18
votes
The similarities between Soviet Union and Silicon Valley
Things that happen in Silicon Valley and also the Soviet Union:
- waiting years to receive a car you ordered, to find that it's of poor workmanship and quality
- promises of colonizing the solar system while you toil in drudgery day in, day out
- living five adults to a two room apartment - being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around you
- 'totally not illegal taxi' taxis by private citizens moonlighting to make ends meet - everything slaved to the needs of the military-industrial complex
- mandatory workplace political education - productivity largely falsified to satisfy appearance of sponsoring elites
- deviation from mainstream narrative carries heavy social and political consequences - networked computers exist but they're really bad
- Henry Kissinger visits sometimes for some reason
- elite power struggles result in massive collateral damage, sometimes purges - failures are bizarrely upheld as triumphs
- otherwise extremely intelligent people just turning the crank because it's the only way to get ahead
- the plight of the working class is discussed mainly by people who do no work
- the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default
- the currency most people are talking about is fake and worthless
- the economy is centrally planned, using opaque algorithms not fully understood by their users
There are a few of these tweets that I feel like I could try to rebuke (also a few that do ring true), but this is the one that is most egregious to me.
The Bay Area is one of the most politically active and civilly engaged regions of the country. I think it's amazing that no matter which party is in control, the political activism in the Bay is constant. In my opinion, political activism is one of the best metrics of love of country.
I'd be curious if the Tweeter or the OP has ever been to the Bay Area. I've never experienced anti-American sentiment in the Bay. Just this week at the San Francisco Fourth of July firework show, a spontaneous U-S-A chant broke out.
EDIT: A few more thoughts..
I generally think that posting a laundry list of unsubstantiated claims is not the best way to have a conversation. The burden of proof is upon the Tweeter/OP if the hope is to have a conversation about these issues.
That leads me to my next thought which is, why did you post this, OP? Were you hoping to discuss these? If so, which points do you feel are strongest, and which are weakest? And what is the merit of the comparison between the Soviet Union and Silicon Valley? And what's the relevance if there is merit to the comparison?
OP here; for me the listing of these similarities, as unsubstantiated as they are, is just food for thought. I can understand the comparison because the Soviet Union was totalitarian and that drive to have complete power over people is definitely visible in Silicon Valley companies.
There's a great passage in The Origins of Totalitarianism about how that ideology tries to make every human just a bundle of reactions and isn't that what Facebook, Google, and the rest are? Every human is interchangeable with any other whether they're a developer or a user. Users are controlled through the features available and there's no end to the experimentation and testing that is conducted on them on a daily basis. The users are just reactors to the systems. The developers are in no better a position, with their food and laundry needs taken care of on-site and forced to be as interchangeable as possible.
So that's the conversation that I think this list opens up:
The overall question for me is; if our society is democractic, why are our companies so similar to despotic regimes and absolute monarchies?
Apologies for not opening the conversation in this way!
It's satire, so I don't think "burden of proof" is needed. Satire is meant to poke fun at the powerful and to get you thinking. Is Silicon Valley (by which the OP obviously means "modern tech culture", as opposed to the Bay Area specifically) the modern day equivalent of the USSR? Of course not. But the prevailing groupthink - and hypocrisy - is a valid target for satire. Whether you find it funny or offensive is another matter.
Another example: some years ago the British investigative/satirical magazine Private Eye had a regular column depicting the then-Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, as Joseph Stalin. Now Brown may have been many things, but a mass murderer of peasants and Party members he was not. The column just exaggerated some of his mildly authoritarian characteristics and clumsy political speeches for humorous effect.
Literally none of these are unique to Silicon Valley or the bay area.
At least three of these are direct attacks on Musk's companies. Sounds like we have a hater, lmao.
I admire his will to actually get things done and having a big enough vision for it, but we can't ignore that he is actively anti-union and is actively against improving worker safety. And he's been anti-newspapers lately.
Tesla, SolarCity and SpaceX have given a gigantic kick in the ass to their respective industries and we should be grateful for that; having the will to accomplish something that helps many many people is sorely missing (look at the shitshow of trying to get people to accept that climate change is happening which actively delays action on it).
Musk is a terrible human being and Musk hate should be encouraged until the workers at his companies revolt.
Looks like we found the hater lol
I'm not a Musk hater specifically, I'm a robber baron hater and more generally a hater of the capitalist class. Musk does have a smarm about him that makes him particularly irritating though.
I really don't get the Musk hate, everything he does is internally consistent with the world view he espouses (Get to Mars, Transistion from fossil fuels, ect)
There are a lot safer things he could have done to become mega wealthy besides making an auto company and a rocket company.
Hell, he could have taken his zip2 and Paypal money and retired living a nice upper class life; instead he almost bankrupted himself several times.
I think OP forgot the humor tag for this post
Pretty sure you can still buy a car and drive it off the lot the same day.
Genuinely curious what the second part of this bullet is about? Can someone fill me in?
(Assuming this is talking about crypto-currencies and the Ruble) Really quite the opposite, Bitcoin is oddly worth money despite not being backed by people with guns, the Ruble was used by a world superpower and still not worth much. Even then, all currencies are fake except for Brazil's.
Honestly? Most of these have been true for most of the world for the past 50 years, even the one about Kissinger
I think the second part of that bullet is another bullet.
Networked computers exist, but they're really bad.