Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note to non-commenting down-voters: Down-votes are just bits in a database. Down-voting doesn't actually have the power to alter reality. Carry on.
It made your text greyer, though. But have an upvote.
Pointless.
Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
451–460 of 491 posts
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So the solution is train 50 million people and tell them to move to large cities? Will the government pay for the move, or no? What about the skyrocketing rents in the large cities with the large influx? What about their homes and land they own now? Write it off? What exactly would you train them to do?
That's got a lot of red flags in the details. Ignoring that, it doesn't sound anywhere near ideal solution. I would expect something better. I think getting the federal government into building things again instead of contracting it out would be a start, similar to FDR's works programs. I'm sure it will get a lot of resistance, but the same way we've been doing things isn't working.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
50 million people? Simple dismissive answers to complex problems isn't going to solve anything.
Surely most of them have jobs? Even then, the top 5 cities could each handle a million more people - admitably it would require more infrastructure. Also there is no rule that big problems can't have simple solutions.
Many of them are on some sort of government assistance with part time or low paying jobs. Also it would be 10 million over 5 cities. That has big problems in and of itself.
>Also there is no rule that big problems can't have simple solutions.
No, but if the solution was simple, it would have been solved already.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So you don't want a handout and you don't want re-training, then what do you want? For someone to wave a magic wand and make coal economically viable again?
They want honest wage for honest work. Pretty straight forward. The government sure subsidizes industry in California, New England and coastal cities, why not middle America?
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
As someone who enjoys breathing clean air, they can't continue to mine coal. They just cannot. And I'm sorry they feel that way about their wages, but they have to continue to adapt.
Coal is dead due to the economies of natural gas. Besides, China uses coal like crazy, and we pay China to do so, so as far as the atmosphere goes, the US not using coal doesn't really matter that much.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#456People 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…
> As an aside, I’ll never understand why people get so upset for rich people making bad bets and losing a bunch of money.
I think people are more upset about what companies don't get funded rather than which VCs lose their money (more accurately, the money of California government retirees). Companies like WhatsApp created staggering amounts of value by enabling affordable messaging around the world. WhatsApp is obviously a success story, but for every Juicero that's 20-100 other companies that could have done great things and never got the chance. However -- the outrage is always easiest to point with 20/20 hindsight.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
It made your text greyer, though. But have an upvote.
Pointless.
Too bad you're so bitter. I was in full agreement with your original comment, thought it was unfair you were downvoted in the first place. And you're the truly clueless one if you think you can extrapolate the extent of my cleverness from such a small cross section of interaction with my being.
But I'd love to know how my comment made your point?
Reality is altered by downvotes, at the minimum through the color change on our screens as I pointed out, and in the mental reactions that arise when someone on Hacker News sees that greyed text.
There's also the fact that the downvoting is causing you to lash out the way you are, to protect your fragile sense of ego. Is that not downvoting changing reality? At one moment you were not irritated by being downvoted, and the next moment you were. And don't try to weasel yourself out of this by attempting to be aloof regarding downvoting, you've already missed your chance at that.
P.S. For the sake of your well being I recommend you not to reply to this comment.
P.P.S. Lol @ you editing your comment. Looks like I made my point.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#458Earlier 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. 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 l…
Your comment contains no less than 3 strawmans.
Do you really think its accurate to compare a corporation to one's family or place of birth? That's pretty absurd.
Did you actually read the article? The last part of the article - from "So, what can you do about it?" onward is a prescription for fixing the problems enumerated in the first part of the article. Attacks generally don't involve self-help advice.
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#459It's the synthetic, fascist mono-culture.
Free thought isn't allowed-- Silicon Valley enforces thought control like Weinstein did over Hollywood.
Sooner or later (looks like sooner) everyone realizes Silicon Valley is 90% white and Asian male. All the politically-correct talk is lipservice alone. (That's probably why the self-virtue-signaling went into overdrive in the first place.)
Re: Dear Silicon Valley: America’s fallen out of love with you
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't say "white males" on HN without getting slaughtered. I think a fairer way to phrase this is people with power discriminate. Consciously and unconsciously. Doesn't matter if they are white, non white, male, or female. We just happen to live in a society where most positions of power have been historically held by one group.
> You can't say "white males" on HN without getting slaughtered. I say it pretty often, and I don't get "slaughtered". The commentariat here tends to be kinda gross at times (and, tbh, the proprietors should probably do something about it, but I kinda shrug at that one now) but the votes generally bear out that the crowd, at least, is reasonable.
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