Morning Reads for Monday, April 15th

Socialism has always been a large part of the Silicon Valley ethos. Consider such figures as Richard Stallman for example. The alleged libertarian tilt of Silicon Valley was always overstated and was always limited to a few figures. And even then it was a kind of a generational thing, as the older Silicon Valley types who professed libertarianism were seen as being counterculture to the prevailing Wall Street country club Republicanism of their time. So the handwringing over Silicon Valley being libertarian was just the alternative media having tantrums over it lacking the same sort of (rigidly enforced) ideological uniformity that exists on college campuses and Internet echo chambers. But realize that an actual libertarian environment that everyone claims Silicon Valley is doesn’t force out Brendan Eich, the inventor of Javascript – the #1 programming language in the world – over a political contribution, and doesn’t fire Justin Damore either. Nor do they stage walkouts over the handling of sexual harassment cases or organize protests over company contracts with the Department of Defense and military contractors. The whole “Silicon Valley is a hotbed of libertarianism!” merely because, say, 5% of folks who work there may have had something positive to say about some libertarian idea or concept at some point in time, reminds me of the people who a few years ago was convinced that the Nolan Batman trilogy was pro-fascist and Brad Bird’s “The Incredibles” was this giant pro-Rand statement.

So as for why Silicon Valley workers never unionized … good grief. Very few professional occupations have unions. Lawyers, architects, bankers, engineers and accountants don’t have unions, and the American Medical Association for doctors isn’t a true union either (neither do nurses, physical therapists or other allied health professionals). The same is true for people who work in sales, marketing, middle management, human resources, you name it. Some of them have organizations that set professional standards, perform political lobbying and provide member services – the aforementioned AMA for example – but they don’t perform collective bargaining or take on other union functions. Teachers and Hollywood are exceptions to this. Teachers primarily because they are government employees (private school teachers are rarely if ever unionized) and the story behind SAG-WGA for Hollywood is another one unto itself. The only reason why anyone ever expected “Silicon Valley” to unionize was because it is located in California (and we can extend that to include the Portland and Seattle tech companies). But there is the deal: “Silicon Valley” isn’t the tech industry. The vast majority of tech jobs – even if you limit it to programming and the other tech activity that dominates Silicon Valley – isn’t in California or on the west coast. The tech industry is nationwide (mostly) and is much more ideologically and culturally diverse. The media only focuses on Silicon Valley to the exclusion of the rest because they want to pretend that places like Texas – just as important to the development of our tech sector as California and has almost as many tech workers as Silicon Valley – do not exist because a tech worker in the Lone Star state is as likely to have been educated at Baylor, TCU, SMU, Texas A&M (or Auburn or Ole Miss) as Cal-Berkeley or UCLA.

So there is no way the TECH INDUSTRY (not just Silicon Valley) is going to unionize because the tech workers in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia etc. aren’t going to go for it. Which means that if the west coast tech workers do unionize, the result is a lot of tech jobs being relocated to either non-union locations or overseas. Just as what happened with Boeing (opened a plant in South Carolina to get away from the union) and car companies. They all know that if they unionize their jobs would move to Bangalore or Houston the next day, which is why despite all the smoke you hear them blowing about it, it is never actually going to happen. But hey if you want to root for it go ahead because the tech jobs that don’t relocate to India, Texas or North Carolina have as good a shot at coming to metro Atlanta as any.