
Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum - coloneltcb
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/silicon-valley-has-an-empathy-vacuum
======
micaksica
A capitalist economy is an "empathy vacuum". This is just more vilification of
Silicon Valley in the midst of the post-Trump election, where coastal
residents are mad "fake news" and social media organized "flyover" states
into, well, voting for Trump, and are looking for someone convenient to blame
for the fact that a marginalized semi-rural population organized against
globalized interests. There is a lot of irony in the fact that most East
Coast-based established media is spending all this time talking about how
there is no empathy in Silicon Valley, when the people in the Rust Belt that
voted Trump into office would say exactly the same thing about the New Yorker
and its "elite" ilk.

There is nothing about Silicon Valley that has any less "empathy" than many
non-tech organizations. If the financial incentive structure runs against this
ideal of "empathy", it happens and is bound to happen. End of story.

The empathy vacuum is real in finance, politics, health insurance, petroleum,
pharmaceuticals, law, law enforcement, and virtually any other large
bureaucracy in which individual actions are rewarded in spite of impersonal
behavior. At the end of the day, people are rewarded for what they bring to
the economy, not the mental happiness of a populace, which is not always
quantifiable or captured by the market.

~~~
gaur
A comment amounting to "that's how capitalism works, so tough shit!" is such a
perfect example of the SV empathy vacuum that I almost think it must be
satire.

~~~
micaksica
That's not my point at all. My point is that the crosshair is incorrectly
aimed: it is not an industry that is failing at this, it is the way our social
structure is formed and rewarded that is failing.

Technological progress may be an issue that contributes to this so-called
empathy vacuum, but all industries that cause negative externalities (in
cyclical or permanent unemployment, or pollution, or wealth disparity, etc)
are just as much a problem.

If we want to have this debate, that's great. It needs to happen, especially
as our economy ends up with an increasing human labor supply as it's automated
away or sent to places where labor is cheaper. The track we are on now will
likely end up with massive Gini coefficients worldwide, a ruling class and a
noted underclass based upon who was able to achieve capital accumulation while
their labor was still worth something.

The problem I have here is that the _New Yorker_ isn't even going for this
debate in this article. They are complaining about something and pointing a
finger at but a sliver of an issue that they are also a part of.

------
helpfulanon
I am surprised by the sheer volume of tech professionals who have been
responding to this article today by unapologetically reinforcing it's primary
position. The idea that the industry should have no accountability for it's
actions seems to be the jarring consensus.

I want to believe that those of us who are opposed to the use of technology
purely for greed and power still outnumber, but am starting to feel like maybe
we are an island and a dying breed, giving way to a new callous generation of
technologists who wish to wield the power of social technology for only
individual ambitions over the democratic idealism of collaboration that it was
founded on. This is a dark time indeed

~~~
taurath
Then you get into the "not my responsibility" paradigm. What do you actually
do to help the people who's industry you've replaced? What CAN one company
even do? The usual libertarian response seems to be that people need to look
out for themselves and keep their skillsets fresh - ignoring the larger forces
at play here. Maybe someone else has a more cogent argument for how a person
can avoid getting caught up randomly in what amounts to a broader economic
trend.

------
tshadley
> As Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management
> told MIT Technology Review, “Productivity is at record levels, innovation
> has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median
> income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology
> is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.”

This may have been true five years ago, but now? The real median income has
been going up since 2011
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States)).
Jobs have been increasing since at least 2009, i.e last recession
([http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?jt](http://data.bls.gov/cgi-
bin/surveymost?jt)). I don't think Brynjolfsson's thesis-- that technology
destroys jobs-- is holding up ([https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-
technology-is-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-
is-destroying-jobs/)).

~~~
taurath
It destroys jobs, and (maybe) creates them elsewhere. This can be devastating
to individuals who's jobs are destroyed, and we don't exactly do much to help
those left behind who cannot re-skill, move into new jobs etc.

Think of a 55 year old factory worker who's job is outsourced. They may have
been damn good at that job, but the industry is now gone, replaced with
another. They're far enough away from retirement that they need to find
something else. Maybe they have commitments like a very elderly parent, ties
to a community etc that make it hard or impossible to leave where they are.

Those 2 stats don't tell the whole story:

Median income can increase simply because the top earners earn a heck of a lot
more, while the lesser earners are still earning less. This graph on the page
you linked tells that story:
([https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/US_GDP_per_ca...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/US_GDP_per_capita_vs_median_household_income.png))

More jobs do not mean jobs that pay as well as previous ones do. They could
all be low pay service sector employees to chauffeur the rich people around,
or deliver burritos to them at 2AM.

We need to look closer at the devastation that an industry leaving a town can
have when there are no ready replacements - its been going on for decades but
all people seem to care about are "number of jobs" in most cases.

~~~
tshadley
I'm primarily concerned with the facts at the moment; I think once those are
known, it becomes easier to understand the big picture.

> This graph on the page you linked tells that story:
> ([https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/US_GDP_per_ca...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/US_GDP_per_ca...))

That graph is misleading because it leaves out benefits and other
compensation; a more accurate picture is the graph here:
[http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/productivit...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/productivity-
and-compensation-growing-together)

> It destroys jobs, and (maybe) creates them elsewhere. This can be
> devastating to individuals who's jobs are destroyed, and we don't exactly do
> much to help those left behind who cannot re-skill, move into new jobs etc.
> Think of a 55 year old factory worker who's job is outsourced. They may have
> been damn good at that job, but the industry is now gone, replaced with
> another. They're far enough away from retirement that they need to find
> something else. Maybe they have commitments like a very elderly parent, ties
> to a community etc that make it hard or impossible to leave where they are.

This is true, but it is also less severe and less frequent than at any other
time in American history. Jobs and wages are increasing over the last five
years (since the recession) on the whole, not decreasing. On the whole,
Americans are better off than probably at any other time in history. So it is
not likely that Americans laid off or outsourced made the most significant
impact in this political election, there just aren't enough of them relative
to the rest.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
The biggest ones are ruthless and they're not apologetic about it. Still can't
dislike them as much rent collectors though, at least they're _doing_
something and if they stagnate they'll be overtaken.

------
brudgers
Duplicate:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13055427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13055427)

------
bertiewhykovich
"Silicon Valley seems to have lost a bit of its verve since the Presidential
election. The streets of San Francisco—spiritually part of the Valley—feel
less crowded. Coffee-shop conversations are hushed. Everything feels a little
muted, an eerie quiet broken by chants of protesters. It even seems as if
there are more parking spots. Technology leaders, their employees, and those
who make up the entire technology ecosystem seem to have been shaken up and
shocked by the election of Donald Trump."

As loathsome as Trump is, I do look forward to having our collective nose
rubbed in our collective shit.

~~~
m0llusk
This business cycle started down well before the election. Many reported
evidence of a big turnaround in August and September of 2015. Apartment prices
we well known to be headed down in early 2016. What is happening in San
Francisco and Silicon Valley has to do with macroeconomics and very little to
do with politics.

