Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 8:49 PM UTC

jeffdavis wrote: post #416

Apocryphon wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

I am starting to see it: the name is too cheerful -- almost boastful about a powerfully-backed business beating their less-powerful competitors. Markets are brutal sometimes. This still seems to rank pretty low on that scale. For a long time competition was looked at more like a non-violent form of warfare, and this wouldn't even register. Now, I guess we have a more cooperative view of business (or perhaps some peop…

There's a colonization sort of dynamic emerging when sharp differences in tech are involved. A VC-backed state-of-the-art startup going against old-fashioned brick and mortar shops is like tanks against spearmen in a game of Civ. Or gentrification through other means.

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

#422

Post by plussed_reader » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 8:57 PM UTC

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 does not imply that they love surveillance, loss of privacy, sexist office culture, messianic and arrogant CEOs, lack of diversity, tax avoidance schemes or sweat shop labor."

Could you differentiate this from the financial sector, please?

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

#423

Post by qball » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 9:02 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #394

Tyrek wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe this sort of thing is more of a problem in SV itdelf, but tech in Columbus OH isn't like this at all. Most accepting group of people I've known.

Note that this is only because tech people are scarce in Columbus, OH (or anywhere that isn't SV).

See, SV doesn't have to tolerate weirdness- everyone in tech there is replaceable (there's a surplus of members). Because of human nature, the people there now have to adopt a different ingroup/outgroup structure (which usually has a negative correlation in how interested/competent in tech they are), and what better way to do that than by using the local political leanings?

And, as a quirk of (the local) progressive politics, this also puts SV and the rest of the tech community at odds- SV claims that it's important for tech communities to exclude men/non-minorities to promote the participation of women/minorities, but the vast majority of tech communities see an objective shortage of members and can't afford to discriminate (the fact that they skew male/majority is an afterthought) so they rightfully object to doing that.

Put another way, SV can afford to be illiberal/progressive and discriminate; the rest of us are liberal because being illiberal still has meaningful consequences.

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

#424

Post by mcguire » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 9:08 PM UTC

plussed_reader wrote: post #422

bogomipz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 does not imply that they love surveillance, loss of privacy, sexist office culture, messianic and arrogant CEOs, lack of diversity, tax avoidance schemes or sweat shop labor." Could you differentiate this from the financial sector, please?

To what extent are the tech sector and the finance sector different?

[ObJoke: the FS does technology; the TS does upscale vending machines.]

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

#425

Post by jnbiche » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 9:09 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #267

jnbiche wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mount…

I dare say the Russian fake news didn't do anything that Fox and Limbaugh and Brietbart haven't been doing for decades. I'd really like to see some samples of Russian planted news and comments. I wonder if they would even be detectable compared to "normal" stuff the aforementioned organizations produce.

Yes, but we don't give foreign governments and intelligence agencies unhampered access to our TV and radio airwaves to broadcast whatever the hell they want. There's a big difference between US nationals broadcasting bullshit and hostile foreign governments broadcasting bullshit. Neither is ideal, but the latter is completely unacceptable, at least to me, because it touches on sovereignty issues.

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

#426

Post by thephyber » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 9:10 PM UTC

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 does not imply that they love surveillance, loss of privacy, sexist office culture, messianic and arrogant CEOs, lack of diversity, tax avoidance schemes or sweat shop labor.

Do you love your parents despite their flaws?

Do you love what your country affords you despite its shortcomings?

Attacks on "Silicon Valley" for what a handful of jerks at a small subset of companies in SV do is just as bad as articles like "Millennials are the laziest generation".

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

#427

Post by thriftwy » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 9:13 PM UTC

brandmeyer wrote: post #294

thriftwy wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are raising two kids, isn't it kinda obvious that your BI payout is 3 * $12k = $36k? Anything different just doesn't make sense in my opinion. You also seem to discard the value of work (on a 10 hr workweek perhaps)

That's not at all obvious. You'll have people screaming about welfare queens, for example. Never mind the fact that some of this screaming comes from a racist place of giving money away to brown people, it does need to be addressed in order to gain broad acceptance. One way to defend against the welfare queen argument might be to recognize that there are economies of scale in child-rearing, and pay out adult/2 for th…

You see how you have solutions before you even recite a problem. It's usually like that.

WRT welfare queens, now it would make sense to have family intact.

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

#428

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 9:24 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #323

s73ver_ wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but coal miners are such a small subset of middle America. I'm talking about all the blood letting between VA and CA. And (I'm not being snarky) but what would you retrain them to do? Unless those cities grow an economy, they will just be retrained, still unemployed people. Unless you have a massive migration to large cities, it's not going to do much good. I mean think about that for a few steps. You have milli…

> The Democrats used to serve the middle class, but they stopped after Carter got demolished by Reagan.

No, the Democrats now serve the middle and upper class, they used to serve the working class.

And the pro-labor faction of the a party was dominant until Bill Clinton (and arguably until 1994; there's a reason why Clinton had to rely on mainly Republican votes to pass NAFTA.)

> Like it or not the default vote for most of middle America is GOP

If your default vote is for your own destruction, you will be destroyed, and then to your vote, default or otherwise, will be irrelevant. The GOP has nothing to offer Middle America but a series of people (blacks, Mexicans, Muslims, ...) to vent their anger at as a distraction while the GOP’s financiers destroy Middle America.

> The Dems have to actually come up with something that works to get these smaller cities and towns vibrant again if they want the votes.

The people can be saved; their small towns and cities, in many cases, cannot. Some might survive as shadows of themselves and living museums (see Columbia, CA, as an example from the Gold Rush), but once the economic basis for a town is gone, finding a new one is unlikely, and doing it for more than a small share of a large number is just not going to happen.

> I don't think the establishment Dems understand America outside the coastal areas.

The neoliberal establishment has been losing ground in the Democratic party for decades; and what they don't connect with has more to do with class than geography.

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

#429

Post by mcguire » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 9:27 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #281

jonbarker wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon's stated goal is to have no margins (Bezos 'your margin is my opportunity'). So yes if they are following their zero margin strategy they should be lower than WMT, whose only claim is low price. If something is cheaper elsewhere it is because Amazon has not figured out how to deliver that particular item to the consumer at cost yet. So for example if you find something cheaper at WMT it may be that WMT has a g…

Huh? So how does Amazon actually make money?

When did they start making money, again?

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

#430

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Oct 09, 2017, 9:28 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #396

tomjen3 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then have the migrate to the cities. Seriously, the US was founded by people moving over the Atlantic in search of better opportunities and the west was converted the same way.

50 million people? Simple dismissive answers to complex problems isn't going to solve anything.

Yes the vast majority of the non-urban population is going to become urban for economic reasons. That’s been going on since the dawn of civilization (it's literally where the name “civilization” comes from), and it's not going to reversed any time soon.