A Shift in the Force?
Post-pandemic, more people are rethinking their work-life choices, which might be good news for social change. Plus, Andrew Yang's eminence grise.
A somewhat more personal note to start off today’s issue of The Connector: One of the silver linings of not having a full-time job while living through the Great Pandemic is that I have more time for long conversations with friends, former colleagues, and fellow travelers on parallel journeys through the shifting world of social change organizing. Not to get all David Brooks on you, but these conversations are often deeper than the kinds of catch-ups that you might have going out to lunch with a co-worker or friend back in the pre-Pandemic, regular work days. And I’ve noticed something of late.
A lot of people are in a liminal state where we are asking ourselves, do I really want to go back to what I was doing before we hit the Pause Button? Or, how can I more seriously commit my time to work that matters, that will really help make big change happen? I’ve heard versions of this from friends ranging in age from their early 30s to late 50s. They include people choosing to leave somewhat secure careers at big nonprofits because the organization is too cautious or compromised; people who have held leadership roles (sometimes even founders) for ten years or more who were ready for a change; and several who are especially interested in figuring out how to usefully deter, defang or defuse the still ticking threat to American democracy represented by today’s Republican Party.
I don’t have any obvious answers. We’re in a hinge moment in history. The Biden Administration is doing some big, unexpected things that suggest a real break with the neoliberal past, like getting out of Afghanistan and deciding to ignore deficit hawks and spend big on rebuilding our physical and social infrastructure. It’s too early to see how these gigantic choices will play out in people’s lives, but they have the potential to reshape things as much as capitalist-driven technology—the other big force in our lives other than government—is already doing so. (Just imagine hundreds of thousands of young people working for a new Climate Change Corps, or millions of health care providers finally getting paid a living wage, or cities undoing the effects of old highway projects that ripped through low-income neighborhoods.)
Into that larger flux will come the post-pandemic explosion of pent-up emotions—exhaustion, desire and fury. The last year has pushed many to their breaking point, especially front-line healthcare workers and teachers, but also service workers. As it becomes safe(r) to congregate, we’re sure to see more protests as expectations lift. At the same time, there’s the natural human need for connection, and many are predicting a “roaring twenties” decade of exuberant debauchery.
What makes me hopeful as always is the fierce commitment of young people (which comes with some inevitable hubris and stupidity). But, going back to the conversations I’ve been having with my peers and younger friends: it also feels as if there’s a Changed Generation bubbling up in the middle cohort too. If this fits you, or someone you know, I’d love to hear from you (leave a comment below or just hit reply). It might be fun to get a group of us together (ugh, by Zoom of course) and see where everyone is at.
New York State of Mind
If Andrew Yang, the failed tech nonprofit entrepreneur who parlayed a glib belief in the dangers of automation and the value of a “universal basic income” into a failed Democratic presidential bid in 2020 (where he lasted longer than 18 other candidates, most of whom with far more political experience than him), manages to win the New York City democratic mayoral primary this June, then first off we should give him credit for having some raw political skills that have enabled him to connect with a lot of voters. It’s not failing upward if you win.
Part of the reason Yang is doing well so far, beyond the high name recognition that he jumped into the race with, is that he’s just not that serious. As Michelle Goldberg noted in her New York Times piece on Yang, he wants to make the city fun again. Most of the other top contenders seem to be competing for some version of top disciplinarian. It doesn’t help that if you’re a responsible politician in New York, you’ve done fewer physical events and take care to wear a mask when you are out in public. Which means fewer people can see you smile. Advantage to Yang, who has been less cautious and got COVID-19 while campaigning. (No word on how many of his staffers or civilians he may have also endangered in the process.)
I also think he’s doing well because he really believes his own technobabble. Like The Former Guy and other hyperconfident men in the political arena, Yang’s Dunning-Kruger effect is really strong. It doesn’t matter if the numbers he spouts about giving every American $1000 a month in basic income can’t possibly add up (the annual cost would dwarf Biden’s multi-year trillion-dollar spending bills). Never mind that his proposal for a digital data dividend is unwieldy and would only put pennies in the pockets of people. Dunning-Kruger describes people who, despite having low cognitive ability or self-awareness, think they’re doing better than they actually are. Less competent students often over-estimate their rank in class; that’s Dunning-Kruger in the classroom. Of course, self-confidence is a good thing—except when you’re actually seeking to wield authority over others.
