throwaway75311
Some anecdotes: on privacy, Schmidt famously said "if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place". So CNET reporters published some of his personal information found through Google searches to demonstrate the need for privacy that he was denying to us peasants. Instead of reconsidering his position, he blacklisted CNET from speaking to Google.
In 2017 a think tank working on tech praised the European Commission's legal decision to fine Google for abusing its market power. Schmidt used his personal influence to have the author of the report fired from the think tank.
See also Assange's report: "Schmidt's world view equates progress with the geographic expansion of Google, supported by the US State Department – technocratic imperialism."
On tax, Schmidt has claimed that Google's tax avoidance is "capitalism" and that he is "very proud of it".
A personal anecdote: I remember Schmidt starting a conversation with a room of people barely making a living by discussing his latest vacation in the Caribbeans and how big his yacht was. He did not even consider that this could be perceived as rude or obscene. It was painfully obvious that to him these extreme levels of inequality are natural and perfectly justified, with himself on the right side of course.
He considers himself very bright. There is some evidence that he his slightly above average. But if you look at some of his strategic decisions, politically before Trump he bet all in on Clinton, positioning Alphabet very close to the Democrats. To a technocrat like him Clinton's victory was obvious. Of course he got things entirely wrong and completely missed the Trump populist backlash, which put Alphabet in a very difficult position politically for several years.
Schmidt is the embodiment of the modern technocratic elite, respects only power and money, complete spite and disregard for common people, entirely alien to the mere concept of common good or actual democracy, and absolute confidence that today's inequalities are perfectly natural, despite his own position being much more a consequence of his sociopathic tendencies than of his slightly above average skills, praising capitalism and liberalism while he got rich and powerful largely through monopolistic market dominance.
Of all the dim technocratic billionaires that pass for our so-called elite today, he is the one I despise the most.