41–50 of 120 posts
You need colleges. You want the next Silicon Valley, pump money into the CS programs of area colleges.
And unfortunately, your best universities are not in the heartland and very few in red states. Silicon Valley has the luxury of educational centers, as well as large tech firms that can be used to seed the area with talent they create and attract. You would be hard pressed to find such a confluence of actors in the heartland.
Unless a lot of areas become a lot more hospitable to immigrants, it is very unlikely that they will become the next Silicon Valley —- or next anything really. When you look at places like Ohio, for instance, that have been stagnating for decades, a huge reason for it is that the population of Ohio was once representative of the country and has increasingly become older and whiter than the general U.S. population. Th…
Your cause and effect seems reversed; that is, Ohio is older and whiter because people have been moving out, and not that people are avoiding Ohio because it is older and whiter.
Unless a lot of areas become a lot more hospitable to immigrants, it is very unlikely that they will become the next Silicon Valley —- or next anything really. When you look at places like Ohio, for instance, that have been stagnating for decades, a huge reason for it is that the population of Ohio was once representative of the country and has increasingly become older and whiter than the general U.S. population. Th…
Diversity Index (61.1%, up from 54.9%).
Race and ethnicity (White alone 61.6%; Black alone 12.4%; Hispanic 18.7%; Asian alone 6%; American Indian and Alaska Native alone 1.1%; Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone 0.2%; Some Other Race alone 8.4%; Two or More Races 10.2%).
Unless a lot of areas become a lot more hospitable to immigrants, it is very unlikely that they will become the next Silicon Valley —- or next anything really. When you look at places like Ohio, for instance, that have been stagnating for decades, a huge reason for it is that the population of Ohio was once representative of the country and has increasingly become older and whiter than the general U.S. population. Th…
FTA : I believe that if America loses its way and ceases to be the most innovative, entrepreneurial nation in the world, the most likely cause will be not having an immigration policy that is as welcoming to people as it has been for the past couple of centuries.
Hotelling's law and Nash equilibrium can partially explain why so many "next silicon valleys" haven't panned out. It's also interesting that the valley is in a jurisdiction with such pro-employee laws.
Outside of LA and the NY metro area, diversity drops drastically. So while there maybe a growth in research parks/tax advantaged zones to attract satellite offices and software startups, HQ’s are still going to be based where the diverse talent lives.
The second point is Americans simply are not pursuing the highest levels of education. Masters and PhD programs are filled with immigrants, and new departments are frequently established by hiring such highly educated people. And it turns out, it’s safer and more enjoyable for immigrants to live where they’re accepted and already have communities.
One can hope that America becoming more diverse in the future will cause other more diverse areas to be established, but that depends on the politics of the area. Educated people tend to not associate with right wing/republican policies, and these areas will have to embrace that and not just devolve to gerrymandering. And that means your neighbors and communities also have to embrace diversity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And unfortunately, your best universities are not in the heartland and very few in red states. Silicon Valley has the luxury of educational centers, as well as large tech firms that can be used to seed the area with talent they create and attract. You would be hard pressed to find such a confluence of actors in the heartland.
I consider Rice and UT-Austin as two of the best universities in a conservative, red state. But they don't get a lot of respect from coastal elites because they aren't in NYC or SF.
As a counterexample, MIT is not in NYC or SF, and it gets respect.
For the universities you mention, maybe the (perceived?) sense of lower respect comes from picking up on outsider's suspicions that a Texas university may draw from the state, and thus may have a higher percentage of, you know, people who put tribe and faith ahead of logic and reason (which is not a swipe at all Texans, just more my personal opinion of the red voter types nationwide). Of course those suspicions may be unfounded.
You need colleges. You want the next Silicon Valley, pump money into the CS programs of area colleges.
4-5 of the top 20 CS programs are in the Upper Midwest, depending on whether you count Western Pennsylvania (I personally do — politics are solidly Midwest conservative; manufacturing is a major industry; ethnicity is largely German-American rather than British; religion is largely Catholic and mainline Protestant rather than Quaker and Congregationalist; and so on. Pittsburgh looks and feels more like Columbus than…
But pining for, or attempting to establish, a new SV is ridiculous, and doesn't consider the history of things at all. Artificially creating a centralized hub of industry (which already has several centralized hubs) will do nothing but drive up living costs and make it harder for anyone not in STEM to live there. More realistically, this idea will fail altogether and these "investors" will have to settle for small, corn-fed cities with a few tech companies that they can own minority shares in.
These people already got their gold rush, why isn't that enough for them?
Unless a lot of areas become a lot more hospitable to immigrants, it is very unlikely that they will become the next Silicon Valley —- or next anything really. When you look at places like Ohio, for instance, that have been stagnating for decades, a huge reason for it is that the population of Ohio was once representative of the country and has increasingly become older and whiter than the general U.S. population. Th…
I think this whole west coast trope of the midwest being a bunch of insular unwelcoming old white people is overblown.