{"id":1997,"date":"2014-08-01T15:58:41","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T22:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/?p=1997"},"modified":"2014-08-01T15:58:41","modified_gmt":"2014-08-01T22:58:41","slug":"silicon-valleys-new-robber-barons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2014\/08\/silicon-valleys-new-robber-barons.html","title":{"rendered":"Silicon Valley&#8217;s New Robber Barons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=&#8221;EgEeltgVhbdrJtpZgu1Pc9OkKclq7k1w&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>THERE&#8217;S a\u00a0 very fine new <a title=\"Solnit on Stanford\" href=\"http:\/\/harpers.org\/archive\/2014\/08\/the-octopus-and-its-grandchildren\/\" target=\"_blank\">piece<\/a> in the August Harper&#8217;s in which Rebecca Solnit draws a straight line between the 19th century robber barons and Silicon Valley&#8217;s cyber-utopians. The common denominator, she writes, is Stanford University. The relationship between the early kings of the railroads &#8212; who were given free reign across much of California &#8212; and today&#8217;s enor<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1998\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/220px-Leland_Stanford_c1870s-192x300.jpg\" alt=\"220px-Leland_Stanford_c1870s\" width=\"192\" height=\"300\" \/>mous tech corporations is &#8220;genetic,&#8221; she writes.<\/p>\n<p>The way monopolists like Southern Pacific Railroad bought politicians, overpaid themselves and burned their accounting books resembles the huge market share companies like Google have captured.<\/p>\n<p>The old railroad barons, Solnit writes, &#8220;grew rich even when they created chaotic, dysfunctional corporations that ill served the public.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And while Silicon Valley does not literally buy politicians, &#8220;Google spent more on lobbying the federal government in 2012 than any other corporation except General Electric.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, despite the number of free-market-loving libertarians that roll out of Stanford, the federal government funds roughly 85 percent of the research that takes place there! (I should point out I have no gripe with the institution, exactly; I was born at Stanford hospital while my father was attending the graduate journalism school.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Most of Solnit&#8217;s piece is behind a paywall. She concludes it this way: &#8220;Technology was supposed to bring us forward &#8212; remember Bill Clinton&#8217;s &#8216;bridge to the twenty-first century slogan&#8230;? Fourteen years into that century, it looks a lot like the nineteenth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I urge CultureCrashers to find the new Harper&#8217;s and read this story in full.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=&#8221;EgEeltgVhbdrJtpZgu1Pc9OkKclq7k1w&#8221;] THERE&#8217;S a\u00a0 very fine new piece in the August Harper&#8217;s in which Rebecca Solnit draws a straight line between the 19th century robber barons and Silicon Valley&#8217;s cyber-utopians. The common denominator, she writes, is Stanford University. The relationship between the early kings of the railroads &#8212; who were given free reign across much [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[624,32,638,637,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-disruption","7":"category-internet","8":"category-rebecca-solnit","9":"category-stanford-university","10":"category-west-coast","11":"entry","12":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}