The history of the business culture of SV is pretty well-documented. A witches brew of academic/anarchistic/military/hobbyist cultures all bonding over the twin ideas of changing the world and making a lot of money. Nice to see a mention of the deliberately light touch of regulation in the early days of the World Wide Web, as they used to call it. Much like AI today, everyone agreed it was important but no one could say why, exactly, and SV got VERY comfortable with that approach. Its gradual phase-out alone explains a lot about the current political position of SV. Add in the galactic wealth and (literal) Galactic ambitions of characters like Andreesen, Theil, and Musk and you're just about there.
I remember when the biggest problem with SV billionaires was they were galactic assholes like Larry Ellison. Now they want to be the protagonist in a Heinlein juvenile, and if democracy has to go its a shame but the story and their egos demand it. But really, the black hole of all that wealth concentrated in the persons of a bunch of delusional narcissists being fed fantasies of power explains most of where SV is today. Add in SV betting the farm on AI, an insanely expensive technology with no profitable use model waiting to crash their (and our) entire economy, and you've got a bunch of desperate billionaires looking for a bailout. And then there's crypto. Among other things, the Trump presidency is going to be very, very expensive for the American people.
Respectfully, this seems like a lot of words to make the point that while the emphasis is put on progressive ideas with little economic impact (inclusion, diversity, representation). moneyed interest will play along and even take advantage of the PR, but as soon as progressive economic ideas are in play (labor rights, wealth redistribution, regulation) they will do a mercenary 180 and run to the reactionaries for help.
Also, I think Noah and Matt are just auditioning for Mark's attention, more than falling into any kind of fallacy.
I don't disagree but I think the last decade has proven how massively important identity politics is to people, and having SV on the liberal side of the culture war did a lot to foster, for example, the transformation in how our culture views queer people that took place between 2005 and 2015.
Yeah, while identitarian issues can be counterproductive and even dangerous (white supremacy, to give the clearest example), the wholesale dismissal of "identity politics" begs the question of if there's such a thing as "non-identity politics".
Arguably, when you're making so much money that any further gains will have zero impact in your immediate circumstances other than shift you around on some Forbes list, when a billion more or less will actually have zero impact in your material conditions, we may looking at the prime example of a politics of identity.
Something I think you (and others) are missing is the material circumstances of tech over the past decade. While it's true that large tech companies have been incredibly profitable, it's also the case that from a VC point of view there hasn't been a huge hit since Facebook. Some good stuff has come along since then, but these guys want the monstrous payday of a Facebook IPO and that just hasn't come along.
This is in no small part driving the investor mania for AI, and crypto/NFTs before it. They're desperately hoping for another 1000x payday, and their frustration at being denied that payday has inflected their ideology.
Similarly, for large tech companies the economic reality is that they've mostly reached the frontier of profitability with their current business models. In a world where Amazon was able to aggressively grow profits and market share it was easy for them to ignore DoD contracts; indeed such contracts were likely less profitable than pursuing further consumer growth. But in the 2020s with a stranglehold on online retail and the cloud computing business mostly settled into a two player equilibrium (with Google as a distant third)? Suddenly those investments and opportunities are attractive.
Which is all to say that these guys never really had any sense of principled progressivism; it was ever and always a sham. It was good PR and a way to differentiate themselves from "legacy" CEOs, but now that their material interests dictate otherwise they've dropped the mask.
This strikes me as far closer to the truth than anything I’ve read by Noah or Matt—especially regarding the alliance between DCs neoliberalism and SVs “do no evil” libertarianism. That has clearly collapsed on both sides. The gap in SV is being filled by Musk-Andreessen-Thiel crypto crowd. Reid Hoffman is the remaining voice for the old consensus, and Eric Schmidt is focused on building support for the AI-security fusion in DC.
Having you praising this post feels a little like having Picasso saying nice things about an eight year old's Etch-a-Sketch. Which is a roundabout way of saying that if there is anyone who I'd love to see writing seriously on this topic, it is you ...
I'm here because Paul Krugman cited this article on BlueSky, and I'm glad he did. This broad philosophical discussion isn't my wheelhouse (organizational psych/dynamics), but Krugman's comment that it's about "the pettiness of plutocrats" made me curious. I'd like to add the possibility that one factor in the rightward shift is the sensitivity of one-of-a-kind thought leaders (Andreesen et al) to criticism by gurus/authorities who they feel don't understand and thus can't appreciate their contributions. Think about it: Early in your career (inc., pre-career childhood), your contributions were dismissed and even derided. Then you break through with a combination of hard work and good fortune, and suddenly you possess the power of a credible voice. That kid who was dismissed is still in there ... it's his voice, coming out of his feelings, too.
