Author wants to “Abolish Silicon Valley” to save it from capitalism

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/12/qa-this-san-francisco-based-author-wants-to-abolish-silicon-valley-to-save-it-from-capitalism/

by 8bitsrule • 6 years ago

27 11 6 years ago

mercurynews.com

bryanlarsen2• 6 years ago

Reading between the lines I see two complaints:

- the VC system is pretty messed up. Paul Graham made himself and others rich by recognizing some deficiencies. That there are still massive problems would not be a controversial statement here.

- Private companies controlling, exploiting and monopolizing platforms. Tech companies effectively self-organize to disrupt monopolies that harm them (Linux, Postgres, Kubernetes, etc) while these same companies are trying to gain their own monopolies.

I think most people here would agree that these are problems. Most here would probably be happy if the US enforced its existing anti-trust laws better, but it sounds like Liu's proposed solutions are much more radical. I'll be interested to hear them.

RubenSandwich• 6 years ago

Nonpaywall link?

I checked Google Cache and it's still paywalled.

Impossible to have an informed opinion without reading the article. As "saving from capitalism" can mean so many different things.

bryanlarsen2• 6 years ago

It's a teaser for a book which comes out next week. There will be much more informative reviews and articles then, I'm sure.

sudosteph• 6 years ago

I guess I'll have to read that book.

I'm a similar age to the author and have also experienced a good deal of disillusionment about the tech industry. Like her, I absolutely did idolize tech companies as a kid, despite only ever reading about them from afar. I even bought into the concept of these places being pure meritocracies and forces for good.

I still love tech and most people who work in the field, but it's apparent that it's not a pure meritocracy by any means. Not that any industry is, to be fair. I still have no regrets about choosing this career and think that technology jobs in general offer an outsized opportunity compared to most other jobs, especially for ambitious working class kids. I do think though that the highly regional nature of top-tier jobs and capital heavily favors the SF area excludes a good portion of talent from the tech startup scene, especially black people and rural people. You would think the absurd housing costs in that area would provide incentives to branch out, but network effects are powerful and the wealthy investor class don't feel the pain from that issue. The end result is a physical and cultural bubble around tech in SV that will decrease the ability of tech startups to contribute genuine innovation moving forward.

Like many things related to capitalism, it's not terribly hard to identify problematic patterns and unequal outcomes - but proposing solutions is much harder. Will be curious to read what the Author believes can help, and why.

lazylizard• 6 years ago

Why is "silicon valley" only websites n smartphone apps?

DeathArrow• 6 years ago

Reclaim the wealth from capital, push back capital and fund public innovation.

Being born in Eastern Europe, having experienced communism when I was a kid - which meant lack of food, living in improper conditions (cold, frequently shutdowns of utilities), scarcity of common goods, relative poverty, low development, poor healthcare, censorship, violation of most rights - and thinking of tens of millions of deaths caused worldwide by communism, I don't really understand why some westerners are pushing to it instead of being happy they didn't experience it.

pcmaffey2• 6 years ago

Socialism != communism

Democratic socialism !== socialism

pgcj_poster• 6 years ago

Socialism ⊇ communism

Democratic Socialism ⊆ Socialism

solotronics• 6 years ago

They push it because they have no concept of the consequences. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

By no means do I think capitalism is perfect and we have no room for improvement. At this point it seems that there have been enough examples of communism that we can see the results of that system.

musicale• 6 years ago

This is manifest in the way tech companies are funded through venture capital firms, going public or taking money from stock and the public. The problem is the fact that tech is ultimately interrelated to capital and right now capital is in a very concentrated and not representative group of people

Software and web service startups don't require a lot of capital to get off the ground.

In many cases I would agree that venture capital is unnecessary and can do more harm than good as the company shifts focus toward investor happiness rather than customer and employee happiness. The same bad focus can happen in a public company when the stakeholder balance sometimes shifts overwhelmingly toward investors at the expense of everyone else.

In a non winner-take-all market, funding a company the old-fashioned way - paying out of pocket until you have enough paying customers to sustain the business - may be a good way to go.

Author wants to “Abolish Silicon Valley” to save it from capitalism

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