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Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

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Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#211

Post by santaclaus »

touchofevil wrote: post #168
nsxwolf wrote: post #105

Middle America is not too keen on your "basic income" solution to all the problems you are creating. It brings to mind a future of living in a 300 square foot government apartment in some hideous Brutalist concrete block of a building, eating our daily Amazon rations, knowing that's just how life is going to be, forever, no need to have dreams anymore. There will be torches and pitchforks coming for you.

Middle America generally lives in the suburbs and does not interact with homeless people everyday who are dying on the streets in front of them like those who live in SF, LA, and NYC do. Basic Income is meant as a "floor" that those people will not be able to fall below.

> with homeless people everyday who are dying on the streets in front of them like those who live in SF, LA, and NYC do

You see very few homeless people on street or in trains, and zero tents, in NYC. Its kind of strange -- NYC has a larger homeless population than SF no matter how you slice it (total count, per capita, per square foot) but the issue seems way worse in the major California cities.

I have friends who visit Oakland from NYC and are amazed at the Mad Max quality of the Bay Area.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#212

Post by ng12 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #181
nsxwolf wrote: post #105

Middle America is not too keen on your "basic income" solution to all the problems you are creating. It brings to mind a future of living in a 300 square foot government apartment in some hideous Brutalist concrete block of a building, eating our daily Amazon rations, knowing that's just how life is going to be, forever, no need to have dreams anymore. There will be torches and pitchforks coming for you.

> Middle America is not too keen on your "basic income" solution to all the problems you are creating. It brings to mind a future of living in a 300 square foot government apartment in some hideous Brutalist concrete block of a building, eating our daily Amazon rations, knowing that's just how life is going to be, forever, no need to have dreams anymore. Except that all of those things are the exact opposite of what…

And what happens when we inevitably converge on a price point where BI only buys you a concrete block and government cheese?

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#214

Post by jnbiche »

austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

I think you underestimate how much this whole Russian fake news during and after the election has angered many Americans (at least outside of the ~30% of hard-core Trump supporters).

Facebook was already on a lot of people's shit list because they know they're the product, they know their privacy isn't respected, and yet they can't keep in touch with their friends without it. This direct attack on our democracy mounted via Facebook and other social media, while they performed no meaningful monitoring or self-policing of their own network, has made the situation all the worse.

So blame all of this on "old media" to your detriment. Bitter complaints about Facebook and other social media pervade far beyond the media.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#215

Post by kevmo »

noonespecial wrote: post #187
kevmo wrote: post #82

The overlords of Silicon Valley need to do a bit more to turn America's best minds towards solving serious social problems. Personal anecdote: Right now, I am building software that automates the process of filing super-simple Chapter 7 bankruptcies. We give the product away for free.[1] Technologically, this is a really straightforward problem and solution: You just collect some documents and fill out a long questio…

That is a really cool idea. Make sure to do a Show HN on the Monday morning after you launch.

Thanks! Will do. We applied to YC Winter 2018 batch - waiting to hear if we got an interview.

WSJ profiled us last month if you're interested in reading more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-struggling-consumers-a-chea...

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#216

Post by wutbrodo »

sidlls wrote: post #72
austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It's more like they tolerate the 500 pound gorilla in the room because there isn't an alternative. Non-techies I associate with constantly complain about the poor quality of software, hardware (even Apple's devices, which regularly freeze and fail in all the ways any others might) and support. It's the best we have. It doesn't mean it's good, or that peop…

The non techies I associate with are intelligent enough to understand that they can buy a dumbphone like a Jitterbug if they don't like the downsides of the complexity of a smartphone, and that they get substantially more value out of the upsides than losses from the downsides. This shakes out to them being a lot more excited and optimistic and rosy about technology and technology companies.

Especially when I worked at Google: every non tech person I met would gush over how much they loved their products, how amazing the company must be, etc etc. This was true across a large gamut of people, from "coastal elites" to the rest of the country to people I met across the world once I quit Google and went backpacking for almost a year.

The _only_ place I've seen the level of cynicism you find on this forum is from people _in_ tech, too bitter and concerned with looking cool to even entertain the notion that there could be anything valuable about what these products do for people's lives.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#217

Post by vasilipupkin »

mixedbit wrote: post #104
vasilipupkin wrote: post #13

this article is so nonsensical, it's almost comical, I don't even know where to start. Ok, how about calling it a problem that 19 out of 20 investments will fail. Willing to invest like that is a great thing about SV, not a bad thing!

19 of 20 investments fail because VCs equate success with > 1B$ valuation. Among the failed companies there are plenty that produce great and useful products but need to shut down because the VC deals forced them to grow to unsustainable size.

ok, but those 19 investments didn't have to take VC money. if they produced great and useful products, then why couldn't they grow organically, borrow from a bank, etc.? I mean it's just complete nonsense to complain about the fact that you failed using someone else's money.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#218

Post by unclebucknasty »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #99
austenallred wrote: post #24

People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Ask the average person what brands and products they like and use the most (or just look at the data on where and how they spend their time and money) and you’ll see that Silicon Valley is doing just fine in the eyes of the populace. In fact, Silicon Valley has never been more influential. Ask people to go to a world without iPh…

> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Respectfully, this may be a biased perspective. Are you in SV? Because there are many non-media people outside of SV who don't share your enthusiasm. > I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money. I think some consider it audacious and see a certain cynicism in it,…

Note to non-commenting down-voters: Down-votes are just bits in a database. Down-voting doesn't actually have the power to alter reality.

Carry on.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#219

Post by ihm »

santaclaus wrote: post #211
touchofevil wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle America generally lives in the suburbs and does not interact with homeless people everyday who are dying on the streets in front of them like those who live in SF, LA, and NYC do. Basic Income is meant as a "floor" that those people will not be able to fall below.

> with homeless people everyday who are dying on the streets in front of them like those who live in SF, LA, and NYC do You see very few homeless people on street or in trains, and zero tents, in NYC. Its kind of strange -- NYC has a larger homeless population than SF no matter how you slice it (total count, per capita, per square foot) but the issue seems way worse in the major California cities. I have friends who…

There are no tents, but you definitely see plenty of homeless people on the street or sleeping in trains in NYC. It does feel less dystopian somehow than SF though.

Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you

#220

Post by aylmao »

s73ver_ wrote: post #200
api wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of the endless ghettoes of William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy (Neuromancer, etc.) where people are basically warehoused and left to jack into "simstim" and rot. In reality the pitchforks will come out as you say and this endless ghetto will be paired with a total surveillance police state to contain the angry aimless masses. Perhaps not coincidentally this is exactly what Silicon Valley seems to be buildin…

"It's basically consigning the bulk of humanity to the status of "surplus flesh."" It only does that if a recipient decides to do nothing but sit on their ass. Otherwise, it provides the opportunity to explore things that one wouldn't have the time to do if they were spending most of their day laboring to afford food and housing. "Options 3, 4, 5, and 6 would employ quite a few people." Would they? Or would robots be…

> It only does that if a recipient decides to do nothing but sit on their ass. Otherwise, it provides the opportunity to explore things that one wouldn't have the time to do if they were spending most of their day laboring to afford food and housing.

Regardless of wether I do nothing or go out and explore, it would mean I'm not essential. Working is not only about the money; is about finding a place in a community and having some sense of identity and purpose.

> Would they? Or would robots be doing most of that work?

Could be either, as necessary.

> Work how?

Work on the projects he listed

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