Eric Schmidt, executive chair of Google, told Glenn Beck he thinks the tech industry has had a libertarian streak “for a very long time.”
Schmidt and former Google executive Jonathan Rosenberg joined Beck for an interview on TheBlaze TV, during which Beck proposed that their industry seems to be turning from liberal to libertarian.
“I could be wrong, but I think there’s a change in Silicon Valley,” said Beck. “I think there are a lot of people in Silicon Valley that maybe thought they were wildly liberal, and have found themselves to be more libertarian because a lot of these guys are, you know, 25 years old, and they started something in their basement. And now they’re like, ‘Holy cow, look at what I’m building.’ And they know they don’t need the government, and now the government is starting to knock on their door and say, ‘Hey, hey, you can’t do that.’”
Beck then commented, “You guys, on the other hand, are deeply in bed with the government. You got, what is it, 25 — the self-driving cars. There were 29 permits issued for the state of California; 25 of them went to you guys.”
“Well, we’re not in bed with them,” Schmidt objected, “We’re regulated by them.”
But Schmidt agreed that his industry is home to many libertarians: “What you’re saying is something that’s been true for many, many decades. The tech industry is famously liberal on social issues, and famously conservative on financial issues.”
“The saying of the industry is: ‘Government out of the boardroom, government out of the bedroom,’” Schmidt said.
Schmidt then took a shot at government attempting to restrict information: “The problem with this is we’re inventing things which really do affect traditional agreements with government. So Google’s in the information business. Well, there’s nothing more important than information. So if you’re a political leader or a government, or especially a restrictive government, a dictatorship, you want to control information. You don’t want freedom of expression for your citizens.”
The politics of Silicon Valley have been the subject of great interest lately. Although the largest IT companies gave far more to the Obama campaign in 2012 than to Romney, libertarians appear to be making gains in their company. Rand Paul has drawn the approval of tech crowds, for example, while Amazon’s Jeff Bezos reportedly has “libertarian leanings.” And of course there’s Peter Thiel, whom New York Magazine has dubbed “the libertarian godfather of Silicon Valley.”
Watch the clip via TheBlaze:
