Wendy Liu > Quotes

“Creating derivative software to help brands better understand their customers seemed like a poor use of my limited time on this burning planet.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“Our current understanding of entrepreneurship is deeply saturated in power-hungry capitalist greed, leading to undemocratic control of the technological infrastructure that underpins our lives — not to mention massively wasteful economic inequality. Whatever merits the existing system of private entrepreneurship may have had, we’re now brushing up against its limits, and it’s time to consider something new.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“Capitalism is one of those words with a highly contested definition: how you define it is a function of your stance toward it. So even venturing a definition requires navigating tricky political terrain. For my analysis, I’ll take as a starting point a straightforward definition: a mode of production in which actors are driven by the accumulation of capital, which is made possible through private ownership of the means of production.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“Abolishing Silicon Valley doesn’t mean halting the development of technology. It means devising a new way to develop technology which fulfils technology’s transformative potential.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“But I also believe that technology has greater potential than the mundane, profit-seeking ventures to which it has been relegated under the current system.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“An analytical framework was coalescing in my mind, and I was starting to comprehend what I had once thought would always be incomprehensible.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“In a way, it’s not fair that the onus should be on workers to take the risks necessary to enact change — and especially not the industry’s newcomers, who may have the most to lose. It shouldn’t be their responsibility to ensure that their company behaves ethically. And yet, we can’t simply leave this crucial task to the people who currently have the power to change things, no matter how lofty their public statements about ensuring the future of humanity.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“(Never did we ask ourselves if our vision of dominance over the ecosystem was good for anyone else. Societal good was never our framework. All we cared about was how we could dominate, with our technology being a means to the end of extracting rent from every transaction.)”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“Boycotts can be highly inconvenient for customers; after all, some companies have flourished precisely because it would be hard not to use them.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“And yet it would be naive to think that meritocracy worked for everybody just because it worked for me. Not everybody had the opportunity to climb the ladder, and in any case the terms of that climb were arbitrary, based on what was most advantageous to the people in charge. How appalling to find self-assurance through the perceived inferiority of others.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“What was the point of all that wealth and power if they refused to use it when it mattered?”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“In the course of my four-year computer science degree, I never had to take a single class on anything remotely resembling ethics. None of my homework assignments were meant to help me navigate the fraught gendered and racialised dynamics of applying for jobs or negotiating salaries. And none of my textbooks explained why I should feel good about making six figures writing proprietary software for a multi-billion-dollar corporation when an increasing number of my neighbours were being made homeless.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I have found a theoretical framework that helps me understand the gap between the world I live in and the world I want to live in.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“It’s an understandable impulse. If the economy is working for you, it’s comforting to believe that your success came through your excelling within a reasonable system.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“But this is 2019, and we’re in the epicentre of technocapitalism; opportunities to provide useful services for the public good are quickly snatched up by tech companies in the pursuit of profit.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“The problem is the structure in which decision-making power rests with such a small group of people, with such a small window for accountability.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“This book is meant for those whose belief has started to evaporate, and who are now thirsting for a narrative that speaks to their disillusionment. I write for those who are currently not in power, in the hopes that they’ll see the world differently, and from there go on to be part of something I could never have imagined on my own. The”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“hit me that the clue was in the name — capitalism was literally designed to prioritise the rights of capital over the rights of workers. I couldn’t believe it took me until I was nearly a quarter-century old to figure that out.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“What’s more, it wasn’t clear to me that organising the world’s information should be the provenance of a for-profit company, rather than a democratic effort outside the purview of the profit motive”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“Technology should never simply be foisted on them to help their employer extract more value from their labour; the technology should grant workers agency, and its aim should be making workers’ lives better. Workers need substantial say over the development of any new technology to be introduced in the workplace, and they should be actively involved in its design, in order to ensure that it fits their own needs. Technology that only serves the needs of management, rather than workers, should not be deployed at all.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“Profit should be treated as a sign that the system is in need of correction. Where it arises, it should be redirected to workers, reinvested in better service, or in the last instance, taxed, in order to channel”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“just wasn’t totally convinced that what was bad for corporations was necessarily bad for society. On”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“course, whether this aim is valuable is a highly contested matter. Any attempt to challenge capital should expect resistance. Diminishing the power of capital would mean diminishing the power of those who currently serve as capital’s agents, and they’ve gotten used to the fruits of that power; they will use all the formidable tactics at their disposal to maintain their illegitimate grip. Change is won through struggle, not ideas alone, and it won’t be easy. On the other hand, doing nothing isn’t really an alternative when that means languishing in a rotting status quo.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“keep coming back to this: it’s all the same money. Each dollar of VC funding for another useless startup in an already crowded space is the same legal tender that allows or denies someone access to housing, food, insulin.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“institutionalised social order”4 that governs not only the accumulation of capital itself, but also the noneconomic background conditions which make capital accumulation possible. Capitalism requires a particular social arrangement which takes advantage of divisions that predate capitalism, including those based on race, gender, geography, and other accidents of birth.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“The logic of the market is to encourage self-interest in the belief that the invisible hand will make everything right, on the grounds that economic activity is a good in itself. But the measurements we use for the health of the economy — GDP growth, unemployment rates, stock market capitalisations — are not themselves infused with ethical values, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that they are a poor proxy for tracking societal wellbeing.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“What was the point of allowing individuals to amass such wealth if they didn’t use it to help others?”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“But even as an amateur coder prone to undercharging, I could make a hundred dollars in a day doing freelance work over the Internet.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“didn’t know how to bring up at all: the monotony, the drudgery, the dread that if I worked a 9-5 at a big company then that work would be all that I was. The fear that wanting more would be conceited.”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

“Why was this company so afraid of public criticism? Developing technology in a bubble seemed like a recipe for disaster when people around the world were depending on Google’s products —”
― Wendy Liu, Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism