
Silicon Valley was going to disrupt capitalism. Now it’s just enhancing it - kurren
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/07/silicon-valley-health-finance
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davidmr
I genuinely don't understand the point of this article. It seems to be that,
because technology companies are partnering with businesses in other
industries, they're somehow betraying the "disruptive" culture of the
technology industry.

Is it so hard to believe that you might want to partner with GSK for
bioelectronics research? Regardless of your opinions on GSK or the
pharmaceutical industry in general, where else would you find that many
scientists and researchers who can actually do the work? Sure Google could set
up a recruiting blitz and try to raid the pharmaceutical industry, but they
have little to no expertise as it is (I assume), so why _wouldn 't_ you want
to work with someone who does?

Same thing with Chrysler. Why would Google want to start out in the automotive
industry with a huge capital outlay to build a factory, staff it, etc.?

Sure, if these things take off and there's real money to be made, maybe it
makes sense to take the work in-house, through development or acquisitions
(e.g. Motorola), but I don't know why it's somehow "bad" to partner with
companies who have expertise you don't.

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dogma1138
When was ever Silicon Valley was going to be or has been disruptive to
capitalism? It was always about mega corporations, bubbles and venture
capital...

If anything SV did was to "enhance" capitalism as it centralized capital
arguably even more than the financial sector, it's super easy to inflate
valuations hence generating capital and it requires almost no initial
investment and very low operating costs.

SV doesn't build huge factories, it doesn't create "tangible" assets, and it
requires almost no workforce (compared to other industries) to operate.

5 guys in a garage birthing billion dollar companies isn't disruptive to
capitalism it is it's wet dream; "you telling me I don't have to build multi-
billion dollar factories and employ 150K workers to create a 10bln dollar
company?! where do i sign?!"

EDIT: As for the article itself, the title is just odd, SV vs "big pharma" has
nothing to do with capitalism. SV (or the "startup scene") was never really
good at disrupting markets that require decades of research and tons of
"actual work", software is quick and easy to make, if you can easily wrap it
around an existing business model or idea you got a product which is
relatively quick and easy to launch. SV can't easily take on the
pharmaceutical industry because it's modus operandi is antithetical to the
drug industry. This is the same reason why no one in SV was really taking on
companies like Intel or NVIDIA or even the likes of Altera or Qualcomm because
you can't "hack" your way into making silicon without doing decades of R&D.

"Hardware" (or if we shall call a duck a duck then "software as a
dongle/thingie") startups are now becoming sort of a thing because cheap,
small, powerful and power efficient general purpose silicon is now dirt cheap
and available everywhere. Additionally there are tons of chip
design/fabrication companies that would create semi-custom silicon for you
within a span of a few weeks without you having to really do anything you just
define what you want your SOC to do and look like and you get it in the mail 6
weeks later.

SV can still innovate in the medical scene primarily around the edge and core
technologies like deep learning, simulating biochemistry and protein folding
health information management and the such. But even then this won't really be
traditional SV startups as the majority of them will grow for the academia
because you still need research in very specific fields and not a good idea
for an app and a few programmers.

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mankash666
The aim of silicon valley companies, or any other company for that matter, is
to make a profit. Sometimes, to profit, you disrupt, other times, you partner.
This whole notion that the valley is anti capitalist seems unsubstantiated.

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littletimmy
Can we just adopt that as a general rule? All things done with a good
intention will backfire.

