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In The New Class Conflict, Joel Kotkin argues that the socially and politically ascendant groups in contemporary America are the oligarchs of Silicon Valley and a complex of elite journalists, think-tank pundits, and academics that he dubs the clerisy. The nouveaux riches of the tech world are increasingly intent on remaking society in accordance with their own passions, reports Kotkin, an urban studies scholar at Chapman University. The clerisy, meanwhile, promotes and provides ideological legitimation for elite goals. The effect of the two groups' efforts, he concludes, is to concentrate wealth and power in a shrinking number of hands, leaving the middle class stranded and subject to ever more evident economic decline.
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Thus, for example, tech leaders press a green agenda whose elements include support for mass transit and opposition to suburban living. Such policies implement the oligarchs' moral and æsthetic preferences, and sometimes they create business opportunities for the oligarchs' class (as when they invest in and promote putatively green technologies). But the same policies pose risks for the well-being of many ordinary people, by constricting their options and limiting their access to resources.
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Similarly, while Bill Gates may call for higher taxes on the rich, many tech firms (Kotkin points to Twitter and Apple) seem quite happy to ensure that tax burdens fall not on them but on the middle class. (Gates's own Microsoft, for instance, has "shaved nearly $7 billion off its U.S. tax bill since 2009 by using loopholes to shift profits offshore.")

Despite its social liberalism, Kotkin suggests, the tech industry is visibly focused on business models in which disregard for privacy is central.
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Read more at: http://reason.com/archives/2014/09/20/who-rules-america