
Silicon Valley is broken and heading for social unrest - henrik_w
http://qz.com/626811/silicon-valley-is-broken-and-heading-for-social-unrest-argues-media-theorist/
======
convexfunction
I find it comforting to know that the group I belong to will be blamed for
_something_ , regardless of what the group actually does. We are free.

[http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/01/28/san-franciscos-
tech...](http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/01/28/san-franciscos-tech-
problems/)

~~~
danharaj
Misses the point completely: Tech companies are a huge part of Silicon Valley,
have enormous wealth, and that wealth isn't used to develop the social and
economic infrastructure they rely on. Tech companies are quite willing to
throw money at their own problems while ignoring how those problems affect
everyone else around them. I don't blame the "tech companies" per se, but
their owners, their investors, and the subset of their employees who are upset
that the streets around their office are crawling with "riff raff" they
despise.

Nothing is more disgusting than a human being that profits off of society and
insists they have no responsibility to anyone else. Let the sham that is the
social contract collapse and reveal the exploitative nature of capitalism for
what it is.

~~~
umanwizard
Typically cities levy taxes to pay for infrastructure. If a lot of rich people
live somewhere, that should be a windfall.

Why are tech companies supposed to donate more than their share to "develop
infrastructure"? No one has ever been expected to do something like this in
the past, AFAIK. Just raise taxes in SV and publicly fund more of what you
want.

~~~
tdaltonc
> No one has ever been expected to do something like this in the past, AFAIK.

They're not legally required to, but there certainly is historical precedent.
I live in LA, and many of the parks, museums, university buildings, and
charitable institutions bare the names of the cities oil/property barons. Even
those that don't were still financed by that money. There's also the "company
town," where the dominate industry in town shoulders even more of the
infrastructure.

~~~
chillaxtian
> They're not legally required to

then there shouldn't be any expectation

~~~
tdaltonc
You must be a fun roommate.

------
dave_sullivan
And yet, if Google were to throw up their hands and say "fuck it!" and just
shutdown, those same people would be up in arms because they no longer have
nearly instant access to all the knowledge in the world for free. To say that
the tech industry has given the public nothing is disengenuous.

Meanwhile, what has the author done other than blog to remedy the issue? What
is he a proponent of exactly, other than "Tech companies suck, boooo"?

~~~
matt4077
That logic can't be right. Because if it were, almost nobody would have the
right to criticise google.

~~~
dave_sullivan
Naw, criticize away. But if you put forth no solutions and aren't doing
anything more to solve the issue, it sounds more like whining. Not all
criticism is created equal, and criticism without a better idea is mostly just
noise.

------
kornork
I've been curious lately about lifestyle businesses - the kind of business
designed not for growth, but for maintaining a comfortable life for its
employees. 4 day work weeks, sustainable paces, avoiding growth for growth's
sake.

These kinds of businesses don't seem to get much attention.

~~~
badsock
Anecdotal data point: I work at one. We've capped both the number of clients
and the number of employees at around 12. I work 18 hours a week, so does the
founder. The most anyone works is 35, but they're the exception, and the next
"raise" they get will be the same amount of money but less hours.

We've been a going concern for 4 years now, so there's still time for things
to go off the rails; but for the moment we're killing our competition and
there's essentially zero internal strife.

To keep the caps we're starting to divide like a bacterium - fostering other
companies around our model instead of growing ourselves. We'll see how that
goes. It's a little alarming to realize that we're creating our own
competition, but there's precedent for it going well (e.g. Anchor Brewing in
San Francisco).

It's a great way to make money, and I spend all the other productive hours of
my week on my efforts to change the world. There's lots of blue-ocean ways to
do that when the need to monetize takes a back seat.

~~~
bitserf
Do you mind sharing a hint of how you got started?

I find the idea of working similar hours as you but still being able to
provide for my family while spending a lot of time with them incredibly
appealing.

Whereas at the moment, during the week I'm lucky to get more than 2 hours a
day, the commute and workday eating up the balance.

~~~
badsock
The founder got a marketing job, and was good enough at it that when he
decided to move cities the company wanted to keep him on as a remote
consultant. From there he added a couple more clients, and as the work
increased and diversified he started to subcontract (including to me, for IT
work). That kept going until it became clear (legally and otherwise) that all
the consultants were in fact employees. So the transition for everyone from a
group of consultants (who, as a perk of that role, can set their own hours) to
a proper organization was seamless, and we were all able to solidify the hours
that we wanted as it occurred.

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kazagistar
That was a comically bad article. I wish people paid attention when their
English teacher explained the structure of an essay:

\- Provide the central point or argument.

\- Provide some supporting points or arguments.

\- Provide evidence and support for each, and tie it back to the main point.

~~~
amirouche
This is not meant to be an essay but review of Douglas Rushkoff ideas about
the very current days.

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adzicg
I'm a bit confused about land, labour and capital comparison. It seems that
he's complaining about 'land' and 'labour' not getting enough as a result of
digital economy, but those are potential inputs, not outputs, so the reference
is misguided. Plus, the straw-man uber driver surely represents labor in that
part, and they get paid for that.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
The part about land not getting enough is prima facie false - housing prices
in SF are out of control.

But even in the '90s tech boom in Texas, many were using equity in tech
companies as leverage to buy and develop land. This in a place with more
affordable housing and no water bounding it.

What passes for capital in SF is also not necessarily easily understood as
capital without extending the concept quite a bit. It's closer to speculation
in early phase equities, which is about the ... third derivative of actual
capital. Unlike a building full of machines that add great creative value but
are hard to move, this brand of capital is many orders of magnitude more
ephemeral.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
Are you familiar with the 'Gulf of Mexico' and in particular 'Galveston.'

