SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Palo Alto, the small Californian town which spawned Stanford University, Silicon Valley and the so-called “broligarchy”, used to boast that it was home to more billionaires than anywhere in the world. Home might be too strong a word.
Local legend had it that in this dull suburban sprawl, inside the underwhelming ranch houses, were freshly minted millennial millionaires who spent nights alone in their empty rooms on their computers.
Speaking at a presidential rally in Washington, Musk twice extended his arm out with his palm facing down, drawing comparisons to the Nazi salute.Credit: NYT
Daytime was no better. The one main strip was dotted with soulless coffee shops full of nerdy young white men, or occasionally nerdy young Asian men, sitting by themselves on their then ubiquitous white Apple laptops. Hey, at least the geeks were out of their garages.
It was while I was doing a year-long Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford in the late naughties that I decided what these blokes could do with was a good session at the pub with a few mates. If they had any. There were no pubs either.
Yet incredibly these misunderstood misfits, these rich tech dudes, have grown up to become the bros of the new oligarchy that President Biden belatedly warned us about.
As of today, this broligarchy apparently rule the US; tomorrow perhaps the world. Which we should have seen coming as their original motto was “move fast and break things” and they were going to change the world.
Back then it was all about stopping climate change, creating electric cars, helping the homeless, putting staff before profits with their ludicrous “campuses” of free organic food and dry-cleaning and bicycles. “Normie Democrat stuff” they called it. “Virtue signalling” is what the right called it.
So, what the hell happened? How did the epicentre of woke turn into the mecca of MAGA in a few short years? One explanation came this week from veteran broligarch Mark Andresseen, who explained to the New York Times why he changed sides to Trump. He blamed the kiddies.
“I believe it’s the children of the elites” said the billionaire founder of Netscape. “The most privileged people in society, the most successful, send their kids to the most politically radical institutions, which teach them how to be America-hating communists”.
Like Stanford. When I attended it wasn’t immune to what Andresseen calls the Great Awokening, although most students appeared to be on their cell phone waiting to hear they’d sold their app to a venture capitalist for millions. It was an incubator for capitalists and communists.
According to him, these Ivy League economic Marxists infiltrated government and business to foment revolution and break things. He says that by 2013 a Harvard kid would tell him: “We’re burning the system down. You are all evil. White people are evil. All men are evil. Capitalism is evil. Tech is evil.” And the threat was coming from inside the house.
He quotes a terrified senior executive of his company who warned him – “I think some of these kids are joining the company not with the intent of doing things for us but destroying us.” But Andreessen “disabused” readers that the view of “American CEOs operating as capitalist profit optimiser is just completely wrong”.
“That’s like, goal No.5 or so. I would say goal No.1 is, ‘I’m a good person’. ‘I’m a good person’ is wildly more important than profit margins.” Wildly, he claimed.
Which, if you believe it, might explain why these billionaire tech bros are so sensitive to bad press or, put simply, why the man-babies all whine so much. They just want to be loved. I remember arriving at Musk’s SpaceX centre in California some years ago with a group of Australian business and political leaders, only to be banned because I was a journalist – even though all our details had been provided weeks beforehand.
Also, I had previously done a tour of his Tesla factory with the same group where we were whisked around to behold the wonder of all this automation without the need for actual workers. Though occasionally a suspiciously human-looking person would pop out from nowhere to fix one of the robots before disappearing back behind the wizard’s curtain.
Perhaps my scepticism about the company’s overly optimistic financial projections during the briefing by Telsa executives might have been reported back to Musk, but who would think a busy billionaire would care what an Australian reporter says? Or for that matter an editorial in the Herald?
No wonder poor unappreciated Elon had to throw away $US44 billion to buy X (formerly Twitter) which was initially seen as the worst deal of the century when it lost more than half its value. But now it seems a great buy as he not only bought his own good press, but silenced most of his enemies as well. And it helped buy him a US president for a mere $US250 million, which looks like a bargain in comparison with Clive Palmer spending $A123 million for one inconsequential seat in the Australian parliament.
Other controversial broligarchs have also had media issues. Peter Thiel, of PayPal and Trump-pal fame, helped to wipe out the Gawker news site because it had once questioned his sexuality, by subsequently funding Hulk Hogan’s defamation suit against it. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos said at the time that Thiel should “grow a thicker skin”; that was before the Amazon founder was embroiled in a battle with the National Enquirer over his extramarital affair.
Here in Australia, billionaire Wisetech founder Richard White has been featuring in this paper with damaging revelations about his lurid private life. No word yet whether it has driven him into the arms of Trump.
Meanwhile, our Atlassian broligarchs, Scott Farquar and Michael Cannon-Brookes, continue the “good” fight on everything from climate change to gender discrimination at private schools. Their company is even paying more Australian tax now. It might be easier to stay true with reverential press coverage – the Australian Financial Review column Rear Window did crown MCB the “Double Bay Jesus”.
But pity poor mining mogul turned global woke warrior, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, who will find that in the current climate, it’s not easy being green. Indeed, it is hard when right is left and left is right, and no-one knows what side you’re on driving a Tesla.
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