It takes a rare level of self-awareness to become the kind of person he wishes he'd encountered more of early on. We all evolve. He may get there. But usually, he'll take some revenge. (Why do you think Musk is so in love with Trump? "I am your retribution." - that's why.) He'll use his voice and his "fuck you" money, now that he has them, to have his "I'll show them!" moment. It may be a long moment. It's hard to change course when you suddenly have wealthy, smart friends whom you consider your tribe--the cool kids lunch table in middle school--who share your "disrespected kid" experience and your current status.
Right now, I'm just an old lady whose name nobody knows, and I'm happy with that. Dismiss my observation if you like. But here it is: Everybody would do well to approach life in general, and extraordinary people in particular, with less of our own ego's need to prove ourselves and more curiosity and kindness. I used to dabble in the corporate dark arts of persuasion and manipulation at the micro and macro levels, and that's the lesson I learned. The goal you want to achieve has nothing to do with satisfying your ego. Focus on the goal; lead with curiosity and proceed with kindness, and you'll get better outcomes.
The general outline of this is correct, but I think you underplay the anti-union data point you dug up. While tech hasn’t really become a hotbed of union activity per se, the labor force is extremely demanding on a variety of axes (benefits, anti-DoD, “woke” of various sorts, etc.) and the executive class haaaaaates that. As long as the labor force was liberal *at home* that was fine! But when you brought your liberal into the workplace (which we frequently did for a brief shining moment around BLM, etc.) that just infuriated them.
(There’s a more refined and better organized version of this argument but it would take more time than I have this morning…)
Also, during (say) 2018-2022 this was in their face alllll the time: in company chat rooms, in 1:1s with every manager, etc. It threatened their autonomy over their fiefdoms, which is the core emotional driver (and bridge to Trump).
I work in the industry. It is very hard to overstate how much resentment toward their “spoiled” employees drove the circa 2021 ideological shift among tech bossss.
Plenty of people have opined on how tech workers & bosses have differing tendencies and I am wondering how this plays into your thesis. I think its an important dynamic to tease out to see how the shift happened within the SV milieu.
I have a suspicion that pre-Trump (first term), tech workers were largely abiding by the sort of facebook idealism described, with a minority of people (founders disproportionately, perhaps) with Randian tendencies, lets say. Post-trump, the tech industry was by that point widely understood to be a path to an upper middle class life (joining Law, Medicine, etc), and I think drew in many less people who were ideologically or aesthetically motivated by the idea of technology, and cared more for the general class & lifestyle promise of the industry. At that point the ideology with the most voice within the industry would have been the Randian types, many of whom were already 'bosses'/founders/investors. And lately we can see what looks like a largely top-down ideological turning point within the industry for people who are more online and tuned in to the culture.
The above is complete conjecture and largely personal observation but I am curious if it might help explain some of the fairly rapid shift in ideological structure in SV in a somewhat endogenous fashion.
1. A distinction should be made between the widespread adoption of social media in the US, the widespread adoption abroad, and the advent of algorithmic social media.
The second and third have been highly profitable, coinciding with tech CEOs emerging as the world's richest people, and with conflicts of interest as dictatorships threaten to restrict market access to social media in general, and democracies interrogate the corrupting effects of algorithmic disinformation on their own systems.
2. A new industry with less adoption and less political power sees regulation differently than a powerful, mature one.
3. As businesses and industries mature, systematize, and become profitable, the corporate culture at the top changes. A board of investors in a tech startup will give a long leash to an ideologically optimistic management, but sooner or later seeks maximal returns.
4. Startups use ideology as an energy source in the absence of an established profit model. At what point did these tech giants actually become profitable?
5. Power and money corrupts. These bros have more money than god. It's gross. Imagine how you would change as a person with each passing year, surrounded by only sycophants and other billionaires, completely insulated from the effects of your decisions. They began to care less because they spent less and less time in the same world that you and I inhabit.
And one cannot minimize the motivation fueled by "There is no such thing as enough personal wealth", the drive is always toward unaccountably MORE riches, by any means necessary.