~~~
ArkyBeagle
Somewhat. I was meaning more around Dallas, where most of the water has
bridges across it and there really was a significant boom in the '90s.

------
jorleif
The author does not articulate his critique very well beyond claiming that the
VC get disproportionate return compared to land and labor. A much better
critique is Jaron Lanier's Who Owns the Future. There he argues that the
problem is when companies create monopolies that shrink the overall economy
(Instagram vs Kodak, Facebook vs publishing in general). The startup then
provides the public with free services but at the same time it decreases
employment opportunity. The whole machinery works as long as some other sector
of the economy grows, but that is unlikely to be the case forever. Somehow
there would need to be economic growth, not just lowered cost.

------
manishsharan
This article is essentially a promo piece for an upcoming book.

------
DrScump
Doomsayers like this have successfully predicted 5 of the last 0 panics.

My favorite sentence: "He also wrote a book on the internet in 1992 that was
never published, based on the belief that the online phenomenon would be over
by 1993."

That picture isn't even from Silicon Valley; it's S.F.

~~~
jackgavigan
_> My favorite sentence: "He also wrote a book on the internet in 1992 that
was never published, based on the belief that the online phenomenon would be
over by 1993."_

I think that sentence is incorrect. Rushkoff's first book _Cyberia_ was
apparently completed in 1992 but not published until 1994 because the
publisher initially believed that that the Internet, email, etc. was a fad
that would pass.

------
atemerev
The entire "job" concept was born with the industrial revolution, relatively
recently. Miraculously it survived through post-industrial age, mostly through
paper-shuffling clerical jobs (nobody could have predicted it a century ago).
Now, either the notion of a job will be gone altogether (see pre-industrial
history on how it will look like), or some other activity will take the role
of paper shuffling as the archetypal job (instructors? servants? We can only
guess now).

~~~
sologoub
That's very much an oversimplification - in pre-industrial society the
majority of labor was involved in food production. At the current scale of
farming, I don't see this happening.

The article is very poorly written, but I think the concern it is trying to
hit on is what happens to the economy when too many jobs are automated out of
existence and the overall employment plunges.

Personally, I'm optimistic that the society will adapt, as we have adapted to
the industrial revolution, but we need a healthy debate to do so.

------
dclowd9901
>Rushkoff points out that basic economy theory, as laid out economist and
philosopher Adam Smith, recognizes three factors of production: Land, labor,
and capital. But in the current digital economy, only capital is valued.

Stopped here. Airbnb commoditizes land, and Uber commoditizes labor. They do
so _very_ efficiently, but the problem is they take too much for the parent
company for how efficiently they commoditize these assets.

I can't take someone seriously who can't even get the basics right.

~~~
GuiA
If you hadn't stopped there you would have seen that he addresses why
Airbnb/uber aren't counter examples in the next paragraph.

------
oldmanjay
I'll believe those who protest against the tech industry a bit more when they
stop availing themselves of our output to tell us how shitty we are

~~~
vadym909
I don't think they are protesting the tech industry per se, but they
unfairness when rich and speculative companies push unsustainable conditions
(high cost of living) on society.

For example- Highly paid engineers from a large Tech Unicorn company that
moved to an East Bay city- drive up prices there displacing half the current
residents. The city's economy improves- other tech startups follow suit,
people buy houses, real estate value go up, people invest in remodeling homes,
setting up shops and services.

1 year later Unicorn dies or moves to another city for lower costs. Engineers
with high salaries leave, other startups start to fold, city return to pre-
Unicorn condition. People left holding the bag are the ones that felt this was
long term sustainable or couldn't move because they were tied down.

It's not the entire tech industry's fault, but if you were a resident of that
city, who are you going to blame? Probably the company who started it all,
although some may argue they also brought prosperity in the first place.
Depends on how you were impacted. If you flipped a house profitably, you are
happy. If you bought a condo to live in - not so much.

------
peter303
The headline invoked a scene of a horde of menancing nerds in horn-rimmed
glasses and slide rules.

~~~
Mtinie
Nerd stampede!

~~~
varelse
Careful, there's nothing more dangerous than a wounded nerd...

------
kukx
Now let's imagine what will happen when driverless cars start to take away
millions of jobs. It may not be that easy for a truck driver to find a new
work.

------
cubahacker
It was extremely shocking for me to see how many poor people are living even
in the richest communities of the USA, except on places where poor people are
removed from "security men" like if they were dirt.

It is unbelievable how primitive and underdeveloped the society in the USA
still is, how anti-social and pre-homo-sapiens-sapiens-like most people with
money are behaving.

Very disgusting especially when looking at the enormous amount of money USA
puts into its war machinery.

Simply disgusting. You have nothing to be proud of.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Are you really from Cuba?

I haven't noticed people leaving the United States for Cuba by crossing shark-
infested waters on rafts they've made from trash bags filled with styrofoam
packing peanuts, have you?

Oddly, all of that traffic seems to be going the other way.

