
Author wants to “Abolish Silicon Valley” to save it from capitalism - 8bitsrule
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/12/qa-this-san-francisco-based-author-wants-to-abolish-silicon-valley-to-save-it-from-capitalism/
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bryanlarsen
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.

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sudosteph
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.

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musicale
> 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.

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DeathArrow
>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.

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pcmaffey
Socialism != communism

Democratic socialism !== socialism

~~~
pgcj_poster
Socialism ⊇ communism

Democratic Socialism ⊆ Socialism

~~~
pcmaffey
Also, Government ⊇ communism.

Communism being a bad form of government says very little about the set of all
forms of government. Likewise with socialism.

However equating communism with democratic socialism as the GP and many others
do is a false equivalency.

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

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RubenSandwich
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.

~~~
bryanlarsen
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.

