I like how the persistent ills of amoral, toxic businesses are now "Silicon Valley's Special Problem with Bro Culture."
It's just Wall St. in t-shirts. If you let sociopaths run everything, you'll always end up with this result.
Using this term glibly breaks the HN guideline against calling names. You refer below to "people I highly expect were diagnosable sociopath/psychopaths" (emphasis added). "Highly expect" is a way of saying "don't know". Slinging provocative labels is great for emoting but reliably degrades substantive discussion, so please don't do it here.
I've seen a trend of the word "sociopath" being thrown around here flippantly. While I understand what this hopes to communicate, the claims are unsubstantiated and it only serves to lessen the argument.
Having had the chance to work with some people I highly expect were diagnosable sociopath/psychopaths, I'd say the opposite is true. People really, really don't want to believe that about 1 in 100 people have absolutely no conscience and thrive on manipulation and sadism. Or that we've created a culture that rewards this kind of behavior. I've watched co-workers bend over backwards to rationalize people who make monotone "jokes" about their desire to harm and kill others.
I understand - it's a horrifying baseline condition for human society. But pretending like it's untrue or limited to some tiny subset of marginal deviants isn't getting us anywhere. Most socipaths/psychopaths are non-violent and still manage to cause immeasureable harm in people's lives, every day.
I think there is meaning to the use of that word. It's not just an ad-hominem snipe, but it's an accusation on the values of these individuals' motivations.
When somebody says a CEO is a sociopath they are essentially arguing that the CEO has little/no empathy, believes their success is due to their own inherent superiority, views morality/law as an obstacles to their success, and defines success as in personal achievement without regard for collective wellbeing.
Moreover, by name-calling the trait (using a derogatory word) one is collectively reshaping the cultural definition of success away from "Make billions of dollars you have no need for and are going to leave to your kids" toward "Make the world a better place."
I honestly think it's more a burgeoning understanding, often born from painful personal experience, that some professions draw a disproportionate number of psychopaths and sociopaths. Law enforcement, Corrections, and High finance according to some estimates have a couple of dozens of times the background levels of sociopaths you'd find it society.
It's hardly shocking, when you see what someone like Martin Shkreli can do, and realize that the major qualification is not being a moron, and not having a conscience. A lot of the "brilliant innovation" out there is just a matter of people who aren't fazed by the notion of collecting all of your data and selling it on, or giving birth to Mirai if it means selling more toasters.
When a slick suit, the ability to lie without actually feeling any anxiety or doubt, and a "strong presence" can net you millions before anyone realizes that they made a bad bed... is it a shock? When that person can leverage their titanic failure into work experience that makes them more likely to be funded next time?
>"I like how the persistent ills of amoral, toxic businesses are now "Silicon Valley's Special Problem with Bro Culture." It's just Wall St. in t-shirts"
Except Wall Street makes no pretense of being anything else, whereas with S.V the talk is constantly on about "disrupting" the status quo, "thinking different", "changing the world" etc. There's a hypocrisy in there that's not doing S.V.'s image any favors I think.
I think if you go back to the 80s, you'd find all those things as well. The Regan Revolution(albeit with more explictly religious overtones) was pretty much premised on this idea. Once it was overwhelmed by it's own moral bankruptcy, not to mention being the cause of several financial collapses, it stopped wasting time on these kinds of illusions. Tech industry isn't there yet, but it looks to be headed in the same direction.
Are you talking about deregulation? If so I'm not sure I see the parallel. Who would Wall Street have been disrupting other than their formerly more-regulated selves? But maybe I've completely misunderstood your comment?
