like government, where sometimes the people who are not the most qualified end up an elevated positions.

I always think of the analogy too, of like if two people have won a race and they gotten the exact but one person ran against like severe headwinds, that person is probably the Better runner. But IT looks like they got the exact same time.

But I think we're getting back to this idea that marano's racy is great if you are a White man, uh, or a man. Because statistically speaking, silicon value is still largely composed of men. And I was some of those folks who are a little more are leaning now, who are fighting back again, the corrective efforts, like A D E I, diversity, equity and inclusion within companies.

My favorite David sax story is that shortly after his company went public and became like a multi, multi million, a billion years, he has to a forty fifth birthday party. That was marie and hamed. And the tagline for the party was, let him eat kick. Once again, I would like to .

know why I am not invited to these parties, along with they don't die in earth.

Nep tog was.

oh, really. So you want .

to hang out with a libertarian royalists.

just five on the wall. I want to .

hear all the few points. sure. Why not? All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we will ask the question that we have been building to is the prevAiling ideology in silicon valley actually libertarian?

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Welcome back to uncle ny valley. So we've been talking a lot about the ideology of libertinism and how it's been put into effect and silicon valley. But of course, silicon valley is not a monos.

There are millions of people living and working there who have very different ideas about how involved government should be in the economy. And I just wanted get to the heart of the matter. Can we call silicon valley libertarian? Can we put that label on the economic and social system that is at play in silicon valley?

Yeah, this is a good question. Yes and no. The libertarians are a small bunch. Some of them are just also a very vocal and powerful bunch. There was this survey, stanford.

I think this is the last time we're going to mention stanford university on the show, hopefully. So in two and nineteen, there was the stanford survey of successful tech entrepreneurs, and the survey was about their politics. In what IT revealed was this new class of political animal called a David member of voice, the liberal talian.

The research basically showed, when IT comes to things like taxation, social issues, trade, that a lot of wealthy tech founders are more liberal than, like all but the people who are really, really far left. But then when he comes to regulation, maybe unsurprisingly, these people tended to be more conservative than most republicans, and in fact, look a little bit more like libertarians. We originally think of them, hence the term liberal talian.

So we have this interesting combination of values here. Of course, that was twenty, twenty. And we know that politics in the bali have shifted since done. It's a little bit harder to define right now. Uh and I think when you actually look at the voting data of the geographic areas of silicon vali, let's like say, uh, sent a clear account and meteo county, the broader san Francisco by people do still tend to vote mostly democratic yeah I don't .

even know how helpful IT is to figure out if the exact label applies here. I mean, to me, IT certainly seems true that the traditional libertate ideals are still relevant today and honestly, perhaps more relevant today than ever before because we just had this huge election. And among other things, that was the first time that are republican, one, the popular vote since two thousand four, and things like tax or form and deregulation and infrastructure investment were central issues in that election. And some were being pushed by tech letes, who seemed to have play an outside role.

Yeah for sure you know, I think if you look at where silicon valley originally got labeled as libertarian, you have to look back at the declaration of independence for cyber space, which was written in one thousand nine hundred ninety, fixed by john Perry barlow of the electronic frontier foundation, where he basically says, in so many words like government, you are not invited into the space. We built this without you.

We built IT for us, and we will govern ourselves. And that was you like a rallying cry for the early internet. I mean, one nine hundred and ninety six, the web was only a few years old at that point and I think for a long time that held as the truth because the government just did not understand technology.

You know some of the most foundational regulations of the tech industry were written by, uh, the people in the government offices who understood at the best. But the big players in big tech and silicon valley were not as much of a part of the conversation. And as we've progressed and technology has become a bigger part of like our country, in our economy, in our social fabric, those big tech companies are going more and more and more involved in government.

So you know, you may have these librarian ideals about no regulation and free markets, but there is also an understanding that if you're going to make sure that the regulation is favorable to you, then you do have to be involved in those discussions. So there's, you know big money being spent on lobbying, posing up to political candidates, sending out his zz on twitter when they win. You see a lot of that happening from the same people who may not believe that government should be involved in their industry.

