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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

#361

Post by CalChris »

Clubber wrote: post #325
CalChris wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Michael Jordan calls himself elite, is he an elitist? If a quite successful Valley engineer calls himself elite, am I an elitist? These are different words. Populists will call SV elitist. That doesn't make them right.

That's kinda the point. I don't believe MJ ever called himself elite. He didn't really need to, did he?

He did. He may have never used that word but he was the biggest trash talker. At the Olympic workouts there was an All Star's All Star game and afterward he told Magic Johnson there was new sheriff in town.

http://www.businessinsider.com/magic-johnson-trash-talking-m...

Elitism is a self-protecting cabal. SV doesn't really do that. That's the point of disruptive technology. You're disrupting an existing order. That's anti-elitist.

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

#362

Post by Apocryphon »

Two things that the article missed:

1. The startup scene's smarmy feel-good rhetoric and forced friendliness. The cutesy aesthetics, the wacky company names, and most gratingly the lofty mission statements that cover up at best business as usual and at worst actual corporate malfeasance. How did we get to here? When did "making the world a better place" become the mantra of Silicon Valley, and why did this laughable cliche get created? Was SV truly idealistic at one point, or has it been trying to cover up its true mission all along by pretending to be better than Wall Street or Hollywood, those other synonyms for wealth generation and inequality?

2. Silicon Valley can't even make the Bay Area a better place, never mind America, or the world. The extreme inequality in San Francisco and its environs is largely due to local government and broken politics, it is true. But SV companies should spend more of their lobbying efforts not in D.C. clamoring for special statuses, but in local legislatures securing better housing and infrastructure. Both their employees and the local populations will benefit, and like them more for it. Instead, what's the most high profile example of an SV executive interacting with local leaders? Steve Jobs presenting the new Apple headquarters plan to the Cupertino City Council in 2011. How's the traffic on Stevens Creek these days?

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

#363

Post by bzbarsky »

richardknop wrote: post #276
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…

Instead of basic income wouldn't it make sense to have some sort of basic "lifestyle" provided by government. Out of the box you get a very small government built apartment (no rent or utility bills, all part of the package), vouchers for 3 meals per day (government run canteens in these government apartment buildings), free healthcare and education also provided by the government. So you would get all these basic ne…

You're presupposing a uniformity of needs that simply does not exist.

Do the government canteens have vegan options? Vegetarian? Nut-free? Just peanut-free? Gluten-free? Halal? Kosher? Why or why not? Which of those are "necessities" and which are "luxuries"? It may well turn out that your opinion on that last question differs from your neighbor's, which differs from that of the bureaucrat who actually makes the call. And at least in the US, having government-provided food facilities that are expected to be widely used but effectively discriminate on a religious basis in any way would end up in court on First Amendment grounds in a hurry...

That's just the food end. There are similar questions about housing. Should all the apartments involved be wheelchair-accessible? Should all the bathrooms be accessible by someone who is mobility-impaired?

(Healthcare and education have similar issues, though to a large extent people seem make the opposite choice on those, as compared to food.)

Anyway, one of my big takeaways from the history of the 20th century (both from nominally communist countries and the experience in the US with housing projects and urban redevelopment in general) is that uniformization schemes like what you describe tend to lead to a good deal of misery...

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

#364

Post by Caveman_Coder »

brm wrote: post #192

I spent a decade of my life in the valley and I do believe it's relevant to remember that what used to be a homebrew mixing of nerds, hippies, academics, researchers, teachers, makers, marketers, tinkerers and capitalists is now in large part skewed to marketers and capitalists. This is not necessarily good, bad, or romanticized it just is. So here are some tips: Don't hustle. Don't crush anything. Try not to have to…

+100. I spent almost two decades in SV before moving to PHX and agree completely with your tips.

I've found that since moving to PHX, the hustling and "revolutionizing/world-changing/disruptive" rhetoric is kept to a minimum. Tech isn't its "own world" as much here and most of my friends and co-workers in the tech community end up talking about things we all enjoy doing as hobbies, or our families, more than anything. It's nice to find professional peers who enjoy hiking in Sedona, not worrying about how many PRs their open-source project has, or how many retweets their presentation at RubyConf got.

