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Silicon Valley: Abandoned

businessinsider.com

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Re: Silicon Valley: Abandoned

#21

Post by antonovka »

perkoff wrote: post #20
Alex3917 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, you're not increasing the cost of goods and energy, you're increasing the cost of carbon. The idea is that the money flows to whoever can create those goods and services using the least carbon. While the cost of goods does go up, the increase is minimal because the system is designed to find the least expensive solution. The money comes in because the entrepreneurs who are able to find the most cost-effective…

These "tons of highly intelligent and competent people" will probably not sit down and roll their fingers in either case. Rather, programs like this drains brain power from other sectors of the economy. There is an alternative usage for most resources! ANY new program would not increase our wealth. Building pyramids, for example, is just a waste of resources. Even if it would "create" a great deal of jobs for constru…

Even if it would "create" a great deal of jobs for construction engineers, it would take away resources from _useful_ production.

In the U.S., we have no shortage of "useful" production, and no shortage of not-very-useful production (see also: Cougartown).

Reducing pollution is useful production. I appreciate the idea that we'll assign a cost to traditional externalities whose cost is usually foisted on society at large, at which point the market will be forced to find new ways to decrease those costs.

The increased demand for carbon licenses does not come out of thin air. Someone does pay for it - while reducing other expenses!

It will also force incumbent, stagnant industries to invest in research and development, and disperse wealth more broadly, both of which pay significant future dividends beyond simply a reduction carbon output.

Re: Silicon Valley: Abandoned

#22

Post by Alex3917 »

perkoff wrote: post #20
Alex3917 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, you're not increasing the cost of goods and energy, you're increasing the cost of carbon. The idea is that the money flows to whoever can create those goods and services using the least carbon. While the cost of goods does go up, the increase is minimal because the system is designed to find the least expensive solution. The money comes in because the entrepreneurs who are able to find the most cost-effective…

These "tons of highly intelligent and competent people" will probably not sit down and roll their fingers in either case. Rather, programs like this drains brain power from other sectors of the economy. There is an alternative usage for most resources! ANY new program would not increase our wealth. Building pyramids, for example, is just a waste of resources. Even if it would "create" a great deal of jobs for constru…

Right, well first we have to decide that the products and services created by cap-and-trade are a good use of our country's talent and resources. That's an entirely separate debate, but once we've already decided that then the broken window analogy no longer applies.

Re: Silicon Valley: Abandoned

#23

Post by skmurphy »

Alex3917 wrote: post #7
grellas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Valley will not soon be displaced and will do just fine in spite of the larger economic problems - nowhere else in the world will one find such an aggregation of talented entrepreneurs, monied investors, academic expertise, and, above all, critical relationships with those who know startups well and are integrally involved in launching and promoting them. With every cycle (I have seen them all), the Valley takes…

"The Valley will not soon be displaced and will do just fine in spite of the larger economic problems" Which seems more likely in twenty years: A) The CA/US debt, education, and political problems will be fixed B) In the near future Boris Johnson or some other politician who 'gets it' is able to convince their government to pass a series of bills that create the same economic/social conditions that created SV, and ov…

Silicon Valley is more than 100 years old. I blogged about this in http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/11/05/steve-blank-on-secre... but here is one quick data point:

California Landmark NO. 836 PIONEER ELECTRONICS RESEARCH LABORATORY - This is the original site of the laboratory and factory of Federal Telegraph Company, founded in 1909 by Cyril F. Elwell. Here, Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor of the three-element radio vacuum tube, devised the first vacuum tube amplifier and oscillator in 1911-13. Worldwide developments based on this research led to modern radio communication, television, and the electronics age. Location: In sidewalk, SE corner of Channing Ave and Emerson St, Palo Alto

Radio technologies preceded and prepared the way for electronics and semiconductors, and it was fueled with risk capital.

Re: Silicon Valley: Abandoned

#24

Post by gaius »

grellas wrote: post #4
Alex3917 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ostensibly, this is good as it means cheap office space." Cheap office space in a dying empire that smart people are increasingly leaving because its citizens are too shortsighted to realize their economy will collapse if they don't pay for what they've purchased, too racist to let in the next generation of innovators, too stupid to educate their own kids, and too apathetic to fix the problem. Cap-and-trade is proba…

The Valley will not soon be displaced and will do just fine in spite of the larger economic problems - nowhere else in the world will one find such an aggregation of talented entrepreneurs, monied investors, academic expertise, and, above all, critical relationships with those who know startups well and are integrally involved in launching and promoting them. With every cycle (I have seen them all), the Valley takes…

talented entrepreneurs, monied investors, academic expertise, and, above all, critical relationships with those who know startups well and are integrally involved in launching and promoting them

Silicon Valley had none of that before Shockley and the Fairchildren (AKA tha Traitorous 8) rolled into town back in '57. Was that truly a one-off? The world's a big place.

