Mike Monteiro, co-founder and design director of Mule Design, has a new book called Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It. He posted a sample chapter from the book, about Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand’s influence on Silicon Valley. He’s a funny writer!
Welcome to Silicon Valley. A libertarian stronghold at the very end of America. (Literally.) Silicon Valley, and specifically the venture capital firms of Silicon Valley, are mostly run by old white men who read Ayn Rand in high school, thought it was great, and never changed their minds. (This is where I need to be fair and let you know that not all venture capitalists are monsters. In fact, I’m friends with a few who are lovely people. They are very much the exceptions. Also, every VC who reads this book will think this parenthetical is about them.) In the words of the late great Ann Richards, they were, “born on third base and think they hit a triple.”
For those of you not familiar with Ayn Rand, she wrote crappy books about the power of individual achievement while she collected social security and started some pseudo-philosophy called “objectivism”, which can be summed up in five words: I got mine, fuck you. The old white men of Silicon Valley all have giant Ayn Rand back tattoos. (Look, it’s a chapter about venture capitalism inside an ethics book. I gotta tell a joke once in a while, for all our benefit.)
Image: Ruined by Design