An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
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Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
#2Can confirm, was a contractor in Silicon Valley. The "narrative" these executives sell is little more than an opiate for their fleets of highly-paid engineers to feel like they're justified in having a salary several times higher than the contractors they work with on a daily basis.
Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
#3Any additional evidence (either for or against) the claim that government pays for tech advances, while the private sector is who sees a return from that?
Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
#4I’m not sure what this articles point is. Disruption as called by Christensen, Andreeson, Thiel, etc all talks about displaced jobs and industries. I don’t think this is unknown. It’s just that the benefits outweigh the costs (to some).
So this isn’t an alternative history more than it is just a weird anecdote or two without follow-up.
I’m not sure what Wired is as a magazine any more. It really needs knowledgeable editors to plan and shape stories along some theme. I feel like these stories about rich and bad Silicon Valley is are pretty common and all boil down to the same reality that Silicon Valley has high margins and makes a lot of money for in demand employees and stockholders. This isn’t relevatory though and I’m not sure what Wired’s angle is.
Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
#5> For instance, the same year the government loaned $535 million to solar-power company Solyndra, it also loaned Tesla $465 million. “Taxpayers footed the bill for Solyndra’s losses—yet got hardly any of Tesla’s” gains, she says. Solyndra has become “a byword for the government’s sorry track record when it came to picking winners,” a story that has helped keep regulators at bay, she says.
I'm no Tesla fan, but that's sort of how loans work. You get your money back plus interest. It's not a lottery ticket. And Tesla paid back their loan early. I don't think the program lost very much money overall.
Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
#6Any additional evidence (either for or against) the claim that government pays for tech advances, while the private sector is who sees a return from that?
Federal spending accounts for 44% of basic research spending. at one point, it was as high as 70%.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/data-check-us-govern...
Generally, the pattern has been that government and university funded researchers make the early discoveries, and then corporations do the research towards applying them. Universities benefit from patents, but the federal government doesn't.
Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
#7> For instance, the same year the government loaned $535 million to solar-power company Solyndra, it also loaned Tesla $465 million. “Taxpayers footed the bill for Solyndra’s losses—yet got hardly any of Tesla’s” gains, she says. Solyndra has become “a byword for the government’s sorry track record when it came to picking winners,” a story that has helped keep regulators at bay, she says. I'm no Tesla fan, but that's…
Pretty much, I mean the argument is that there are jobs/tax revenue/etc to be gained from having a healthy local market.
There may not be direct returns, but that’s not really the point.
Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
#8> For instance, the same year the government loaned $535 million to solar-power company Solyndra, it also loaned Tesla $465 million. “Taxpayers footed the bill for Solyndra’s losses—yet got hardly any of Tesla’s” gains, she says. Solyndra has become “a byword for the government’s sorry track record when it came to picking winners,” a story that has helped keep regulators at bay, she says. I'm no Tesla fan, but that's…
Loans are often structured with a penalty if they are paid back early. The provider of the capital wants the scheduled payments more than they want access to the capital.
Perhaps big fat government loans should really be purchases of special restricted securities (that do things like limit the control the government has over the company and prevent dilution).
Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
#9How can someone write a whole article about disruption but not actually use the correct, well understood meaning of the term? They literally just made up their own strawman definition of what "disruption" means (tech people getting rich I guess?).
Disruption has always been used to mean disrupting established market leaders via innovation. Guess what? That's exactly what has happened with Uber, AirBnB, Amazon...
If anyone wants to learn more about the actual meaning of disruption, I suggest The Innovator's Dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma
Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
#10How can someone write a whole article about disruption but not actually use the correct, well understood meaning of the term? They literally just made up their own strawman definition of what "disruption" means (tech people getting rich I guess?). Disruption has always been used to mean disrupting established market leaders via innovation. Guess what? That's exactly what has happened with Uber, AirBnB, Amazon... If a…
> Uber, AirBnB, Amazon
Amazon, sure, but Uber & AirBnB? Wasn't their "innovation" flaunting the law to gain a temporary advantage before regulation leveled the field again?