Consider the post-WWII consensus: that individuals have fundamental rights by virtue of their humanity, rather than simply being at the mercy of the crown or the state that grants only the rights it chooses to. Secondly, that nations enjoy the same - that territorial conquest is morally unacceptable.
Now, we see modern dictatorships trying to collapse that consensus and revert us to Napoleonic times, creating a world order in which those with power can take as they please, unhindered by any international order.
To me it seems clear that the billionaires, having passed some threshold of wealth and power, have begun to see themselves in the way nations do, as global actors untethered to the pesky moral boundaries of the state in which they reside. The weakening of the cultural norms of the state, as well as an overly permissive regulatory structure, the increasingly international nature of capital and billionaire social groups, have probably lowered this threshold.
In the end I think they're all beginning to chafe at the idea of state-level restrictions on their power, believe they've outgrown the state (they no longer need its protection), and now consider themselves actors on a historical stage. When viewed through that lens, it's obvious why they want to bring back the old world order with far fewer restrictions. They see it as a net benefit.
Great read. I’d add that a lot of Silicon Valley’s big ideas don’t just benefit from but require a weak regulatory state. We’re 10+ years into the web3 revolution and crypto remains a paradise for scammers and financial elites with little upside for the rest of us. It NEEDS a weak SEC. And now it gets one. Similarly the gig economy’s interests clearly align tightly with weak labor laws. My hunch is this dynamic supercharged the interest in deregulation and allowed people to back into ideologies to justify it.
I knew nothing about Yarvin, but for some reason, your comment led me to do a search. My goodness, the result for me was some scary reading. And now, the people who follow Yarvin’s thinking have the money and 3 branches of government behind them. I’m just a retired old guy and I’m not sure what I can do to counter this effort they’re making! But thanks to your comment and subsequent reading, I know what to look for and to the extent that opportunities arise, I can open my mouth. Thank you.
The Silly Con Valley you speak of are proto typical "Snowflakes". When they went into the public arena they melted. They created the shitposting sun that melted them.
When we say "lost Silicon Valley", we don't mean the working people, we mean the Silicon Valley Money.
In Steven Levy's "Hackers", the newly-rich tech bros of 1983 were all collegial with each other, went river rafter together, across corporate lines. But when upbraided for poaching a programmer from another company, one said "we're all friends until it cost me $10,000".
That's just about $20,000 today, but the money in Silicon Valley has gone up 100-fold, and I think they can be friends today until it costs them $2M.
After that, they don't have political principles and will fund and work for the political party that will make them the most money.
I agree that we are in a chaotic period, but I think of Silicon Valley (and especially Marc A) as having not so much an ideology as a distinctive personality. In Big 5 terms, super-high on O (openness to new experience), and super-low on N (negative emotions, fears, worries). Before Trump, Republican conservatism was almost by definition low on O. And back then Democrats were on the O side and not so much on the N side, so closer to Marc A's personality. Now, "progressives" are very high on N, expressing fears about fossil fuels, social media, capitalism, racism, colonialism, and so on. And they are not as high on O as they used to be. Meanwhile, Trump seems like a disruptive figure, so that suggests high O. We'll see how that plays out (I have a hard time seeing him as having the depth to really achieve anything of lasting significance). But some of the Silicon Valley types are more receptive to (taken in by?) Trump's element of disruptiveness than I would be.
In 2004, and in 2014, 3 of the biggest 10 American companies by market cap were in the tech sector (and two of the three changed between 2004 and 2014. Currently, 8 of the biggest 10 American companies by market cap are in the tech sector.
Once you've won, you want to freeze the world in amber rather than risking further change.
It's the greed of the billionaires, pure and simple.
Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias are comically incorrect. The billionaire class was always going to fight for lower taxes for the rich, less regulation, and less anti-trust. They want to make as much money as possible, and they don't care about the well-being of the rest of us. Social issues are secondary to increasing their net worth.
The left (and I mean the left that identifies with the working class, not the upper middle class liberals), wants a second New Deal, universal healthcare, and a more egalitarian distribution of wealth.
Those were always going to be competing goals. To blame the left is wrong on their part. It's greed that's the issue.
