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Silicon Valley's Problem

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Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#81

Post by sskates »

fatbird wrote: post #8

Love this: Their goal is to make themselves as appealing—or threatening—to a big player as possible so they can get bought out for a few hundred million dollars and then devote the rest of their lives to a) building Burning Man installations, b) investing in other people’s widgets, or c) both. They really don’t care that much about making the world a better place, mostly because they feel like they don’t have to live…

Alright, I'll bite. I intensely care about maximizing my positive impact. After looking at a lot of things in college, including academic research, finance, consulting, nonprofits, and engineering at a big company, I concluded starting a company was the best way to have an outsized impact on other people's lives. That is why I'm running a company now. I am trying to build a Microsoft.

It's very easy to be dismissive of widgets. For example, the entire internet is a mechanism to instantly teleport bits of information from one place to another. That's all the widget does. It doesn't help you do anything physical. It just lets you send bits from one place to another, nothing else. It sounds so trivial. Who would have thought that a widget for sending bits from one place to another could have such a big impact?

Now I'm wondering- can you give a specific example of the company/person being described? These criticisms of Silicon Valley are always so abstract, it would be nice to have a few examples.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#82

Post by sridharvembu »

Let me add my perspective as an Indian living in the SF bay area, spending about 20-25% of my time in India. The poverty of India is inescapable, it is everywhere around you. The reason I got into business, particularly business in India, ultimately is that in my mid-20's I found myself simply very depressed about this, and decided that business was the only way I could make a real difference. I was inspired by the examples of Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan and similar places, which went from miserable third world poverty to middle income prosperity within about 30 years.

About charity, in the here and now, when you are surrounded by such need that you see all around you in India (I personally know hundreds of stories), small and local acts of charity are very necessary and helpful.

At the same time, I do not believe that charity can work on any kind of large scale. First, given the vastness and diversity of India, it is impossible for any one person to know more than a small fraction of India. With that said, I firmly believe that the part of India that I am familiar with - the Southern part accounting for about 25% of Indian population - could have been a Taiwan or South Korea or Southern China, if only the Indian government had pursued a relatively sane economic policy. No I am not complaining about corruption and so on - South Korea or China did not develop because they had enlightened, corruption-free governments. Even today, Indian economic policy is miserably wrong-headed. It hurts the very poor the most, but our political class is simply oblivious to it.

One example would suffice: today, the second largest textile exporter in the world, after China, is Bangladesh. With all the political turmoil, corrupt government and so on, Bangladesh has made more progress in lifting its poorest citizens than India, and the 3 million textile industry jobs are a primary reason. Why couldn't India do it? Policy, in one word. Textile industry is the classic climb-the-ladder industry. China is just about ready to vacate the lowest rungs of the ladder, and Bangladesh is getting on it. India's poorest are still waiting.

To summarize, I believe in charity-in-the-small, in the here and now, but large scale economic development, lifting hundreds of millions of poverty in India (which accounts for most of the world's poor) needs something different.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#83

Post by fatbird »

javajosh wrote: post #78
fatbird wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

stop writing posts describing problems that you have no ability, no ideas, and no real capability to solve. This is a moronic thing to say. First, diagnosis is valuable in and of itself. Second, awareness of a problem shouldn't wait on a solution. Third, you're basically saying that, for any problem beyond a certain individually-addressable size, just don't talk about it because the author can't do anything about it.…

a) that's an ad hominim. I never attacked the author, and you are attacking me. Apology accepted in advance. b) there is a large class of problem which only induces anxiety. For example, lamenting the "disconnection" between people in a modern, technology mediated society (which is a lament that's been going since the industrial revolution, and is no less valid now as then). When we accept that large, impersonal forc…

I called your statement moronic, not you. I will not be apologizing for doing so. If I say something idiotic, calling it such does not entail that I am an idiot.

There may or may not be a class of problems that only induces anxiety, but your example is not a member of that class even if such a class exists. Trivially, I can address the disconnection between people in our technologically mediated society by going out and meeting people in person. If I write a lament about that disconnection, I'm not speaking out solely to induce anxiety, I'm doing so to urge people to turn of their computers, to quit starting at their iPhone, and to go out and make personal connections.

More specifically, Ms. Bracy is not, in any sense, suggesting that the problem she identifies is insoluble, or that it cannot be addressed by individuals. She says, in part:

What if, instead of imploring people to vote on Facebook’s privacy policies, we were pushing Florida lawmakers into fixing the state’s broken voting system? What if prison reform advocates could speak as loudly as the anti-SOPA activists?

