The idea that this involves a conflict between the old liberals and new libertarians does not make sense because in reality both the newcomers and old timers are really more ideologically similar to one another than that (e.g., both groups are environmentalists).
In fact, one person in the article identified a reward system based on talent and effort -- meritocracy -- as the central value of the tech industry.
"Silicon Valley hasn’t really known how to describe its political ideology,” a thirty-one-year-old entrepreneur named Joe Green told me a few weeks ago. “You have strains of libertarianism, strains of progressivism, pretty universally socially liberal.”
“What I realized along the way,” he went on, “was that there actually was an ideology”—a mixture of causes, playing to the tech industry’s appetite for highly trained experts, that he’s taken to calling “the knowledge-economy agenda.” He focussed on two issues, immigration reform and education reform, that the entire industry could rally around, and has managed to inspire political sentiments where previously there seemed to be none. “If there’s anything that reflects the spirit of the Valley, it’s having a meritocracy, and the idea that anyone should be able to rise up through the system,” Green said.
But it could be argued that the belief in meritocracy is something that virtually all Americans subscribe to across the American ideological spectrum (a spectrum that is actually very narrow compared to other countries, at least before Sanders and Trump became popular).
So
the differences between old-timers and newcomers in San Francisco might
be understood more accurately in economic rather than ideological terms
-- liberal yuppies getting priced out by incoming liberal millionaires
and billionaires.
Let's look to San Francisco's past for a precedent for this.
From the 2000 census, here is a map of the United States by state and county, illustrating the population in terms of predominant ancestry (ethnicity).
The state map in the corner right shows that the population of the northern United States is predominantly of German origin (light blue).
The southwestern US is predominantly Mexican (pink).
The lower southeastern US -- the "Deep South" -- is predominantly African American (deep purple).
The upper southeast is predominantly self-described as "American" (light yellow). These are basically white Americans whose ancestry goes back so far that they do not know their origins (probably English and Scottish mixed in with Native American and African). (The South was settled before the North.)
The northeastern US is predominantly English, Irish and Italian.
Now look at the main map, of counties.
Look at California.
Northern Cali is predominantly German, southern Cali is predominantly Mexican.
A few counties vary from this pattern. On the eastern border, a couple of counties are English, and one county is American Indian (orange).
Now look at the Bay Area of northern California.
Oakland is African American.
But west of that, San Francisco proper -- San Francisco County and City -- is Irish (purple).
Despite what most people think of San Francisco today, San Francisco has historically been working class and Irish Catholic.
When most people think of Irish Americans, they think of Boston.
But as Ken Burns pointed out on his PBS series on Irish Americans, the two most important Irish-influenced cities in the US are Albany, New York (the seat of government) and Butte, Montana (the focus of labor unrest in the western US). (Boston is really ruled by old-time WASPs, which might include the Kennedy dynasty, who "real" east-coast Irish Americans dislike.)
The point is, the history of San Francisco since the 1960s involves outsiders pushing out the locals, who were/are working-class liberals. But there are no long articles in the New Yorker about that.
Also, long before that, Irish Americans in California were instrumental in pushing out the Chinese with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. No one raised a fuss about that.
The Irish also used their ties and connections to gain power in the
unions and subsequently exclude non-Irish workers. With the demise of
the Gold Rush and the completion of the transcontinental railroad, both
Irish and Chinese workers became unemployed. With competition for jobs
greater, Irish-led unions stirred up resentment and discrimination
against the Chinese, with Dennis Kearny, leader of the Workingman's Party of California, raising the cry of "The Chinese must go!"