The history of the business culture of SV is pretty well-documented. A witches brew of academic/anarchistic/military/hobbyist cultures all bonding over the twin ideas of changing the world and making a lot of money. Nice to see a mention of the deliberately light touch of regulation in the early days of the World Wide Web, as they used to call it. Much like AI today, everyone agreed it was important but no one could say why, exactly, and SV got VERY comfortable with that approach. Its gradual phase-out alone explains a lot about the current political position of SV. Add in the galactic wealth and (literal) Galactic ambitions of characters like Andreesen, Theil, and Musk and you're just about there.
I remember when the biggest problem with SV billionaires was they were galactic assholes like Larry Ellison. Now they want to be the protagonist in a Heinlein juvenile, and if democracy has to go its a shame but the story and their egos demand it. But really, the black hole of all that wealth concentrated in the persons of a bunch of delusional narcissists being fed fantasies of power explains most of where SV is today. Add in SV betting the farm on AI, an insanely expensive technology with no profitable use model waiting to crash their (and our) entire economy, and you've got a bunch of desperate billionaires looking for a bailout. And then there's crypto. Among other things, the Trump presidency is going to be very, very expensive for the American people.
Respectfully, this seems like a lot of words to make the point that while the emphasis is put on progressive ideas with little economic impact (inclusion, diversity, representation). moneyed interest will play along and even take advantage of the PR, but as soon as progressive economic ideas are in play (labor rights, wealth redistribution, regulation) they will do a mercenary 180 and run to the reactionaries for help.
Also, I think Noah and Matt are just auditioning for Mark's attention, more than falling into any kind of fallacy.
exactly this!! kept thinking "when was tech ever meaningfully left-leaning outside of identity politics?" while reading
I don't disagree but I think the last decade has proven how massively important identity politics is to people, and having SV on the liberal side of the culture war did a lot to foster, for example, the transformation in how our culture views queer people that took place between 2005 and 2015.
Yeah, while identitarian issues can be counterproductive and even dangerous (white supremacy, to give the clearest example), the wholesale dismissal of "identity politics" begs the question of if there's such a thing as "non-identity politics".
Arguably, when you're making so much money that any further gains will have zero impact in your immediate circumstances other than shift you around on some Forbes list, when a billion more or less will actually have zero impact in your material conditions, we may looking at the prime example of a politics of identity.
Something I think you (and others) are missing is the material circumstances of tech over the past decade. While it's true that large tech companies have been incredibly profitable, it's also the case that from a VC point of view there hasn't been a huge hit since Facebook. Some good stuff has come along since then, but these guys want the monstrous payday of a Facebook IPO and that just hasn't come along.
This is in no small part driving the investor mania for AI, and crypto/NFTs before it. They're desperately hoping for another 1000x payday, and their frustration at being denied that payday has inflected their ideology.
Similarly, for large tech companies the economic reality is that they've mostly reached the frontier of profitability with their current business models. In a world where Amazon was able to aggressively grow profits and market share it was easy for them to ignore DoD contracts; indeed such contracts were likely less profitable than pursuing further consumer growth. But in the 2020s with a stranglehold on online retail and the cloud computing business mostly settled into a two player equilibrium (with Google as a distant third)? Suddenly those investments and opportunities are attractive.
Which is all to say that these guys never really had any sense of principled progressivism; it was ever and always a sham. It was good PR and a way to differentiate themselves from "legacy" CEOs, but now that their material interests dictate otherwise they've dropped the mask.
This strikes me as far closer to the truth than anything I’ve read by Noah or Matt—especially regarding the alliance between DCs neoliberalism and SVs “do no evil” libertarianism. That has clearly collapsed on both sides. The gap in SV is being filled by Musk-Andreessen-Thiel crypto crowd. Reid Hoffman is the remaining voice for the old consensus, and Eric Schmidt is focused on building support for the AI-security fusion in DC.
Having you praising this post feels a little like having Picasso saying nice things about an eight year old's Etch-a-Sketch. Which is a roundabout way of saying that if there is anyone who I'd love to see writing seriously on this topic, it is you ...
I'm here because Paul Krugman cited this article on BlueSky, and I'm glad he did. This broad philosophical discussion isn't my wheelhouse (organizational psych/dynamics), but Krugman's comment that it's about "the pettiness of plutocrats" made me curious. I'd like to add the possibility that one factor in the rightward shift is the sensitivity of one-of-a-kind thought leaders (Andreesen et al) to criticism by gurus/authorities who they feel don't understand and thus can't appreciate their contributions. Think about it: Early in your career (inc., pre-career childhood), your contributions were dismissed and even derided. Then you break through with a combination of hard work and good fortune, and suddenly you possess the power of a credible voice. That kid who was dismissed is still in there ... it's his voice, coming out of his feelings, too.
