Is Silicon Valley supporting the $15 Minwage from compassion or self interest?

The most enthusiastic implementers of a 'far above market' (aka $15 minimum wage) have been the centers of high tech and finance, principally in California, Washington State and New York. And they've done so in the face of negative outcomes and near unanimous opposition from the Economics profession.

Why? Could it be that these governments are simply acting in their dominant industry's interests? Because ultra high minimum wages are clearly driving massive adoption of robotics and automation across low wage industries.

Have the Tech Oligarchs and their Wall Street Investors simply decided to target a chunk of lower income America's earnings as a new growth area? And are the $15 laws that they pass at home and promote across the country just strategies designed to accelerate their paydays?

Perhaps the logic is that the profits from automating away a chunk of the working poor will far exceed the excess taxes they will have to pay to provide those people with government support. Particularly when you remember that Tech companies and their Wall Street investors pay virtually no income taxes. And when you remember that Silicon Valley are big supporters of a Federally provided minimum income.

And since they don't necessarily subscribe to the traditional American morality that  recognizes the poor's need for work and purpose, do they just look upon them as 'poorly adapted' members of the species that must be cared for?

I don't know. Because absent a big payday for the power elite in these communities it doesn't seem to be rational to have public policy accelerate the idling of a solid chunk of the industrious poor. Or to accelerate the eradication of the first rungs on the career ladder for many Americans. It also runs in direct contradiction to the Oligarch's promotion of open borders if all they are going to do is automate away the jobs they are luring people here for.

Much of this will happen anyway but why speed up the chaos and the pain that targets the least of us? Why drive the price of their labor so high that businesses are forced to get rid of them in large numbers now?  It seems so self serving and narcissistic of the Oligarchs.  And where are the politicians in these communities who are supposed to be standing up for the 'little' guys and against powerful interests?

Is it (to paraphrase the Who): Meet the New Robber Barons, just like the Old Robber Barons?