More generally, her post is a plea for the participants of the Valley startup scene to look to address problems outside their own, quite limited experience. That's not anxiety-inducing, that's an exhortation. The fact that she doesn't link to a kickstarter for a specific project doesn't undercut that point. It's easy to imagine someone in the Valley casting about for a good idea to decide to say to themselves "We don't need another socially networked tastes-organizing app. What problems are worth solving in St. Louis for people who don't have smartphones?"

You have an extremely limited view of 'agency' if you think Ms. Bracy's post exists solely to make you feel badly.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#84

Post by rayiner »

natrius wrote: post #66
rayiner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how investments work. If someone invests $100,000 in your startup, and you IPO for $10 billion, you don't just pay back $100,000 and call it even. The way I see it, the federal government should own basically half of California.

I don't understand why you think it's instructive to compare government investments to venture capital. The government engages in plenty of investments, and none of them operate that way.

The fact that government makes an investment on favorable terms does not change the underlying nature of the investment. The point is to challenge the self aggrandizing west coast narrative of rugged individualists setting out and building civilization from the desert. In reality, the west coast was an investment of the taxpayers of the east coast. Without that investment, California would be Mexico, or perhaps a private colony--a wholly owned subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#85

Post by fatbird »

sskates wrote: post #81
fatbird wrote: post #8

Love this: Their goal is to make themselves as appealing—or threatening—to a big player as possible so they can get bought out for a few hundred million dollars and then devote the rest of their lives to a) building Burning Man installations, b) investing in other people’s widgets, or c) both. They really don’t care that much about making the world a better place, mostly because they feel like they don’t have to live…

Alright, I'll bite. I intensely care about maximizing my positive impact. After looking at a lot of things in college, including academic research, finance, consulting, nonprofits, and engineering at a big company, I concluded starting a company was the best way to have an outsized impact on other people's lives. That is why I'm running a company now. I am trying to build a Microsoft. It's very easy to be dismissive…

Instagram. An app for doing what we were all doing already anyway, but now with a lot of faux-effect filters. Sold for a billion dollars. All that time, energy, and money that did not one thing to help anyone else or measurably improve the world.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#87

Post by 001sky »

sskates wrote: post #81
fatbird wrote: post #8

Love this: Their goal is to make themselves as appealing—or threatening—to a big player as possible so they can get bought out for a few hundred million dollars and then devote the rest of their lives to a) building Burning Man installations, b) investing in other people’s widgets, or c) both. They really don’t care that much about making the world a better place, mostly because they feel like they don’t have to live…

Alright, I'll bite. I intensely care about maximizing my positive impact. After looking at a lot of things in college, including academic research, finance, consulting, nonprofits, and engineering at a big company, I concluded starting a company was the best way to have an outsized impact on other people's lives. That is why I'm running a company now. I am trying to build a Microsoft. It's very easy to be dismissive…

They really don’t care that much about making the world a better place, mostly because they feel like they don’t have to live in it.

==Theory of the leisure class

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#88

Post by lubujackson »

jacoblyles wrote: post #49

It surely is embarrassing that California's two senators were strong supporters of PIPA and that they are still in office. Silicon Valley is sending a strong message - "Mess with us, and we'll be very angry for about 4 days. Then we'll go back to trying to get rich." If the Tea Party could throw out dozens of fiscal moderate Republicans from the Congressional caucus, surely we - the technically savvy citizens of Sili…

It's important to remember how tiny the tech crowd really is vs. the size of California.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#89

Post by teffen »

dredmorbius wrote: post #86

Page reads vastly better without the background images (and then with anchor color set to something other than white). 1997 called, it wants its page designer back.

Uhh, fuck off?

Huh, I guess being an asshole isn't so appealing after all.

Re: Silicon Valley's Problem

#90

Post by 001sky »

rayiner wrote: post #84
natrius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you think it's instructive to compare government investments to venture capital. The government engages in plenty of investments, and none of them operate that way.

The fact that government makes an investment on favorable terms does not change the underlying nature of the investment. The point is to challenge the self aggrandizing west coast narrative of rugged individualists setting out and building civilization from the desert. In reality, the west coast was an investment of the taxpayers of the east coast. Without that investment, California would be Mexico, or perhaps a pri…

Its not an investment, its a public good. By definition, that is how they work. You're using a very flawed anology.

Parkland is common public good, and most of the west is publicly accessible. And where it is not, it is most often military in use. Or, it has been set aside for rich people to benefit from.

Think about who really gets the value of Central Park in NYC vs Who can afford a home closeby.

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