Its totally subjective, but its my kind of environment.

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

#365

Post by icebraining »

ernst_klim wrote: post #349
icebraining wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to break to you, but non-SV companies are quite fond of insane EULAs too. And drivers were exploited before Uber/Lyft, as taxi companies already classified them as contractors.

>as taxi companies already classified them as contractors. In states, maybe. With uber that cancer spread worldwide. >non-SV companies are quite fond of insane EULAs too. Sure, I've written nothing about SV in my post, only about >a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft

In states, maybe. With uber that cancer spread worldwide.

As far as I know, they've used that model (UberPOP) only in few places. In my European country, they just accept companies, which hire their drivers as employees.

Sure, I've written nothing about SV in my post, only about a world without iPhones, Facebook, Google, Uber/Lyft

And only those products/companies have insane EULAs?

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

#366

Post by stale2002 »

Spivak wrote: post #62
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.

This view is ridiculously out of touch with reality. What you're describing is borderline cartoonish levels of evil. You make it sound like white males get together with conferences to discuss new ways of oppressing people. The theory that explains this phenomenon needs to address how things still go wrong even when nobody has any dislike or prejudice.

> You make it sound like white males get together with conferences to discuss new ways of oppressing people.

Yeah so... about that. Here is an article about someone infiltrating one such conference in Seattle that was literally full of white male mostly techies who were discussing different ways of doing that.

http://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/10/04/25451102/we-snuck...

Yeah, yeah... you'll probably point out that this was a only a couple hundred people, and thats very few when you compare it to the total population of seattle. And I'd mostly agree with that argument.

But I just thought it was funny that one such conference just happened.

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

#367

Post by snerbles »

wutbrodo wrote: post #207
api wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alt-right is the logical endpoint. It kind of combines all the worst ideas from liberalism over the past 50 years (postmodernism, identity politics) with all the worst ideas from conservatism (nationalism, racism, biological determinism) in the previous century. I remember years ago having a discussion with a friend about "what's the worst ideology you can possibly imagine" and it kind of resembles what I came up…

> It kind of combines all the worst ideas from liberalism over the past 50 years (postmodernism, identity politics) Not to be pedantic, but those are _illiberal_ ideas. You're conflating liberals and the left, which was mostly fine when they were in a coalition for a while. But if you're talking about identity politics et al, you're very specifically describing things that are almost definitionally illiberal.

It's tragic that some consider "classical liberal" an alt-right dog whistle.

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

#368

Post by deadmetheny »

s73ver_ wrote: post #321
deadmetheny wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need more people churning out more webshit. Some of us actually give a shit about wanting to better our local communities instead of running off to SV or NYC to build Tinder for Dogs.

You don't have to run there. If you wanted to better your local community, you'd be working to better opportunities there, instead of decrying the idea that the economy is changing.

I am. You'll notice I am not the one advocating people just moving to chase ephemeral opportunities.

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

#369

Post by snerbles »

richardknop wrote: post #262
floatrock wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and revolutions we had in US and Europe in 18th/19th century could happen again if the income inequality continues to grow and quality of life of middle class / working class continues to decrease. This is sort of extreme reaction a really stressed society would be capable of.

When the stresses exceed the salve of McDonalds and Netflix, we'll see the guillotines roll out again.

Many of the heads in the basket will be our own.

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

#370

Post by Apocryphon »

jeffdavis wrote: post #359
Apocryphon wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's a certain "startup style" that appeared in the marketing for tech in the Web 2.0 period, maybe kicking off when Google adopted "Don't be evil" as their corporate slogan. (I allude to it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436272)

The name being too accurate falls into the stereotypical Silicon Valley trap of cheerfully "disrupting" with negative consequences for "regular people." Not only does the product ostensibly challenge the economic security of bodega owners, they're using the name of their livelihood to brand their own company. So the name becomes an extra sore spot. It's insult to potential injury. It's banally Orwellian, in the Ministry of Peace sort of way.

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