There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about Yang’s standing in the NYC mayoral race. One of the biggest for me is how much his campaign appears to be an extension of a different tech entrepreneur’s unusual empire. I rolled out a short Twitter thread on this yesterday, but here’s the quick and dirty. Most of Yang’s top campaign staff are employed by Tusk Strategies, a top local lobbying firm. This isn’t unusual—other lobbying firms are consulting for candidates like Scott Stringer, Eric Adams and Ray McGuire. All of this raises conflict-of-interest concerns, as this article in City and State by Jeff Coltin lays out well.
But what we don’t know is how much more there may be to the Yang-Tusk connection. That’s because Bradley Tusk, the hard-charging founder of Tusk Strategies, is also a big venture capitalist and a philanthropist. What got Tusk to this position was his role advising Uber, where he led its brute force invasion of many cities including New York, and where he was paid in stock rather than cash. That stock, reportedly worth $100 million, put Tusk at a different level in the American influence game, and one has to wonder where Tusk’s business investments and political engagements are based in true belief in the virtues of a product or candidate versus the opportunity to amass more money and power. And Coltin’s article suggests that Yang’s mayoral bid wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Tusk’s having reached out to him more than a year ago, after he dropped out of the presidential contest, to start talking about a possible run.
Two days ago, one of Tusk’s big VC investments, Coinbase, a cryptocurrency trading platform, went public. Its share price popped, giving the company an overnight valuation of $85 billion, more than ten times its last private valuation, as Erin Griffith reported for The New York Times. She quoted Tusk, who said that Coinbase’s listing answered the question “Is crypto a real thing? “Any industry that can launch an I.P.O. of this size is without a doubt a real thing, and it’s proven by the market.” We shall see how that prediction holds up, but one thing is surely true: early investors in the Bitcoin mania like Tusk are now a lot richer. (And the environment, which is the victim of Bitcoin mining’s huge electricity drain, is now a lot poorer.)
In that context, what are we to make of Andrew Yang’s announcement in early February that “As mayor of NYC – the world’s financial capital - I would invest in making the city a hub for BTC and other cryptocurrencies.” Lots of people were already pumping air in the Bitcoin bubble before Yang. But I also have to wonder how much big investors in cryptocurrency have also seen Yang as a very useful messenger for their own ends. Has a leading New York City mayoral candidate ever so blatantly taken positions that would make the entrepreneur/lobbyist running his campaign a lot richer?
Bonus link: This 2016 Village Voice profile of Tusk by Ross Barkan is a must-read.
Odds and Ends
-My friend and one-time colleague Nancy Scola has left Politico to write a book, and unfortunately for those of us in the newsletter game, she has also started her own Substack, called Slow Build. For several years, Nancy wrote for TechPresident under my attempts at tutelage, and some of my subscribers here are folks who probably started out reading our newsletter First Post when she was writing it. So, this is like having your younger, smarter, faster cousin opening a fine restaurant next to the little shack you’ve been operating. Seriously, go subscribe to Slow Build, which I’m sure is going to be a terrific read on the intersections of tech and society. And I’m joking about feeling competitive; we all get smarter when Nancy is in the room.
-Yet another government tech deployment has crashed—this time it’s a website built for the Small Business Administration to run a $16 billion grant program, the Shuttered Venues Operating Grants program. The American Prospect’s David Dayen has the details.
Speaking of government tech, bookmark this: Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age is a fantastic new syllabus developed by David Eaves, Dr. Ines Mergel and Tom Steinberg. It’s all free and open access.
-While President Biden is enjoying a 59% approval rating, recent polling also shows that people who identify as Republicans are still in another world, where 2/3 say The Former Guy won the election, and their sympathy for the January 6th insurrectionists have not abated, Will Saletan reports for Slate. Ignoring this does not make it go away.
-Some well-meaning folks have started something called Democracy Investments, which offers an “international portfolio weighted toward democracies and away from authoritarianism, with the intention of increasing the economic growth of democratic countries and decreasing it for authoritarian countries.” The fund is tiny, but hey, now you can “Buy DMCY” and feel better for doing so! Where’s the emoji for raised eyebrows?
-Speaking of well-meaning folks, this richly reported piece by Issie Lapowsky for Protocol on what happens to tech whistleblowers after they go public is worth your time. If we want more ethical tech, we need to find more ways to support these folks.