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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

#241

Post by thesagan »

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.

Here in the Midwest (MI) people beg for change on every other street corner. It's obvious to us here why things are falling apart politically. Whole cities have collapsed.

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

#242

Post by deadmetheny »

lostboys67 wrote: post #150
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.

So they do want handouts /subsidies then

This is remarkably tone-deaf. I also originally hailed from a small Midwestern town. The lack of available work is not a pretty sight, and suggesting that people should just uproot themselves and move somewhere else is not a solution for a number of reasons (family/friends, lack of money to move in the first place, etc). It's no small wonder that people voted for Trump - even though his promises were pretty obviously full of hot air, the opposition was (and still does) not even attempt to mask their total contempt for 'flyover country'.

You will reap what you sow.

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

#243

Post by nsxwolf »

bradleyjg wrote: post #197
nsxwolf wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking to Silicon Valley when I said "your".

In other words you posted a reply to austenallred's comment that had nothing to do with it in order to try to game the ordering system here. That's quite rude.

Not really. The comment I posted it under was very pro-Silicon Valley, claiming regular people just love SV and all the wonderful goodies they bestow upon us.

My comment was responding to that sentiment.

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

#244

Post by [deleted] »

xversilov wrote: post #27
carbocation wrote: post #8

As someone outside of SV (Nevadan living in Boston and practicing medicine), I think this article largely misses the mark. I think it is true that there is a diversity problem in SV, just like there is a diversity problem in medicine. It’s a problem, because there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields. But that’s probably the only point that resonates. Th…

There is no a priori reason that society feels comfortable acknowledging, but for anybody without those hangups, the reasons are actually quite obvious.

[deleted]

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

#245

Post by floatrock »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #205
leggomylibro wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle America doesn't seem to be keen on much of anything these days, besides torches and pitchforks. I'd rather put my money on the people trying to build solutions rather than more problems. Sure, it seems like the actual silicon valley location is mostly making solutions for problems that it created, these days. But there's plenty of tech outside of California. And anyways, dire imprecations of fire and brimstone…

> And anyways, dire imprecations of fire and brimstone if we don't do things your way is so 1700s. You think if the majority of people in this country continue to experience a declining quality of life, there won't be riots in the streets? This method of shifting blame from economic issues to social issues won't work forever. edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Am I wrong in some way?

A major people's rebellion (started for all practical purposes mostly with pitchforks and torches) against the tyranny and oppression of the wealthy noble-class in far-off lands happened in 1776 or somewhere around then...

couldn't help but notice the irony of using the 1700's in the above example.

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

#246

Post by Tyrek »

jrs95 wrote: post #44
gotthemwmds wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" there is no a priori reason for women and ethnic minorities to be less prevalent in our high-paying fields." Sure there is: racist and sexist white males making decisions and developing a workplace culture that prevents them from attaining those positions. And the sooner people accept this, the better for everyone.

>developing a workplace culture that prevents them from attaining those positions Some who make this argument (and I'm not necessarily saying you're in this camp) are essentially saying that "nerd culture" is some oppressive sexist force. That's sort of ironic given that it's basically a subculture formed by social rejects. There are of course aspects of workplace culture which do this, but an appreciation of science…

Is it truly ironic? Most 'social reject' subcultures trend towards their own styles of conformity and in/out group determination, which can be as harsh or harsher than that of the mainstream. Should it really come as a surprise that nerd culture has taken the same path? Just consider anti-dress code, 'mandatory' code marathons, etc.

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

#247

Post by Clubber »

jklein11 wrote: post #230
ivraatiems wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>ideas that seem dumb and ideas that are dumb.

The first makes money, the second doesn't. :)

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

#248

Post by aaron-lebo »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #223
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?

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.

You're presenting everything as ideal case. $12k a year means $1k a month to live. You'll be buying lots of cheap carrots and potatoes and rice because that's all you'll have money for. You won't have a choice. Go break down the budget at $1k a month. You'll find that people on government welfare often already live better than that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/...

...earning $10,000 a year (which was about half the federal poverty level that year)...

The state with the highest total value of welfare benefits was Hawaii, at $49,175. The lowest was Mississippi, at $16,984. Welfare packages in only 10 states, plus Washington, D.C., exceeded Grothman’s threshold of $35,000.

Note, that's an article showing that a representative was exaggerating how much welfare recipients receive; those are the numbers refuting his claim.

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

#249

Post by aylmao »

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.

That's noble, but "living" shouldn't be the focus of discourse because there's much more to life than just "living".

It's already the case that if you don't work, you can "live". We should focus on making sure everyone can work if they want to, and their work will pay enough, which is the real problem at hand imo.

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

#250

Post by maxsilver »

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.

> Middle America generally lives in the suburbs and does not interact with homeless people everyday

Sure they do -- there's plenty of homeless people in the suburbs these days, it's just a different interaction.

It's homeless people standing on the sides of freeway offramps and stripmall driveways, dying in front of them on the grassy lawn road medians. It's handing change to a homeless person in the stormwater road ditch while you wait at a red light.

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