
The Government Shutdown Has Revealed Silicon Valley’s Dysfunction Fetish - dnewms
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/silicon-valleys-dysfunction-fetish.html
======
NathanKP
_Companies are transcending power now. We are becoming the eminent vehicles
for change and influence, and capital structures that matter._

That doesn't sound like a better world. That sounds like a worse one.
Governments tend to at least have some interest in keeping their citizens
alive, healthy, and happy.

The primary purpose of a company is to make money and as history has shown
time and time again companies in general are all too willing to sell people
dangerous products, work their employees to death, and do other unsavory
things in order to make money.

Sure the US government is seeming ineffective, and in many cases less than
satisfactory. But a system in which companies have the power definitely isn't
better.

~~~
sausman
What specific power(s) do you object to companies having? The power to
voluntarily exchange with others?

Companies don't make money killing people, they make money improving the lives
of customers and employees by offering them something they value more than
their money/labor. If someone is working under poor working conditions, it's
because their next best alternative is even worse.

~~~
alexqgb
"Companies don't make money killing people"

No, they don't make money killing their CUSTOMERS. But they can make a lot of
money by not giving a fig about people impacted by their operations.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster)

This is why we have regulations, by the way. So when amoral idiots find
themselves in a position to do serious harm, there's some external force to
compensate (as much as possible) for their lack of suitable ethics and working
moral compasses.

~~~
sausman
If by regulations you mean enforcing property rights and laws against murder,
I agree.

In a free market the initiation of force is not tolerated. The Bhopal disaster
you cited is a perfect example of an initiation of force.

The government legitimizes the initiation of force on those who have done
nothing to violate the rights of others -- similar to the disaster you cited.
It seems you have a problem with companies initiating force, but not the
government. Why is that?

~~~
alexqgb
"It seems you have a problem with companies initiating force, but not the
government. Why is that?"

Why does it seem that way? I don't know, it's your impression. You tell me.

------
molecule
Those expressing the views described in this article seem to be painfully
ignorant of the Federally financed origins of Silicon Valley:

[http://steveblank.com/secret-history/](http://steveblank.com/secret-history/)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo)

~~~
chubot
Yup. I was watching a video about the history of BSD recently and I was
surprised at how closely DARPA was involved. Marshall McCusick was describing
how he, Bill Joy and others were at Berkeley and literally implementing the
Internet in BSD! They were funded by DARPA and were overseen by DARPA
admnistrators. But they actually were not doing all of it -- DARPA was also
paying private contractors for other components. (Which ended up in some
technical disagreements as I recall.)

That BSD code is of course not only the foundation of the Internet, but of
your iPhones and iPads as well. Actually I believe it is fundamental to
Windows as well, since my understanding is that the TCP/IP implementation in
Windows is BSD code.

Silicon Valley doesn't have the foresight for the technical foundations of
society (and I say that having worked here for over a decade). The web wasn't
invented by Silicon Valley either. Neither was e-mail. Neither was Perl, PHP,
Python, or Ruby. Python was actually government funded too.

Also don't forget that Bill Clinton and the government made all your location-
based apps possible, by opening GPS satellites to the public in the 90s.

~~~
gcb1
historic significance does not matter much. what it is doing now?

it is no wonder that someone who has private transportation, private
insurance, private retirement, private everything... does not care about
government. he is the embodiement of the capitalistic dream. government for
those people is only for taxation. of course they would cheer.

the weird part is the middle class worker with the obama bumper sticker
cheering for them. this i will never understand,

~~~
TruthElixirX
Not to mention the wars overseas and the war on drugs. The U.S. is the most
incarcerating country in the world (ignoring North Korea).

I'll trade my roads, my Linux, my Android phone, whatever in exchange for the
ending of killing those overseas and domestically.

~~~
wozniacki
That's quite an ode.

------
molecule
> His statement mirrors what venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said last
> year, when he proclaimed, "I love gridlock!"

I doubt Marc Andreessen loved gridlock when he was working on Mosaic @ the
NCSA

> The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is an American
> state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale
> cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomput...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications)

------
cylinder
It's frustrating that someone with such poor critical thinking skills can
become so rich.

Anyone with even mediocre critical thinking abilities and a general knowledge
of markets would understand that the reason the stock market went up during
the shutdown is because investors _know the government will be back._ This
understanding and expectation is obviously priced into the market. If they are
implying that the stock market would remain resilient if the federal
government disappeared overnight never to return, they are quite simply
idiots.

The #1 reason the US and other western nations are able to attract capital and
have sophisticated economies is because of their predictable, reasonable legal
systems and regulatory environments. Capital commands extremely high rates of
return in risky legal frameworks, when an investor doesn't know whether they
will be hit up for a bribe or seized by a populist government, they are
obviously going to demand much more. A well-developed legal system and the
power of the government to enforce laws and judgments is the reason the US is
a "safe haven."

~~~
dnautics
>because of their predictable, reasonable legal systems and regulatory
environments...

Isn't there a argument, then, that increasing the number of laws (or pages in
any given law) beyond a certain point begins having negative returns on your
predictability and reasonability, because of the power-law increase in
interactions between laws?

------
mseebach
This is a ridiculous article. It leaps from a couple of government-critical
comments to declaring a "fetish" for "dysfunction"? Based on what, exactly?
Why aren't the people tirelessly defending the clusterfuck that is democratic
government in most of the western world the fetishists?

And for the comments on this thread suggesting that silicon valley can't be
critical of government because government once had a hand in the valley?
That's roughly the same level of hypocrisy as a government-fan shopping at
Walmart.

