L. A. Times column, October 12, 1998

[Tony Barry]

Gary Chapman's articles are normally thoughtful.  This one suggests that
the DoJ Microsoft case is a side issue and that -

>But the real crisis in American values is not loose sexual mores but the
>decoupling of our elite and wealthy from the rest of the nation, from their
>responsibilities for public leadership, and from any reasonable constraints
>on power and wealth in a democracy.

Making particular  reference to the IT industry.

Tony


>Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 07:55:14 -0500
>To: chapman@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu
>From: Gary Chapman <gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu>
>Subject: L. A. Times column, October 12, 1998
>Reply-To: gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu
>Sender: owner-chapman@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu
>
>Friends,
>
>Below is my Los Angeles Times column for today, Monday, October 12, 1998.
>As always, please feel free to pass this around but please retain the
>copyright notice.
>
>Hope everyone is doing well. We're finally getting some glorious weather
>here in Austin, and when it's beautiful here there's no better place.
>
>Best,
>
>-- Gary
>
>Gary Chapman
>Director
>The 21st Century Project
>LBJ School of Public Affairs
>Drawer Y, University Station
>University of Texas
>Austin, TX  78713
>(512) 263-1218
>(512) 471-1835 (fax)
>gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu
>http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/21cp
>
>   ------------------------------------------
>
>If you have received this from me, Gary Chapman (gary21cp@mail.swbell.net),
>you are subscribed to the listserv that sends out copies of my column in
>The Los Angeles Times and other published articles.
>
>If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this listserv, send mail to
>listproc@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu, leave the subject line blank, and put
>"Unsubscribe Chapman" in the first line of the message.
>
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>of the message.
>
>   ------------------------------------------
>
>The Los Angeles Times
>
>Monday, October 12, 1998
>
>DIGITAL NATION
>
>Microsoft Trial Obscures Larger Inequality Issues
>
>By Gary Chapman
>
>Copyright 1998, The Los Angeles Times
>
>The Microsoft antitrust trial scheduled to begin this month will no doubt
>dominate high-tech industry news as an epic and historic battle between the
>dominant company in the Information Age and the U.S. Justice Department.
>
>But, like most other news stories about high tech in newspapers, magazines
>and on the World Wide Web, this legal battle obscures deeper problems in
>the relationship between our high-tech companies and the country in which
>they operate.
>
>No other industry is as self-absorbed, arrogant, insular or in love with
>itself and its products as high tech. And the real tragedy is that a great
>many of our best and brightest citizens, attracted to this industry because
>of its famous and astonishing capacity for creating millionaires, are
>typically lost to the nation as leaders in a more profound and noble sense
>of that word. The vast chasm that exists between leadership in high tech
>and leadership in public affairs is a significant and growing national
>problem. The Microsoft case is the proverbial tip of this iceberg.
>
>Recently we've watched Silicon Valley and other high-tech centers discover
>the public arena, launching lobbying organizations like the Technology
>Network (http://www.technologynetwork.org/), opening corporate offices in
>Washington and donating money to candidates. Microsoft contributed more
>than $500,000 to both Republicans and Democrats in the last year (twice as
>much to the former as the latter).
>
>But in nearly every case when high tech has taken an interest in public
>issues, industry leaders have limited their focus to what is good for their
>bottom lines: protection against shareholder lawsuits, relaxation of
>immigrant worker quotas, education reform oriented toward the production of
>more high-tech workers, getting more computers in schools and increasing
>protections against software piracy, among other themes.
>
>The mission statement of Technology Network, the chief bipartisan lobbying
>group in Silicon Valley, is "to pass federal and state laws that will
>benefit technology enterprises, their employees and investors and foster
>continued growth of the New Economy."
>
>High-tech industry leaders and pundits have let it be known that they
>consider government mostly an unfortunate holdover of previous eras, one
>that is now ill-suited to the world that they, as pioneers of the
>electronic frontier, are creating.
>
>But because it doesn't look like government is going to disappear soon, the
>industry has to deal with the public sector as a source of power, to be
>opposed in some instances and wielded as a tool in others. Thus the
>Microsoft case is mostly an internecine dispute between industry leaders
>themselves, not a landmark case for protecting the public interest.
>
>Retired Army Lt. Gen. Howard Graves, who is setting up the new -- and
>timely -- Center on Ethical Leadership at the LBJ School of Public Affairs
