A “Silicon Valley” actor is terrified by what’s happening in Silicon Valley

Tech is one of the only sources of growth in our stagnating economy and is responsible for humanity moving past a subsistence standard of living, but leave it to a well-paid actor sitting in a comfortable air-conditioned room during the most prosperous period ever in the history of humanity to whine about its downsides.

http://fortune.com/2017/10/11/china-debt-evaders-loans-black...

I'm sorry, but too much of this leaves me scratching my head as to whether this is satire or not, and I will explain my position and not just be snarky about it, but truthfully after reading through the post having previously only glossed over it, I find some of the statements just very curious.

I take issue with the statement that SV/Entrepreneuer/programmer types just want what is the best long term outcome because more or less what they want is a long term profitable outcome most of the time. We can see examples of software and services which are produced for a better long term outcome; the Linux Kernel, software like ffmpeg, cURL, World Wide Web, etc. Not only are the statements from the founder clear on the goals and intentions of the software, but the software and services live up to their delcaration of intentions and look to solve a problem in a focused and sustainable way. There's always a lot of talk about "nothing wrong with making a little bit of profit while doing something great", but this is a pretty thin line to walk most of the time - Microsoft, for example, does have some very useful software solutions, but there's no doubt that everything about the procurement and design is meant to lock you into using it without question - it's not software to better the human, it's software to lock you in. Microsoft isn't the only guilty party here, they're just an easy example. When I see startups, when I hear about entrepreneuers and SV programmers, and heck I'll outright say it, when I hear about side-projects on HN, a lot of the times it's not software to enhance or improve life, it's software taking a stab at a share of the market.

Not everything has to be F/OSS; we don't all need to be Stallmanites with regards to our data and privacy, and I'm happy to pay out for software that does what it says on the box. I happily dropped $10 on DaisyDisk for macOS because it does exactly what it says it does without trying to lock me in further; I pay and it's done, no subscriptions, no limited functionality, no restrictions on what I can use with it. It serves its purpose very well. Sublime Text is much of the same, and it's such a good program that I've seen people here wish that new versions would require a new purchase just for another excuse to give the authors more money. The difference between these projects and most of the non-sense that gets released is that they're trying to serve an actual goal; they fulfill a need instead of creating one, and they do as promised.

This is what long-term betterment looks like; not subscription models, nag campaigns, constant notifications on what you're not getting, but instead providing a functional tool that makes your life better instead of trying to figure out more ways to get you to put out your credit card.

> I don’t think ‘regular’ people think like that.

I wonder if Doug Evans thinks much of the same thing and wonders why people don't understand he was just trying ot better their future. I take from statements like these a lot of hubris, that such Entrepreneuers know better than everyone else. Everyone at some time is guilty of thinking "if everyone just thought like me it'd be perfect", but it should be pretty obvious this just isn't how the world works. I think that indeed many of the 'regular' people do think very hard about the future, but they also think about how their 'now' will affect their and their children's future. It's not that they aren't trying to help the trillions of yet unborn humans, it's that they see a different way of getting there. For example, a programmer like you're describing wants to write a service to better the future of humanity - my friends in Seattle think we need trees and gardens everywhere. Whose solution now is going to be more important in 10 years? In 1000? In 1000? I'm not sure that you can confidently say the software is going to be impactful and important in 10 years, much less in 1 year, when more and more it seems we just get flashes in a pan.

Your conclusion that startups are concerned about survival and the human race, not just about money, isn't really supported by what the start ups are trying to do. They consolidate power instead of distributing it; they hoard information instead of sharing it. They try to lock you in instead of giving you freedom and options. This is what SV has come to represent with many of the startups you see; a new, more benevolent master, instead of a new tool to help you. There are dozens of new [Something]aaS every week, each one just fighting to lock you in to whatever cycle they have and to wring out a bit of money. These aren't there for the long term betterment of humanity, they're there for the quick buck and to make promises they can't deliver on.

Mind: I would like to see decentralisation and better encryption protections, generally, but those by themselves won't solve the problem (you still need to address ethics, rights, and power imbalances), and still leave certain of present attacks in place.

David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, makes the exceedingly good point in an FT interview, that Bitcoin and Blockchain themselves are attempts to tech around the trust problem, and that this raises challenges because trust itself buys you an immense amount of efficiency.

https://www.ft.com/content/61cdc5c8-370e-11e7-bce4-9023f8c0f...

I'm starting to come to the view that information technology itself directly attacks* interpersonal trust, at the macro scale. I may not be articulating the argument well at this point, though I've tried:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...

After all, it may sound dismissive, but I'm reminded of a quote by Patrick Stuart. "That's the biggest danger, you see: believing that you really are more important than everyone else. We're not, you know. We're just actors". Maybe if Kumail spent his life building things instead of pretending to be someone who builds things, he'd have a different perspective on technology and ethics.