Silicon Valley Billionaires Are the New Robber Barons

Posted: Aug 17, 2017 12:00 AM
Silicon Valley Billionaires Are the New Robber Barons


During the 2012 election, President Obama attacked Mitt Romney as a potential illiberal "outsourcer in chief" for investing in companies that went overseas in search of cheap labor.

Yet most of the computers and smartphones sold by Silicon Valley companies are still being built abroad -- to mostly silence from progressive watchdogs.


In the 1960s, campuses boycotted grapes to support Cesar Chavez's unionization of farm workers. Yet it is unlikely that there will be any effort to boycott tech companies that use lithium-ion batteries produced from African-mined cobalt.



The progressive movement took hold in the late 19th century to "trust-bust," or break up corporations that had cornered the markets in banking, oil, steel and railroads. Such supposedly foul play had inordinately enriched "robber baron" buccaneers such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan.



Google has monopolized internet searches -- and modulates users' search results to accommodate its own business profiteering.

Amazon is America's new octopus. Its growing tentacles incorporate not just online sales but also media and food retailing.






What followed were not voices of protest. Instead, Google-instilled fear and silence ensued, in the fashion of George Orwell's "1984."



Answer: Their executives have taken out postmodern insurance policies.

Our new J.P. Morgans dress in jeans and T-shirts -- like the late Steve Jobs of Apple or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook -- appearing hip and cool.






The result was that they outsourced, offshored, monopolized, censored and made billions -- without much fear of media muckraking, trust-busting politicians, unionizing activists or diversity lawsuits.