>at the University of Texas, says: "You have to ask these corporate leaders,
>'Where is the vision? What are the values?' " Graves points out that
>enduring U.S. companies "are known for standing for something more than
>profits . . . . There are more stakeholders out there than just
>stockholders."
>
>The main problem is that the wealth generated by the technology revolution
>has transformed both the individuals who have been made wealthy and the
>society in which they live.
>
>Bernard Rapaport, the billionaire CEO of American Income Life Insurance
>Co., wrote recently in the Texas Observer that we're living in an economic
>era "when many of our citizens are increasingly prosperous, yet have begun
>to act like exalted panjandrums or titled sheiks, showing untroubled
>insensitivity to the large underclass all around us."
>
>"This insensitivity -- the public and often even proud indifference -- is
>most especially cruel to the hundreds of thousands of poor and neglected
>American children, born with little chance of advancement in our
>increasingly competitive world."
>
>But inequality appears to be of little interest to most high-tech industry
>leaders, as a recent article in the National Journal, on the link between
>technology and inequality, illustrated. Not one of the high-tech executives
>interviewed for the article expressed any concern about income inequality.
>
>High-tech leaders commonly judge public officials on whether or not they
>"get it" about the importance of technology to the future of the United
>States. But does this mean that public leaders should simply accept that
>their chief constituency should now be the tiny minority of highly skilled
>workaholics who succeed in high tech, while everyone else turns invisible?
>
>Unfortunately, there appear to be politicians willing to bow to such
>suggestions. Newt Gingrich recently visited Washington state, home of
>Microsoft, where he railed against the Justice Department's lawsuit and
>then said, "The purpose of the American government is to strengthen
>American companies in the world market." One might have thought that the
>purpose of American government was far more elevated than this --
>protecting and enhancing democracy and justice, for example.
>
>What the Microsoft antitrust case will obscure, along with so many other
>so-called "trees-instead-of-the-forest" news stories about high tech, is
>that we're living in a new Gilded Age, one with detestable disparities of
>wealth and power that cannot be -- should not be -- sustained over the long
>run.
>
>And we now have an entire generation of affluent, extremely bright,
>well-educated and flourishing citizens who, by their own choosing, are cut
>off from the rewards and obligations and responsibilities of public service
>to the nation. They're too busy, too wealthy, too "techie," too wrapped up
>in the ideology and jargon of high tech and too hooked on money to relate
>to the majority of Americans.
>
>In fact, the people who do the things we all need doing, such as washing
>clothes, serving food, mowing lawns, fixing cars, taking care of children,
>cleaning offices and so on, are increasingly regarded as "losers" in the
>new economy -- and, of course, in pure financial terms, they are losers.
>
>Conservatives are fond these days of flogging the libertine values of the
>'60s, attributing the current crisis in the White House to that era.
>
>But the real crisis in American values is not loose sexual mores but the
>decoupling of our elite and wealthy from the rest of the nation, from their
>responsibilities for public leadership, and from any reasonable constraints
>on power and wealth in a democracy.
>
>We can't put people on trial for these offenses, especially with the blunt
>tool of antitrust law. But we should create an atmosphere of public opinion
>that will insist on responsible behavior and true leadership from those
>among us who are most fortunate, including Bill Gates, Microsoft and
>everyone else in the industry.
>
>Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of
>Texas at Austin. His e-mail address is gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.
>
>   ------------------------------------------
>
>To subscribe to a listserv that forwards copies of Gary Chapman's published
>articles, including his column "Digital Nation" in The Los Angeles Times,
>send mail to:
>
>        listproc@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu
>
>Leave the subject line blank. In the first line of the message, put:
>
>        Subscribe Chapman [First name] [Last name]
>
>Leave out the brackets, just put your name after Chapman.
>
>Send this message.
>
>You'll get a confirmation message back confirming your subscription. This
>message will contain some boilerplate text, generated by the listserv
>software, about passwords, which you should IGNORE. Passwords will not be
>used or required for this listserv.
>
>Mail volume on this listserv is low; expect to get something two or three
>times a month. The list will be used only for forwarding published versions
>of Gary Chapman's articles, or else pointers to URLs for online versions of
>his articles -- nothing else will be sent to the list.
>
>To unsubscribe from the listserv, follow the same instructions above,