Okay, so the idea of less government seems stronger today than I did before, at least in the way that people voted. I keep thinking about this. Quote from the libertarian writer and researcher got ferenza. IT was in an interview he did with vox, and the quote was, the silk vali ideology thinks about government as an investor rather than a protector, arguing that government's role is to invest in making people as awesome as possible.

So it's like, oh, I just raised my forty million series c from the fed.

right? I read IT a support for a universal basic income. The government should should invest in making sure that everybody can be as awesome as possible by providing for the basic needs of everybody who .

is not awesome in their eyes.

Ah.

so my final question is, what's to come? How do we feel this is going to play out in the future?

I'm going to task that back to you, mike. What do you think is going to happen in the future?

I mean, I hate to be the guy. Well, no, I love to be the guy who is always talking about universal basic income. But I do think the universal basic income has uh has a place in society like especially if you're going to keep driving towards automation.

It's something that we should be seriously considering. And I do think that is a good place for the government to step in and provide for its people. You can do that through taxes.

We've talked about how libertarians and silicon value are OK with taxation if IT allows the companies to keep growing. And I think this is a good sort of safety net. And what I don't think is in the future is the dismantling of the welfare state that already exists and using universal basic income as a replacement for IT. But I do think that things i've gotten so dire in our society, with the rich port cap, with the baLanced power, that universal basic income could provide a good leveling force with the forward march of technology. IT sounds like .

here a little bit wind with the successful tech entrepreneurs who were surveyed by the junior college and polo in terms of being like a liberal italian.

I know I go further, left them out. I would say, okay.

he sounds like maybe he's the yang gang.

oh, the Young yang. I interview a danger Young one under Young.

He was the one of the first big vocal component universe is here and okay, he wasn't deed well, I don't know anything else about him, so I can't say whether or not an actually bang gang.

but to start another third party just for ubi.

Boy, there's no government like no government. I always say, do you say that? Okay, lw, i'm going to i'm going to kick IT back to you. Where where do you think .

this is headed in the future? And I am really struggling to say where this is all headed politically because i'm so confused by what is happening in politics right now and still trying to sort IT out. I do think that they are going to be more factions of self proclaimed libertarians. M and people go opting some ideals from the left in the right. But I do think the original word is losing its meaning.

agreed. I like this new word libertarian.

yeah. But once again, it's from twenty, twenty and things change fast.

So, so what about you?

I think we're going to see more privatization than before right now. We have people like on mosque who is supposedly going to be co leading with VC romashov, the department of government efficiency or dose, and they want to get rid of the department of education. So i'm guessing we're going to see private sector solutions to the things that government used to solve.

Hand on our next episode of on Kenny valley, we're going to unpack all of the very successful companies who have been LED by two CEO at the same time.

Thanks to both of you for this discussion about libertarianism and liberal terrarium ism in silicon valley.

Thanks for being our guide. mike. See on the sea dead.

See the see.

yeah. Thank you both. I'm happy to know a little bit more about nine round.

I think. So when you get inside of dogs, will you bring a report to this podcast first, please? Oh, i'll be reporting life from those.

but just i'll i'll be reporting life from a platform and twenty five miles off the coast, california, where set my own laws .

and i'll be putting my predictions for the actual doge on polymer market at the same time. Something what is time .

to be alive indeed? Well, that is our show far today. We'll be out next week, but we will be back the following week with an episode all about sam ultimate.

Thank you for listening to uncanned valley, if you like, what you heard today or even if you didn't make sure to follow our show and on your podcast up of choice, if you'd like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments or show suggestions, you can write to us at a uncanned valley at wired dot com. Today's show was produced by kona moke down a marr law at microsoft x the episode Jordan bell is our executive producer. Thanks also to executive producer Steve hane. Kariuki condensates, head of global audio, is Chris benner.

Hi everybody, i'm Michael colori, director of consumer tech and culture at wired.

I'm learn good, a senior writer at wired .

and i'm so he suffered director of business and industry at wired.

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