By my calculations, oil took over political dominance from manufacturing in 1968. Tech took over from oil in 2008.
That means we’re now playing the 1983 game. (This will be my 40th Peachtree Road Race. That's me at my second, in 1984.)
That was the year I bought my house. Interest rates were still high making the $49,500 price hard to afford. While oilman George H.W. Bush was VP, it was the defense and media industries who had Ronald Reagan’s ear. The oil shortage of the 1970s had turned into an oil glut, fueled by the Administration pushing the Saudis to keep pumping even while prices paid to Texas oilmen were falling.
This should sound familiar to today’s tech tycoons. Even while Californian Kamala Harris sits as VP, the industry is being battered in Washington. There are calls to break up the company, to tightly regulate the Internet. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was a bad look.
The industry thus faces a political choice.
A lot of the big swinging dicks of the last decade have made their choice. Led by Peter Thiel, a lot of them are putting all the cash they can into Republican campaigns. They see control of the government, under the leadership of a Republican party dedicated to their specific interests, as the best route forward.
But the industry has a different agenda. That’s because technology, unlike oil, rides on human capital, on a large pool of trained, energized minds. The more bright people a company, an industry, or a country can attract, the more freedom and security those people have, the bigger their incentives, the better we all do.
That’s why California is overwhelmingly Democratic. It’s why Massachusetts is Democratic. It’s why those southern states that are growing their tech sectors, like North Carolina and Georgia, are moving that way. Tech work clusters around urban centers, around research universities. People who work close to each other understand the need for government to provide safety, education, and public works. People who don’t think they need these things, because their neighbors are far away, like to pretend otherwise.
We know what happened after 1983. Oil stuck with their party. The industry came to full power with Bush, and kept that power for 20 years, through two wars designed to maintain supplies in American hands. (Let’s not pretend otherwise.)
I don’t know what will happen this time. But history gives me a hint.