It takes a rare level of self-awareness to become the kind of person he wishes he'd encountered more of early on. We all evolve. He may get there. But usually, he'll take some revenge. (Why do you think Musk is so in love with Trump? "I am your retribution." - that's why.) He'll use his voice and his "fuck you" money, now that he has them, to have his "I'll show them!" moment. It may be a long moment. It's hard to change course when you suddenly have wealthy, smart friends whom you consider your tribe--the cool kids lunch table in middle school--who share your "disrespected kid" experience and your current status.
Right now, I'm just an old lady whose name nobody knows, and I'm happy with that. Dismiss my observation if you like. But here it is: Everybody would do well to approach life in general, and extraordinary people in particular, with less of our own ego's need to prove ourselves and more curiosity and kindness. I used to dabble in the corporate dark arts of persuasion and manipulation at the micro and macro levels, and that's the lesson I learned. The goal you want to achieve has nothing to do with satisfying your ego. Focus on the goal; lead with curiosity and proceed with kindness, and you'll get better outcomes.
Personal resentment is definitely a massively underestimated motivation in business and politics
The general outline of this is correct, but I think you underplay the anti-union data point you dug up. While tech hasn’t really become a hotbed of union activity per se, the labor force is extremely demanding on a variety of axes (benefits, anti-DoD, “woke” of various sorts, etc.) and the executive class haaaaaates that. As long as the labor force was liberal *at home* that was fine! But when you brought your liberal into the workplace (which we frequently did for a brief shining moment around BLM, etc.) that just infuriated them.
(There’s a more refined and better organized version of this argument but it would take more time than I have this morning…)
Also, during (say) 2018-2022 this was in their face alllll the time: in company chat rooms, in 1:1s with every manager, etc. It threatened their autonomy over their fiefdoms, which is the core emotional driver (and bridge to Trump).
I work in the industry. It is very hard to overstate how much resentment toward their “spoiled” employees drove the circa 2021 ideological shift among tech bossss.
Plenty of people have opined on how tech workers & bosses have differing tendencies and I am wondering how this plays into your thesis. I think its an important dynamic to tease out to see how the shift happened within the SV milieu.
I have a suspicion that pre-Trump (first term), tech workers were largely abiding by the sort of facebook idealism described, with a minority of people (founders disproportionately, perhaps) with Randian tendencies, lets say. Post-trump, the tech industry was by that point widely understood to be a path to an upper middle class life (joining Law, Medicine, etc), and I think drew in many less people who were ideologically or aesthetically motivated by the idea of technology, and cared more for the general class & lifestyle promise of the industry. At that point the ideology with the most voice within the industry would have been the Randian types, many of whom were already 'bosses'/founders/investors. And lately we can see what looks like a largely top-down ideological turning point within the industry for people who are more online and tuned in to the culture.
The above is complete conjecture and largely personal observation but I am curious if it might help explain some of the fairly rapid shift in ideological structure in SV in a somewhat endogenous fashion.
A few notes:
1. A distinction should be made between the widespread adoption of social media in the US, the widespread adoption abroad, and the advent of algorithmic social media.
The second and third have been highly profitable, coinciding with tech CEOs emerging as the world's richest people, and with conflicts of interest as dictatorships threaten to restrict market access to social media in general, and democracies interrogate the corrupting effects of algorithmic disinformation on their own systems.
2. A new industry with less adoption and less political power sees regulation differently than a powerful, mature one.
3. As businesses and industries mature, systematize, and become profitable, the corporate culture at the top changes. A board of investors in a tech startup will give a long leash to an ideologically optimistic management, but sooner or later seeks maximal returns.
4. Startups use ideology as an energy source in the absence of an established profit model. At what point did these tech giants actually become profitable?
5. Power and money corrupts. These bros have more money than god. It's gross. Imagine how you would change as a person with each passing year, surrounded by only sycophants and other billionaires, completely insulated from the effects of your decisions. They began to care less because they spent less and less time in the same world that you and I inhabit.
And one cannot minimize the motivation fueled by "There is no such thing as enough personal wealth", the drive is always toward unaccountably MORE riches, by any means necessary.
