Victor Davis Hanson writes at National Review Online that the nation’s largest tech companies have taken steps that help them avoid comparisons to other major corporations.
Today, five companies — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet (Google’s parent company) — have a collective worth of more than $3 trillion. Yet such transnational companies remain mostly exempt from the sort of regulations and accountability faced by most other industries. …
… Why are huge tech companies seemingly exempt from the rules that older corporations must follow?
First, their CEOs wisely cultivate the image of hipsters. The public sees them more as aging teenagers in T-shirts, turtlenecks, and flip-flops than as updated versions of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, or other robber barons of the past.
Second, the tech industry’s hierarchy is politically progressive. In brilliant marketing fashion, the Internet, laptops, tablets, and smartphones have meshed with the hip youth culture of music, television, the movies, universities, and fashion. Think Woodstock rather than Wall Street. …
… Third, the tech industry boasts that it is green and clean. Plastic cords and screens almost magically produce podcasts, videos, email, social media pages, and the Internet. Few in the public worry about how lithium-ion batteries are made, or where and how their ingredients are mined. Pods and pads do not emit smoke. They require no gas, grease, and oil. Smartphones and laptops apparently were spontaneously generated out of the clean air of the cool San Francisco Bay area and will dissolve back into it when they wear out.
