The Shaky Moral Compass of Silicon Valley

The New York Times:

When I lived in Silicon Valley, I was struck by not just the region’s income disparity, but also by the lack of compassion that wealthy tech workers sometimes displayed toward the poor.

I would overhear tech employees complain about the homeless in degrading ways — at coffee shops, bars and in parks. Sometimes their disgust spread online. One notorious example took place in 2013, when Greg Gopman, then the chief executive of AngelHack, a code start-up, lamented on Facebook, “why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash I have no clue.” (He later deleted the post.)

This is not exactly in keeping with the Valley’s self-designated catchphrase: “We’re making the world a better place.”

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Paul K. Piff, a professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine, believes all the money sloshing around the Valley could make some tech executives unaware of their surroundings.

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Other researchers have found that just thinking about money can have a similar effect. Kathleen D. Vohs, a professor of marketing at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, conducted an experiment in which two groups sat in front of a computer screen saver. One group saw fish swim by, the other saw money.

Read the whole story: The New York Times