Consider the post-WWII consensus: that individuals have fundamental rights by virtue of their humanity, rather than simply being at the mercy of the crown or the state that grants only the rights it chooses to. Secondly, that nations enjoy the same - that territorial conquest is morally unacceptable.
Now, we see modern dictatorships trying to collapse that consensus and revert us to Napoleonic times, creating a world order in which those with power can take as they please, unhindered by any international order.
To me it seems clear that the billionaires, having passed some threshold of wealth and power, have begun to see themselves in the way nations do, as global actors untethered to the pesky moral boundaries of the state in which they reside. The weakening of the cultural norms of the state, as well as an overly permissive regulatory structure, the increasingly international nature of capital and billionaire social groups, have probably lowered this threshold.
In the end I think they're all beginning to chafe at the idea of state-level restrictions on their power, believe they've outgrown the state (they no longer need its protection), and now consider themselves actors on a historical stage. When viewed through that lens, it's obvious why they want to bring back the old world order with far fewer restrictions. They see it as a net benefit.
Great read. I’d add that a lot of Silicon Valley’s big ideas don’t just benefit from but require a weak regulatory state. We’re 10+ years into the web3 revolution and crypto remains a paradise for scammers and financial elites with little upside for the rest of us. It NEEDS a weak SEC. And now it gets one. Similarly the gig economy’s interests clearly align tightly with weak labor laws. My hunch is this dynamic supercharged the interest in deregulation and allowed people to back into ideologies to justify it.
Came for the political and social-science analysis, stayed for the Chuck Tingle reference
One hates to say it but Curtis Yarvin on DOGE is some of the best reading out there in these complicated times.
I knew nothing about Yarvin, but for some reason, your comment led me to do a search. My goodness, the result for me was some scary reading. And now, the people who follow Yarvin’s thinking have the money and 3 branches of government behind them. I’m just a retired old guy and I’m not sure what I can do to counter this effort they’re making! But thanks to your comment and subsequent reading, I know what to look for and to the extent that opportunities arise, I can open my mouth. Thank you.
The Silly Con Valley you speak of are proto typical "Snowflakes". When they went into the public arena they melted. They created the shitposting sun that melted them.
When we say "lost Silicon Valley", we don't mean the working people, we mean the Silicon Valley Money.
In Steven Levy's "Hackers", the newly-rich tech bros of 1983 were all collegial with each other, went river rafter together, across corporate lines. But when upbraided for poaching a programmer from another company, one said "we're all friends until it cost me $10,000".
That's just about $20,000 today, but the money in Silicon Valley has gone up 100-fold, and I think they can be friends today until it costs them $2M.
After that, they don't have political principles and will fund and work for the political party that will make them the most money.
That's it. Thank you all for reading.
I agree that we are in a chaotic period, but I think of Silicon Valley (and especially Marc A) as having not so much an ideology as a distinctive personality. In Big 5 terms, super-high on O (openness to new experience), and super-low on N (negative emotions, fears, worries). Before Trump, Republican conservatism was almost by definition low on O. And back then Democrats were on the O side and not so much on the N side, so closer to Marc A's personality. Now, "progressives" are very high on N, expressing fears about fossil fuels, social media, capitalism, racism, colonialism, and so on. And they are not as high on O as they used to be. Meanwhile, Trump seems like a disruptive figure, so that suggests high O. We'll see how that plays out (I have a hard time seeing him as having the depth to really achieve anything of lasting significance). But some of the Silicon Valley types are more receptive to (taken in by?) Trump's element of disruptiveness than I would be.
In 2004, and in 2014, 3 of the biggest 10 American companies by market cap were in the tech sector (and two of the three changed between 2004 and 2014. Currently, 8 of the biggest 10 American companies by market cap are in the tech sector.
Once you've won, you want to freeze the world in amber rather than risking further change.
It's the greed of the billionaires, pure and simple.
Noah Smith and Matt Yglesias are comically incorrect. The billionaire class was always going to fight for lower taxes for the rich, less regulation, and less anti-trust. They want to make as much money as possible, and they don't care about the well-being of the rest of us. Social issues are secondary to increasing their net worth.
The left (and I mean the left that identifies with the working class, not the upper middle class liberals), wants a second New Deal, universal healthcare, and a more egalitarian distribution of wealth.
Those were always going to be competing goals. To blame the left is wrong on their part. It's greed that's the issue.