Rick Mandler breaks down the absurdity of Tom Perkins’ comparison of “persecution” of the 1% to Nazi anti-semitism.
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So apparently Tom Perkins, the founder of the most famous and possibly most successful Silicon Valley VC, Kleiner Perkins, thinks that the “persecution” of the 1% is comparable to Nazi anti-semitism. The full letter to the Wall St. Journal, such as it is, can be found here.
As you might imagine, he is being ridiculed widely. And for good reasons, such as…
1. The overall disparity in power between the Nazi era Jewish population of Europe and the 1% of America today.
2. The economic threat faced by the 1%, that a democratically elected government might seek to regulate their accumulation of wealth vs. the existential threat faced by Jews of Nazi Germany.
3. His stirring defense of the author Danielle Steele for the unthinkable accusation that she is a “snob.”
4. A grievous violation of Godwin’s law. A Kristallnacht reference? Really? Is Tom expecting the tie dyed shirts to slip into his gated community, past his home security system, break down his front door, and then…what? A quick trip to Wikipedia says 91 were killed, 30,000 imprisoned, 1000 synagogues burned, and 7000 businesses destroyed or damaged on Kristallnacht.
5. And finally, there is the basic absurdity of a rich WASP, trotting out a holocaust analogy to make a self-serving point.
But… I suspect that while they may not come out in support, there are “many” people in Tom’s cohort (and many who want to be in Tom’s cohort) who agree with him. I put many in quotes because there really aren’t that many people in Tom’s cohort. In fact there are only 442. That is the number of billionaires in the US today.
I have been helping my son Henry study for his mid-term recently, and we have been focusing on the period from 1890 through WWI. If you want to know what unconstrained capitalism would be like, where a “man” is free to succeed or fail without government intervention, just look at that era: Monopolistic price fixing, collusion, child labor, horrific working conditions, rampant poverty, widespread hunger, and severe economic inequality.
In short, a world I know I wouldn’t want to live in, and one that likely wasted huge amounts of human potential, stifling growth that would have benefited everyone. This is why the Progressive movement took shape in the US, and modern labor laws, anti-trust laws, etc. came in to being.
I think many in Tom’s cohort forget how horrific unrestrained capitalism can be. I suspect they believe in the libertarian/meritocratic myth that they are rich because the worked harder and smarter. It is a comforting thing to believe, since it justifies their extreme wealth in the face of other’s poverty. Of course, not everyone in Tom’s cohort believes this. Kudos to Warren Buffet for recognizing that luck, such as who your parents are, plays a great part in the success or failure of a person.
This of course begs the question, if Tom is such an idiot, how did he get so rich? I am reminded of Upton Sinclair’s line which goes something like “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on him not understanding it.”
Finally, before everyone thinks I have dropped off the left side, I would like to point out that while restrained capitalism is better than unrestrained capitalism, over-restrained capitalism is not a good thing either. Today’s NSA debate is a reminder of the dangers of excessive government.
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This post was in response to a Mashable article: Tech VC Compares Criticism of 1% to Nazi persecution of Jews
Photo: AP / Ben Margot
Letter from the National Director of the Anti-Defamation League published in WSJ 2/1/14: The letter from Tom Perkins comparing the “demonization of the rich” to “fascist Nazi Germany” and the persecution of German Jews during Kristallnacht offers a vivid case in point of how American discourse is being cheapened and coarsened by facile comparisons to the Holocaust (“Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?,” Jan. 25). Mr. Perkins is entitled to his views, but he discredits himself and his argument by leaping to the absurd conclusion that class differences in America are stirring up sentiments similar to the virulent anti-Semitism that led to the… Read more »
Mostly right on target, Mr. Mandler, but please go read up on what “begging the question” means. It means something specific, that is nothing like raising or asking a question.
Thanks. Appreciate you pointing that out.
There’s tone deaf, there’s ignorant, and there’s isolated. In remarkably few words, Tom Perkins surpasses the criteria for all three. Kudos to Rick Mandler for the specificity of his critique. When I read Perkins’ letter in the WSJ, my breath evaporated at the word Kristallnacht. It’s almost impossible to explain the insult of invoking such a metaphor. Any credibility Perkins had of any kind circled down the drain into nothingness for me when he typed that word. I don’t care how rich he is, like the rest of us, he spent some time on the earth, and then he will… Read more »
Well, the rich are an unpopular minority, and there are certainly some American politicians who are more than willing to exploit that fact.
Yeah, Mr. Perkins and his fellow billionaires are horribly persecuted and denigrated in our society. How about forgetting about thinking and make an attempt at feeling. Maybe he could link up with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and put his obscene fortune to work helping others not as fortunate as him.
It hardly needs to be said, but well said nonetheless Mr Mandler. And there’s another reason to take issue with this rhetoric: 6. that San Francisco is the ‘epicenter of progressive thought’. No offense to San Franciscans or anyone else in IT, but he really ought to dislodge his head from his diamond-encrusted navel.