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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

#221

Post by leggomylibro »

shoefly wrote: post #78

The small midwestern town from which I hail is rotting. The residents could never afford the luxuries flowing here in the valley. They are angry. They are huge Trump supporters. They don't want handouts. They want jobs. They want to contribute. They don't want to leave their homes. They are stuck.

>They don't want handouts. They want jobs. They want to contribute. They don't want to leave their homes.

Well, they can't have everything. A big part of why America has historically had social and economic mobility is because it also had literal mobility; people willing to go where the work is.

What I hear when I read this is, "they want someone to come along and hand them a stable well-paying job." And who doesn't? But we live in the real world.

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

#222

Post by dna_polymerase »

ng12 wrote: post #212
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The idea behind BI is that you can still work, but if you don't work you still get to live. If you want more than the concrete block - fine. Go do something and earn money, but if not just STFU and live with what you get.

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

#223

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ng12 wrote: post #212
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Housing projects and government cheese aren't terrible because they're inexpensive. The government spends a ridiculous amount of money on them. They're terrible because the buyer is the bureaucracy instead of the consumer. Which is a thing the UBI fixes.

If you have a UBI then you don't have to buy cheese. You can buy beans, pasta, carrots, potatoes, rice, bananas, it's your choice.

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

#224

Post by aylmao »

bogomipz wrote: post #111
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." No, your average non-techie consumer knows and cares very little about Silicon Valley. People like convenience and innovation that leads to convenience in their lives. There is no transitive property where if I "love" ride-sharing I "love" Uber's leadership, business tactics and company culture. >"Ask people to go to a world without iPhones, Facebook, Go…

This. So much this.

Companies love to think that people "love them" but truth is people like to use their products. I'd say people often dislike the company, but will buy the product anyway because that's what they care about.

Everyone has heard about Apple's douchey tax business, Google and Facebook's extreme data-collection, Amazon's aggressive business practices, etc. I'm not in "love" with any of these brands by a long shot. But we keep using them because we need their products to some degree.

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

#225

Post by reaperducer »

austenallred wrote: post #194
reaperducer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People generally do love Silicon Valley and what it creates. It’s the media that doesn’t. Don't blame the messenger. "The media" is a reflection of the people. Not only is it made up of, largely, ordinary people; it spends billions of dollars each year to find out what ordinary people think, want, and feel. It tracks their lives in ways that companies like Google could only dream of, and is sitting on almost a cent…

> "The media" is a reflection of the people. Not only is it made up of, largely, ordinary people; it spends billions of dollars each year to find out what ordinary people think, want, and feel. Looking at the last election as an obvious example, I don’t think media is a good barometer at all for how most people feel.

You're confusing "the media" with a selection of news organizations that exist in their own echo chambers (a discussion for another time). "The media" is a lot broader than cable TV talking heads.

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

#226

Post by poulsbohemian »

reaperducer wrote: post #202
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.

That used to be true, but the nation's very poor live mostly in the suburbs and rural parts of the country now. It shifted about 20 years ago. You can't go anywhere without encountering desperately poor people these days.

This is true. I live in a 30,000 person town in rural America that is a popular tourist destination for upper middle class types. Despite the cold winters, there is a surprising amount of homelessness - the city finally set up a camp area because they were concerned with the visibility to the tourists. Apart from a handful of white collar jobs (a small college, a hospital, a couple law offices), everything else is just above minimum wage, meaning even if you aren't homeless, there is limited mobility. Thankfully real estate is still very affordable, but as coastal cities push more people out of the market, even that is changing, as people move inland to find something cheaper.

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

#227

Post by matt_wulfeck »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #222
ng12 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The idea behind BI is that you can still work, but if you don't work you still get to live. If you want more than the concrete block - fine. Go do something and earn money, but if not just STFU and live with what you get.

You realize that with our current entitlement programs that if you don’t work you still “get to live” right? There’s all sorts of safety nets, and many normal people use them.

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

#229

Post by floatrock »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #210
aylmao wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A different approach, one in which people can still work to get paid, but wages are reasonable. Fulfillment is not all about the money and what you can buy with it. It's about feeling that your'e serving some purpose, and there's value to what you do.

That's what a universal basic income does . It lets the person whose labor is only worth $3/hour take a $3/hour job and still not starve to death.

I sympathize with the sentiment, but I think your statement could be misread as overly harsh.

I would emphasize that money solves all problems measured in money, but humans care about things not measured in money. So faced with a janitorial job making minimum wage $13/hr or a volunteer gig that can only afford a $3/hr stipend, it lets the person take the job that pays more in ways not necessarily measured in money -- it some evolved enlightened form of capitalism that frees us from the serfdom of capitalism itself or some such aggrandization nonsense.

But we've been dreaming about the cultured and creative paradise that only a life formed solely on the unlocked potential of leisure could afford since the dawn of the industrial age, so shrug Maaaaybe this time is different...

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

#230

Post by jklein11 »

ivraatiems wrote: post #77
Clubber wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem with them is that Juciero was an immensely dumb idea that was never checked or questioned and thereby wasted tons of money Like bottled water. The idea of people paying 1600x markup for something they got essentially free while creating massive amounts of waste when sports bottles already existed. When bottled water came out, I remember thinking, "that's a friggin' joke." It sure worked out though.

There's a difference between ideas that seem dumb and ideas that are dumb. The problem is that Juciero was in the latter category. We didn't have to pour millions of dollars into it to figure that out; do you think the creators of bottled water spent anywhere near that much, or over-engineered their product half as crazily? Put another way, do you imagine that nobody at Nestle or wherever stood up and said "this is a…

Can you explain to me what this difference is?
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