Follow on Reply on PJM, Ed Driscoll » The Eye of the Needle is Awfully Thin These Days

Ed Driscoll » The Eye of the Needle is Awfully Thin These Days

John,
(who suggested private colleges, the arts and a purveyor of Cherry Garcia)
Good call on the Ben & Jerry's ice cream. The universities and the arts community were deliberately left off my list because decades ago they became contract management agents for the government. Eisenhower warned that this would happen and it did. First in the great engineering and hard science research projects and then in medicine and finally throughout the arts and social sciences the private philanthropies that once supported and under the eyes of their benefactors served as watchful critics of the colleges, hospitals, museums and theaters became reduced in the scope of what they attempt. That was because of the increased cost of the projects involved, the enormous scope of government demands that crowded out competition, and the effects of government regulatory and tax policy that limited the charities. The infiltration of Leftist apparatchiks onto foundation Boards eased their being shifted from their founders original intent. Political judges have aided in this effort by rejecting challenges from outraged relatives of the original sources of the endowments who saw their family's legacy being perverted.

The theoretically private institutions now either manage projects that are funded by the government or they serve to advocate, that is lobby, and organize political support for government expenditure.

The senior officers and many of the employees of Silicon Valley may personally be Liberals but that does not mean that the Left Liberal Elitists as a group generally hold their industry in the same regard that do the media communications industry (Hollywood) and its celebrities. The new Facebook movie may be seen as a chance to share the love but I suspect that the geeks in the end will find themselves stood up again. The Elitists love to use technology, they love toys, the more shiny and self indulgent the better. They love the money that the industry generates. They love the ability to claim a secret technical knowledge that allows them to confidently pass on orders to the rubes, that is why they love Climate Change. They probably do not really understand the information technology business any more than they do any other business. In the end it too can be demonized and set up for exploitation as a cash cow until it flees the country.