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How Silicon Valley is disrupting democracy
Two books explore the price we’ve paid in handing over unprecedented power to Big Tech—and explain why it’s imperative we start taking it back.
One of the nine entrepreneurs in the book, Peter Thiel, has written that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible” and that “competition [in business] is for losers.” Many of the others think that all technological progress is inherently good and should be pursued at any cost and for its own sake. Lalka points to people like the late free-market economist Milton Friedman, who famously asserted that a company’s only social responsibility is to increase profits, as well as to Ayn Rand, the author, philosopher, and hero to misunderstood teenage boys everywhere who tried to turn selfishness into a virtue. Some venture capitalists, like LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, who made big donations to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, wanted to evict Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, claiming that regulation is killing innovation (it isn’t) and removing the incentives to start a company (it’s not).
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