“users” happen to be illegal drug dealers and tech companies. This dehumanizing language creates the ability to enjoy “user numbers” and dollars coming into the business without taking much responsibility for the human element behind the users. This is an important starting point, and we will see how it plays out in many ways throughout the book. The nation-state is supposed to care about the humanity of its population, whereas the tech-state can comfortably work with users, which creates an emotional detachment. After all, they are just numbers.
It's important to mention that none of the tech-state companies may be doing this out of malice. It started as a benign tweak, but that dehumanizing language has now morphed into a larger problem. Tech-states can get away with this dehumanizing approach to business, and the abuse of the planet in general, because of their enormous power and influence over most nation-states. After all, providing meaningful oversight is increasingly difficult because power has shifted.
Opaque Employee Mistreatment
At the risk of offending some of my readers, I would like to draw some parallels between the tech-state and a pimp. A pimp is a person who controls sex workers and arranges clients for them, taking part of their earnings in return. A pimp knows his workers well, but does not always treat them well. A pimp knows how many tricks each worker can turn each night.
A pimp knows how long each worker can work before they are burnt out, essentially treating people like cars, like objects. After all, there will be plenty of other workers in line for the job. Replace the word “pimp” with “tech-state” and “sex worker” with “employee,” and you'll perhaps agree that the analogy holds strong.
They may not say so explicitly, but most tech-state companies (although not all of them) treat their workers like throw-away commodities. At companies like Amazon, some workers stay on the clock continuously to the point that they have no bathroom breaks. The company recently admitted that workers sometimes “urinate in water bottles” (Pocan, 2021) while they are out and about delivering packages. The workers are numb to the mistreatment because they are grateful to have a job, which, as an Amazon warehouse worker noted, is essential in order to put food on the table (Matsakis, 2020).
Tech-state companies often use the loophole of utilizing “contractors” to avoid paying people full benefits. In 2018, Google's contract workers outnumbered direct employees for the first time in the company's 20-year history. In San Mateo and Santa Clara counties alone, where most tech-states have headquarters, there are an estimated 39,000 workers who are contracted to tech companies, according to one estimate by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz (Sheng, 2018).
Repetitive stress injuries are an epidemic but are rarely reported. These include carpal tunnel syndrome or pain in the wrists, thumbs, hands, or forearms. Sometimes it's the overexertion injuries, which happen because heavy lifting on the job can cause neck and lower back pain. In 2015, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited a New Jersey Amazon warehouse for exposing workers to risk factors that included stress from continuous bending and repetitious exertions and prolonged standing during long shifts (Schibell & Mennie LLC, 2021).
These people are viewed as expendable. After all, tech-state knows that when one person leaves, there are plenty of people knocking at the door looking to do that same job.
As another example of tech-state companies keeping their workers down, Amazon has vehemently opposed its workers unionizing. Amazon's relentless push to beat back a union drive among warehouse workers mirrors the company's past efforts to oppose unions in Seattle, New York, Canada, and the United Kingdom (Greene, 2021). A unified voice could give workers power, which the company likely sees as a threat. Some companies have even been rumored to have gone as far as blacklisting and firing people who engaged in unionizing behavior that is deemed unacceptable.
Borrowing a page from the scare tactics used in the construction industry, in 2009 the union “Unite in the UK” took a case to the High Court after names were found in a file compiled by the Consulting Association, which was raided. More than 3,000 people were on the blacklist, often for being a union member or for raising safety issues (BBC News, 2009). This intimidation in construction or tech thwarts any internal attempts at organizing the workers within the company.
Tech-state companies may not always treat their workers well, but they do take good care of their users and shareholders. “Users” are the customers who pay for the product. “Customer is king,” they say. They know that without the customer they have no company. That's why they care. Shareholders are the investors and other entities who own a stake in the company. They care about shareholders, because without them they have no investment to grow the company. If only they applied this same thinking to their employees and to our planet, the world would be a better place. Because a dead planet is not a good place to run a business.
Money and Power in Politics
Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other companies like them spend a lot of money on lobbying, political donations, and other forms of cozying up to political leaders, to the point that those tasked with keeping them in check are held hostage by the donations from the founders and the companies themselves.
For these companies, it starts with money, which gives them power, which buys them political leaders via donations and other forms of lobbying. This leads to control and influence over the government, which makes it very difficult to pass any meaningful regulation that would keep these companies in check.
Eight men have the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam that marks the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos (Oxfam America, 2017). The report, “An economy for the 99 percent,” shows that the gap between rich and poor is far greater than had been feared. It details how big business and the super-rich are fueling the inequality crisis by dodging taxes, driving down wages, and using their power to influence politics to their advantage.
In places where tech-states have not been able to buy their way into the political system, they will sometimes threaten to leave the region when there are attempts to regulate them. Because of these companies' outsized ability to create jobs and provide services, they still wield a lot of power.
As an example, Elon Musk threatened to move Tesla headquarters out of California at the beginning of 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions. In fact, Tesla ended up suing state authorities over lockdown after the Fremont factory was stopped from reopening (Reuters, 2020). Keep in mind that these regulations applied to everyone and every company, big and small. Tesla sued local authorities in California and pushed to reopen its factory. They threatened to move the company's headquarters to Texas or Nevada, where regulators are looser. Tesla did end up moving to Texas. At the end of 2020, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that he had moved to Texas and was rapidly relocating his California-based business empire to the Lone Star State. With a new Tesla factory under construction and two increasingly busy SpaceX facilities in the state, it was not unexpected news (Cao, 2020)
Another example happened in 2019, when Amazon canceled its plans to build its second headquarters in New York after battling with activists and union leaders (Goodman, 2019).
It's becoming increasingly difficult for legislators to regulate any tech-state companies, because of their sheer oversized influence. It's not hyperbole to say that, as of this writing, a handful of tech-state companies are in control, and not the nation-state or government. Here are some examples to back up this statement:
In 2018, the European Parliament summoned Mark Zuckerberg as the CEO of Facebook to testify in a parliamentary hearing. He was a
