This article's dumb. 8 men control half the world's wealth? All of a sudden the word 'bodega' is racist? Too many white men contributing value is 'problematic'? Articles like this are the reason why Trump won.
Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
351–360 of 491 posts
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#352This author is drinking some serious anti captalist kool-aid. First off both Bannon and Bernie are Leninists. True believers are interchangeable with one another if you believe Eric Hoffer.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#353As 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…
> The oddest turn is that of blaming the global rise in income inequality on SV, and then to lambaste SV for trying to come up with solutions to ameliorate that problem as it proceeds to its logical extreme. The issue here is that many people feel SV's ideas of basic income will absolutely never work in the long-term. Heck, it will never work in this country period. We can't even socialize healthcare in this country,…
America is already the biggest socialist country in the world.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#354Earlier 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.
For the rank and file of tech the problem can't be eliminated until more than 20% of the STEM pipeline is comprised of women. This means fighting sexism at the startup level is useless, you better encourage young people to get into science by making it sexy and not for social outcasts. If there is sexism to fight against it is in education with how maths and physics are painted as "for dorks" instead of showing how y…
You misinterpret what is causing the problem.
It is not just a pipeline problem at the elementary school level where women aren't being given enough Legos to play with or something.
It is a pipeline problem at the company level as well. As in, women in tech are very often driven out of the industry because of all the BS that they have to put up with.
Fix the sexism problem at the company level and the industry stops losing good workers who were being driven out.
Also something to think about, why would women want to join an industry when they know that they will have to put up with a lot of sexism? That would be a pretty big deterrent from them getting a CS degree in the first place.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#355You haven’t produced a new firm that has cracked the world’s top 200 since Facebook’s founding in 2003.
That's a significant point.
Of the 15 companies that entered the Fortune 500 this year, only one, Lam Research, is in Silicon Valley. And they're in Fremont. (PayPal made the list, but as a spinoff of eBay.)[1]
[1] http://www.aei.org/publication/fortune-500-firms-1955-v-2016...
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That attitude is completely irrational.
What is the difference between the government creating jobs for which there is no market, and the government handing you a check to make ends meet?
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is the main reason the Democrats got swept, and will probably continue to get swept. They aren't offering what most people want, honest pay for honest work. They are offering welfare, which most people are to proud to take, let alone want. This isn't just a problem in the Midwest, this is a problem for almost anywhere that isn't a large city on the coast (with some exceptions). This problem affects proba…
That's not true at all. Clinton had plans with job retraining for coal miners. They were offering jobs. They got swept because Trump came in and said, "We'll keep coal mining," despite having no actual plan for what to do.
As a son and grandson of coal miners. That is just politician speak. My father and grandfather can't be retrained to do something else and make the same amount.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
That has nothing to do with Silicon Valley; don't conflate issues. The widening wealth inequality in this country is a product of much larger forces, don't blame people simply because they've happened to have found a modern-day trade which lets them eke out a middle-class lifestyle in the current economy. It seems like you're the one shifting blame, onto people who have no power to change the situation. How about tak…
4 of the top 5 most valuable companies in the world are tech companies. Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon. Hundreds of millions of people use their products every day. You don't think that's power?
Sure it is, but it damned well isn't the power that drove and continues to drive this nation's staggering wealth inequality.
So why are they blamed for it?
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still don't get it. Cultural appropriation is everywhere, and the inevitable and obvious result of cultural mixing. What makes this different? Maybe it has more to do with economic competition than cultural sensitivities?
It is a Xoogler-founded startup called Bodega offering a product that would compete with, and potentially replace, real-world working-class owned bodegas.
I get that people would be worried about the economic impact, and who would feel it.
I don't get how the name is a problem, other than it being a little too accurate.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#360People 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…
Be careful. A little backlash has been brewing all over the place. Some of it's about privacy. Some of it's about power and influence. Some is about addictiveness. It's not much today, but the gap between a little backlash and a popular one is smaller than we're inclined to think. This thread is full of comments making wild assumptions about cities they've never visited. Uber and Lyft made the same assumption about A…
They didn't lose though. They're back without having to change anything on their end.