~~~
dfc
I am curious about: "That's roughly the same level of hypocrisy as a
government-fan shopping at Walmart."

I try not to engage in political discussions on HN so please do not interpret
my question as me challenging your point. I am merely interested in what you
find hypocritical in the Wal-Mart shopping example.

~~~
mseebach
Somebody in favour of the government benefiting from the services of the
private market = not very hypocritical at all. Just like I don't think it's
very hypocritical for someone who once worked for a company that got a subsidy
from the government to be against the government.

We live in the world we live in, and failing to live a perfectly pure life
should not disqualify you from having opinions.

------
rmrfrmrf
Kevin Roose clearly misunderstands what "functioning" means in Congressional
terms. Perhaps he was absent on the day that his 4th grade class learned:

    
    
        - The Executive branch enforces laws.
        - The Judicial branch interprets laws.
        - The Legislative branch makes laws.
    

Think about that: The Legislative branch's ONLY JOB is to make laws. Now, I'm
a big-government-loving bleeding heart liberal, but even _I_ have to admit
that it's completely ridiculous to put 535 people representing 3.8 million
square miles of land into one building for 11 months out of every year for the
_sole purpose_ of making new laws. How could you _not_ end up with tons of
unnecessary cruft and bloat?

What this means is that the _only_ time we aren't adding more restrictions to
our lives is when Congress is gridlocked. Gridlock is the system _functioning
as designed_. What's not to love about it? We don't _want_ a government that
moves fast and breaks things. For startups and lean companies, it can be a
real pain in the ass! It's hard enough to keep up with compliance issues when
you're just starting out; having to change your policies every 6 months due to
the whims on Congress would be practically anti-business.

~~~
gjm11
> The Legislative branch's ONLY JOB is to make laws.

I don't think that's quite right. Its job is to _change the laws_. That can
mean adding laws, repealing laws, updating existing laws in the light of
changing circumstances, etc. And "changing the laws" includes one-off things
that do something once and don't leave much enduring cruft behind, like the
Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

There's no reason in principle why they couldn't do their job while keeping
the total amount of law constant or even reducing it. If in practice they do
spend almost all their time (when not gridlocked) making new laws without
trimming the resulting bloat, the problem isn't _simply_ that their job
requires them to do that.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
> _There 's no reason in principle why they couldn't do their job while
> keeping the total amount of law constant or even reducing it._

Actually, there is! The reason is because Congress can only _make_ laws --
that includes laws that repeal other laws! Note how we still have the
Eighteenth Amendment despite it being nullified by the Twenty-first Amendment.

While there can be, in theory (and again, with such a large mass of people,
it's _really_ only in theory) laws whose sole purpose is to repeal other laws,
such laws almost never make it to the President without a sizable layer of
pork slathered on top in order to gather enough votes.

------
Uhhrrr
For all the rhetoric in the article, Mr. Roose never actually refutes this
belief:

"For them, government is mostly a hindrance — a regulatory obstacle to the
kinds of disruptive start-ups they fund, and an enemy of a looser immigration
policy that would allow their portfolio companies to recruit more talented
foreign engineers."

------
robg
Without extensive government funding, it would never have become _Silicon_
Valley.

[http://video.pbs.org/video/2332168287/](http://video.pbs.org/video/2332168287/)

------
Apocryphon
The cyberpunk genre has existed for almost three decades. His embrace of the
fears of that dystopian movement is pretty disconcerting.

Not to mention inaccurate. Companies are certainly powerful, but what is the
power or influence of Silicon Valley compared to the titans of industry such
as IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon, and yes, the
financial firms and banks of NYC?

------
dragonwriter
> Companies are transcending power now. We are becoming the eminent vehicles
> for change and influence, and capital structures that matter.

 _Becoming_? Corporations have been the transcendant power in the developed
world since the collapse of feudalism.

------
drvdevd
Strange that there seemed to be no mention of why the US government shut down
in the first place: they failed to raise the debt ceiling on time, right? And
who has primary interest in US debt? Other governments, like China for
example.

So if Silicon Valley were to become the true seat of power in the US, how
would they approach international relations? And how would they handle the
military? And what would they do in the event of a war?

This does seem like an article written about an off-hand, not so serious
comment. But it touches a nerve on something I hear echoing around my world
(and I don't live in California) -- people believe Tech companies are the new
driving direction of the economy and they think that makes them the new
direction of power. I can't help but feel it's the wishful thinking of a new
middle class.

------
joyeuse6701
It's funny, people's loyalty seem to almost always lie with their largest
patron.

------
argumentum
I don't like this Chamath guy, but he has recognized something that's real.
Though his words are mostly hyperbole, _power is shifting_ to the valley.

------
mixmastamyk
Hmm, the author seems to imply the idea is wrong or dangerous, then the
article ends. Not sure what to think.

------
avty
Well, nothing like a little crash to bring these kind of people's head back to
earth.

~~~
dtx
"These kind of people" might come across as wrong to a few, which is
completely fair and justified. But as you said - "getting them back to Earth"
is a wrong idea. That implies that current situation is completely fine and
these people are eccentrics, which is most definitely not correct. Rather than
silencing a few who speak their minds and getting things back to (ab)normal;
we need to find our own ideas on how things can be fixed, if not by the
ideology proposed by such people.

We need to collectively work towards a solution than silencing a few.

~~~
avty
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a
sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay
its own bills. ... I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase
America’s debt limit.” — Then-Sen. Barack Obama, floor speech in the Senate,
March 16, 2006