>except substitute the word "Unsubscribe" for "Subscribe."
>
>Please feel free to pass along copies of the forwarded articles, but please
>retain the relevant copyright information. Also feel free to pass along
>these instructions for subscribing to the listserv, to anyone who might be
>interested in such material.
>
>Questions should be directed to Gary Chapman at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.
>
>Friends,
>
>Below is my Los Angeles Times column for today, Monday, October 12, 1998.
>As always, please feel free to pass this around but please retain the
>copyright notice.
>
>Hope everyone is doing well. We're finally getting some glorious weather
>here in Austin, and when it's beautiful here there's no better place.
>
>Best,
>
>-- Gary
>
>Gary Chapman
>Director
>The 21st Century Project
>LBJ School of Public Affairs
>Drawer Y, University Station
>University of Texas
>Austin, TX  78713
>(512) 263-1218
>(512) 471-1835 (fax)
>gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu
>http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/21cp
>
>   ------------------------------------------
>
>If you have received this from me, Gary Chapman
>(gary21cp@mail.swbell.net), you are subscribed to the listserv that sends
>out copies of my column in The Los Angeles Times and other published
>articles.
>
>If you wish to UNSUBSCRIBE from this listserv, send mail to
>listproc@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu, leave the subject line blank, and put
>"Unsubscribe Chapman" in the first line of the message.
>
>If you received this message from a source other than me and would like to
>subscribe to the listserv, the instructions for subscribing are at the end
>of the message.
>
>   ------------------------------------------
>
>The Los Angeles Times
>
>Monday, October 12, 1998
>
>DIGITAL NATION
>
>Microsoft Trial Obscures Larger Inequality Issues
>
>By Gary Chapman
>
>Copyright 1998, The Los Angeles Times
>
>The Microsoft antitrust trial scheduled to begin this month will no doubt
>dominate high-tech industry news as an epic and historic battle between
>the dominant company in the Information Age and the U.S. Justice
>Department.
>
>But, like most other news stories about high tech in newspapers, magazines
>and on the World Wide Web, this legal battle obscures deeper problems in
>the relationship between our high-tech companies and the country in which
>they operate.
>
>No other industry is as self-absorbed, arrogant, insular or in love with
>itself and its products as high tech. And the real tragedy is that a great
>many of our best and brightest citizens, attracted to this industry
>because of its famous and astonishing capacity for creating millionaires,
>are typically lost to the nation as leaders in a more profound and noble
>sense of that word. The vast chasm that exists between leadership in high
>tech and leadership in public affairs is a significant and growing
>national problem. The Microsoft case is the proverbial tip of this
>iceberg.
>
>Recently we've watched Silicon Valley and other high-tech centers discover
>the public arena, launching lobbying organizations like the Technology
>Network (http://www.technologynetwork.org/), opening corporate offices in
>Washington and donating money to candidates. Microsoft contributed more
>than $500,000 to both Republicans and Democrats in the last year (twice as
>much to the former as the latter).
>
>But in nearly every case when high tech has taken an interest in public
>issues, industry leaders have limited their focus to what is good for
>their bottom lines: protection against shareholder lawsuits, relaxation of
>immigrant worker quotas, education reform oriented toward the production
>of more high-tech workers, getting more computers in schools and
>increasing protections against software piracy, among other themes.
>
>The mission statement of Technology Network, the chief bipartisan lobbying
>group in Silicon Valley, is "to pass federal and state laws that will
>benefit technology enterprises, their employees and investors and foster
>continued growth of the New Economy."
>
>High-tech industry leaders and pundits have let it be known that they
>consider government mostly an unfortunate holdover of previous eras, one
>that is now ill-suited to the world that they, as pioneers of the
>electronic frontier, are creating.
>
>But because it doesn't look like government is going to disappear soon,
>the industry has to deal with the public sector as a source of power, to
>be opposed in some instances and wielded as a tool in others. Thus the
>Microsoft case is mostly an internecine dispute between industry leaders
>themselves, not a landmark case for protecting the public interest.
>
>Retired Army Lt. Gen. Howard Graves, who is setting up the new -- and
>timely -- Center on Ethical Leadership at the LBJ School of Public Affairs
>at the University of Texas, says: "You have to ask these corporate
>leaders, 'Where is the vision? What are the values?' " Graves points out
>that enduring U.S. companies "are known for standing for something more
>than profits . . . . There are more stakeholders out there than just
>stockholders."
>
>The main problem is that the wealth generated by the technology revolution
>has transformed both the individuals who have been made wealthy and the