Re: Silicon Valley: Abandoned

#25

Post by skmurphy »

High vacancy in a central location means cheap rents that facilitate face to face interaction. Perhaps there is room for a half dozen different kinds of co-working / hacker dojo spaces that can now afford to come into existence.

Re: Silicon Valley: Abandoned

#26

Post by pchristensen »

Alex3917 wrote: post #7
grellas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Valley will not soon be displaced and will do just fine in spite of the larger economic problems - nowhere else in the world will one find such an aggregation of talented entrepreneurs, monied investors, academic expertise, and, above all, critical relationships with those who know startups well and are integrally involved in launching and promoting them. With every cycle (I have seen them all), the Valley takes…

"The Valley will not soon be displaced and will do just fine in spite of the larger economic problems" Which seems more likely in twenty years: A) The CA/US debt, education, and political problems will be fixed B) In the near future Boris Johnson or some other politician who 'gets it' is able to convince their government to pass a series of bills that create the same economic/social conditions that created SV, and ov…

Was one of those supposed to sound more plausible than the other? They both sound like pipe dreams. Steve Blank's "Secret History of Silicon Valley" shows that it'll take more than a few bills passed to create a viable competitor to SV, esp. since this new region would have to compete with the actual SV.

How about option C) SV continues to thrive as a worldwide center of innovation no matter how jacked the rest of CA and the US gets? The only way I see this not happening is if the US completely clamps down on immigration (right now it's a giant pain but still navigable for a large number of immigrants).

The only international tech centers that I've ever heard anyone mention seriously were Tel Aviv (but unlikely b/c of security issues), and Singapore. Not sure how immigrant-friendly the high tech Asian economies (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, S. Korea) would be (Japan certainly isn't).

Much more likely would be a barely-across-the-border city like Vancouver or (don't laugh) Tijuana. With the ridiculous life science cluster in San Diego, Mexico could have a place where any international scientist could get into easily and collaborate with the existing cluster. It's a beautiful opportunity for regulatory arbirtage of a positive kind. What other opportunity does Mexico have to become a center for super high end research?

Re: Silicon Valley: Abandoned

#27

Post by perkoff »

Alex3917 wrote: post #17
perkoff wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you could explain _how_ this will happen. Many of us, including me, simply don't get the argument. What differs this from assigning a monetary value to, let's say, _any_ new government license? (e.g. for opening a restaurant, or virtually anything) Seems like a rehash of the broken window fallacy.

"Seems like a rehash of the broken window fallacy." Unlike with the broken window fallacy, you're not just breaking a window and creating jobs to create that same window again. The jobs created are actually going to make an entirely different set of products that the market wasn't creating before due to a flaw in the way the market was designed by the people who set it up. That's also why assigning value to carbon is…

By the same argument, you could basically claim that reducing the carbon emissions to _zero_ would improve the economy. The value that you attach to green policies are not quantifiable in a non-arbitrary way. (In the same way that religious artifacts like Pyramids does not represent a measurable economic value.)

Re: Silicon Valley: Abandoned

#29

Post by pg »

Alex3917 wrote: post #7
grellas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Valley will not soon be displaced and will do just fine in spite of the larger economic problems - nowhere else in the world will one find such an aggregation of talented entrepreneurs, monied investors, academic expertise, and, above all, critical relationships with those who know startups well and are integrally involved in launching and promoting them. With every cycle (I have seen them all), the Valley takes…

"The Valley will not soon be displaced and will do just fine in spite of the larger economic problems" Which seems more likely in twenty years: A) The CA/US debt, education, and political problems will be fixed B) In the near future Boris Johnson or some other politician who 'gets it' is able to convince their government to pass a series of bills that create the same economic/social conditions that created SV, and ov…

Unquestionably A), because whatever the likelihood of that, it is more likely than politicians creating a Silicon Valley.

Re: Silicon Valley: Abandoned

#30

Post by evgen »

gaius wrote: post #24
grellas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Valley will not soon be displaced and will do just fine in spite of the larger economic problems - nowhere else in the world will one find such an aggregation of talented entrepreneurs, monied investors, academic expertise, and, above all, critical relationships with those who know startups well and are integrally involved in launching and promoting them. With every cycle (I have seen them all), the Valley takes…

talented entrepreneurs, monied investors, academic expertise, and, above all, critical relationships with those who know startups well and are integrally involved in launching and promoting them Silicon Valley had none of that before Shockley and the Fairchildren (AKA tha Traitorous 8) rolled into town back in '57. Was that truly a one-off? The world's a big place.

And Hollywood was nothing more than orange groves outside of Los Angeles before Lumiere invented the motion picture camera. Was that a one-off? So far that does seem to be the case. Lots of places will compete for the title of being the second-best version of "the center of the universe" for industry X, Y, or Z but there are very few examples of the center actually moving once it has established itself.
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