Author of the study they were writing about here. That is the original expectation I had coming in, but I don't think what we find is totally consistent with that (although some is). We talk about that in the paper. Study here: https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers....
Great work. Thanks a ton for climbing onto the hackernews thread!
When I look at chart in the article (I haven't read the paper) I get really curious about how 'support for regulation' might break down by issue. A lot of the regulation that the Trump administration is rolling back are environment rules that are strongly net positive for our economy once you account for health care externalities. While many of the regulations that hurt the economy the most (e.g. restrictions on urban housing construction.) are unchallenged.
How do you think the results would change if you broke "regulation" down by type e.g. environment/labor/business? I suspect there'd be a significant break between tech elite and the republican donor class on environmental/global warming issues. I also think there's a significant break between the tech elite and some democrats on zoning reform. Though I haven't conducted formal surveys :)
I think this is particularly interesting as it's the one issue were the tech elite didn't look like 'normal democrats' in your graphs - perhaps that outcome is more nuanced then the graphic shows.
It's hard to tell exactly what the underlying principle is from just the few questions we could get folks to answer, but the general pattern seems to be about like you describe -- on the environment, founders are pretty liberal; on issues of labor and product market regulations, they're fairly conservative; on everything else, they're fairly centrist. We have all the survey questions we asked that went into this index in the Appendix.
The only way in which technology entrepreneurs deviate from what you would expect, is in their support for more redistribution. But all these people are not paying normal taxes, anyway. Why would they care? Also if you consider the risk of political or economic instability, then even redistribution might just be a self-interested policy stance.
The same logic holds for founders in other industries but they don't seem to like taxes/redistribution much (although we need and are getting more data on that). Would have been nice to ask about taxation on capital gains, but survey space was limited (you folks are busy!) and that is a relatively small share of federal receipts so not as important substantively, even if it speaks to this theoretical question.
There might also be a best-use-of-capital explanation for that discrepancy. A manufacturer with a cash surplus can typically open another factory, but how does a company like twitter usefully spend excess revenue? Tech CEOs may be more in favour of redistribution because they would have to figure out what to invest in, whereas CEOs in other industries already know what they'd like to do with the money.
Maybe tech companies know that they profit from redistribution, perhaps moreso than other companies? Tech products tend to be relatively expensive, but production is generally unlimited, because a significant proportion of the price reflects the fixed costs of development, which means that a larger market usually comes with profits. This is somewhat unlike e.g. agriculture or construction, where production quantities are more difficult to increase.
The primary reason I support it, and I don't think I'm alone among founders in this, is that I think that society is not going to work very well in the long term unless we strengthen our social safety nets. I want to live in a society that functions well, because I'm happier when surrounded by happier people.
I also think that it would enable more people to take the risk of trying something new if they knew that failing didn't mean destitution, and I think that we'd see significant upside from that in terms of economic competitiveness. I think I should be paying more taxes than I am to fund that, especially on unearned income.
There's an important distinction, however, between redistribution that seeks to create a more free and just society and retribution that seeks to prevent a society without consumers.
Most tech people in favor of redistributive schemes like UBI are in favor of the later.
Ah, well, I'm in favor of UBI and both of the reasons you mention for it - the free market is still the best way we've found to allocate resources to worthwhile projects.