>society in which they live.
>
>Bernard Rapaport, the billionaire CEO of American Income Life Insurance
>Co., wrote recently in the Texas Observer that we're living in an economic
>era "when many of our citizens are increasingly prosperous, yet have begun
>to act like exalted panjandrums or titled sheiks, showing untroubled
>insensitivity to the large underclass all around us."
>
>"This insensitivity -- the public and often even proud indifference -- is
>most especially cruel to the hundreds of thousands of poor and neglected
>American children, born with little chance of advancement in our
>increasingly competitive world."
>
>But inequality appears to be of little interest to most high-tech industry
>leaders, as a recent article in the National Journal, on the link between
>technology and inequality, illustrated. Not one of the high-tech
>executives interviewed for the article expressed any concern about income
>inequality.
>
>High-tech leaders commonly judge public officials on whether or not they
>"get it" about the importance of technology to the future of the United
>States. But does this mean that public leaders should simply accept that
>their chief constituency should now be the tiny minority of highly skilled
>workaholics who succeed in high tech, while everyone else turns invisible?
>
>
>Unfortunately, there appear to be politicians willing to bow to such
>suggestions. Newt Gingrich recently visited Washington state, home of
>Microsoft, where he railed against the Justice Department's lawsuit and
>then said, "The purpose of the American government is to strengthen
>American companies in the world market." One might have thought that the
>purpose of American government was far more elevated than this --
>protecting and enhancing democracy and justice, for example.
>
>What the Microsoft antitrust case will obscure, along with so many other
>so-called "trees-instead-of-the-forest" news stories about high tech, is
>that we're living in a new Gilded Age, one with detestable disparities of
>wealth and power that cannot be -- should not be -- sustained over the
>long run.
>
>And we now have an entire generation of affluent, extremely bright,
>well-educated and flourishing citizens who, by their own choosing, are cut
>off from the rewards and obligations and responsibilities of public
>service to the nation. They're too busy, too wealthy, too "techie," too
>wrapped up in the ideology and jargon of high tech and too hooked on money
>to relate to the majority of Americans.
>
>In fact, the people who do the things we all need doing, such as washing
>clothes, serving food, mowing lawns, fixing cars, taking care of children,
>cleaning offices and so on, are increasingly regarded as "losers" in the
>new economy -- and, of course, in pure financial terms, they are losers.
>
>Conservatives are fond these days of flogging the libertine values of the
>'60s, attributing the current crisis in the White House to that era.
>
>But the real crisis in American values is not loose sexual mores but the
>decoupling of our elite and wealthy from the rest of the nation, from
>their responsibilities for public leadership, and from any reasonable
>constraints on power and wealth in a democracy.
>
>We can't put people on trial for these offenses, especially with the blunt
>tool of antitrust law. But we should create an atmosphere of public
>opinion that will insist on responsible behavior and true leadership from
>those among us who are most fortunate, including Bill Gates, Microsoft and
>everyone else in the industry.
>
>Gary Chapman is director of the 21st Century Project at the University of
>Texas at Austin. His e-mail address is gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.
>
>
>   ------------------------------------------
>
>To subscribe to a listserv that forwards copies of Gary Chapman's
>published articles, including his column "Digital Nation" in The Los
>Angeles Times, send mail to:
>
>        listproc@mcfeeley.cc.utexas.edu
>
>Leave the subject line blank. In the first line of the message, put:
>
>        Subscribe Chapman [First name] [Last name]
>
>Leave out the brackets, just put your name after Chapman.
>
>Send this message.
>
>You'll get a confirmation message back confirming your subscription. This
>message will contain some boilerplate text, generated by the listserv
>software, about passwords, which you should IGNORE. Passwords will not be
>used or required for this listserv.
>
>Mail volume on this listserv is low; expect to get something two or three
>times a month. The list will be used only for forwarding published
>versions of Gary Chapman's articles, or else pointers to URLs for online
>versions of his articles -- nothing else will be sent to the list.
>
>To unsubscribe from the listserv, follow the same instructions above,
>except substitute the word "Unsubscribe" for "Subscribe."
>
>Please feel free to pass along copies of the forwarded articles, but
>please retain the relevant copyright information. Also feel free to pass
>along these instructions for subscribing to the listserv, to anyone who
>might be interested in such material.
>
>Questions should be directed to Gary Chapman at gary.chapman@mail.utexas.edu.
>

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