
Silicon Valley’s Unchecked Arrogance - andygambles
https://medium.com/the-development-set/silicon-valley-s-unchecked-arrogance-d86cbb8db52#.abwm5uvkk
======
subdane
<opinion> The problem I see w/ UBI is that contrary to popular belief, people
aren't lazy, they're industrious. People like to feel useful. And people long
for meaning in their lives and their work. Entrepreneurs define this stuff for
themselves, but most people aren't comfortable with the risk and ambiguity
necessary to be an entrepreneur. We're really talking about finding ways to
give structure and meaning to those folks, the large middle class in America.
And the ways we did this in the 20th C aren't working, for myriad reasons,
some of them technological. UBI is a way to address loss of income without
actually addressing the need for structure, meaning, and belonging to a larger
project. I realize this is beyond the scope of government, but I actually
think we simply handed this conversation over to the free market in the 20th C
and that answer isn't going to work in this century. And this question about
work/income and supporting your family, which was obscured by a strong jobs
market will be thrown into relief. </opinion>

~~~
empath75
Why do you think people getting a UBI would just sit on their asses? If I
didn't have to work for a living, I'd be writing or making music all day or
something like that.

~~~
phd514
The point is not so much whether you'd be doing something or not, but whether
what you would be doing would ultimately be of enough value to justify the
money collected from others to fund your UBI.

~~~
jpadkins
You missed the point of UBI. There will be a whole class of people who won't
be able to create enough value to justify the money needed to have a
comfortable living. So we create UBI so they can still live comfortably. When
most things are automated, there will be an excess of wealth. Why not use UBI
as a transition tool to a post-scarcity economy?

~~~
Domenic_S
"Comfortable living" is where UBI falls apart for me. What's comfortable? If
my parents are [google|fb|apple] execs and I decide I want to just write
poetry and live off UBI, will I be able to afford to live in the same
neighborhood as them? The same city? The same region?

Clearly the answer is no, and it will result in the ghettoization of those
that choose to take only UBI for income. This already happens with Section 8
housing, retirement havens (eg Florida), and so forth. There would be an even
starker contrast between the haves (who perform "useful" work) and the have-
nots (who subsist solely on UBI for whatever reason).

~~~
jpadkins
your criticism is spot on. There will be a have / have not divide. It will
make today's inequality look quaint. The top 20th percentile in
IQ/productivity will live way better than the rest, but they will probably be
creating 99% of the value.

So what's your solution? With the upcoming automation wave coming, UBI is way
better than the status quo. What is better than UBI?

~~~
mcguire
What makes you think IQ or productivity will have anything to do with it?

------
golemotron
I can deal with SV's arrogance but I have trouble dealing with bloggers'
unchecked scolding.

That article was shrill, it impugned motive, and it attempted to stigmatize.
This is more of threat than people who are earnestly trying to help but who
may be missing part of the picture.

See: [https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-
eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

~~~
fabulist
Very interesting article, you should submit it.

~~~
golemotron
It's been submitted many times.

~~~
DrScump
And this main article is the _ninth_ submittal of it in less than 2 days.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Silicon%20Valley%E2%80%99s%20U...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Silicon%20Valley%E2%80%99s%20Unchecked%20Arrogance&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

------
strommen
Silicon Valley's _raison d 'etre_ is to leverage computers to make our lives
easier. It's a confluence of people who are good at software (and the business
of software) - nothing more, nothing less.

Apart from the means to throw vast amounts of money at the problem, there's no
reason that Silicon Valley nerds should be expected to solve squishy human
problems like inequality. Those require a greater understanding of people and
society. And to borrow an analogy from John Oliver, expecting tech
entrepreneurs to possess this is like expecting a vegan to be good at karate -
there's no cause and effect between these two, and the correlation usually
goes the other way.

~~~
d--b
> nothing more, nothing less.

That's not quite true. There definitely is a culture that is specific to
Silicon Valley. Of course, not everyone in the valley matches that culture,
but on average there are some values and a certain rhetoric that comes out of
that area that is very recognizable. You can see that by watching the silicon
valley show, the guys in the show represent the different stereotypes of
people that you encounter all the time in the valley.

This is important to the argument here, because one aspect of the silicon
valley rhetoric is that its objective is to do good, to make the world a
better place, to not be evil. It is that rhetoric that pisses off people. The
fact that ruthless businessmen (because they are ruthless businessmen) put
themselves on the right side of morality. It is going way further than Wall
Street's "greed is good". At least the Wall Street guys had some actual
cynicism behind it. Here, you get people who actually believe that they are
making the world a better place, and that humanity owes them the insane amount
of wealth they're getting out of it. And that's where the arrogance comes
from. Instead of telling the world: 'we're making life a little bit more
convenient' they say 'we embody human evolution, we are progress and progress
is good'

~~~
ewzimm
I think this perception of arrogance is often a misunderstanding. The stuff
that Silicon Valley makes is often treated like brilliant children. Especially
when we are talking about creating automated systems, the pride is the same as
a parent training a child to go out and do great things. They don't take full
credit for it. They just laid the groundwork for that child to go out and
become an amazing person.

In the same way, people working on things like AI are looking at the limitless
potential, not necessarily as their own achievement, but as helping to nurture
something which will eventually develop on its own, but in ways that are
currently unimaginable by people.

This might look arrogant to other people, but it's more like humility in
reality, a realization of what our limitations as people are and an
understanding about how we might be able to build intelligent systems that can
surpass these. They might not all be Artificial General Intelligences. They
will often be good at very specific things, like AlphaGo, but they will be
able to make leaps of intuition that we know no human could accomplish.

I think that most people's problem with pride isn't that someone else is
feeling good about themselves but rather that it humiliates the person seeing
it. We're going to have to learn a lot of humility as a species if we are ever
going to overcome our limitations.

~~~
thelock85
> a realization of what our limitations as people are and an understanding
> about how we might be able to build intelligent systems that can surpass
> these.

I wish it was this way but in my experience, technologists are creating
great/novel technology for the sake being _able_ to create great/novel
technology, instead of thoughtfully designing systems that consider
consequences beyond a high-growth business model (if any). I agree it's not
arrogance but also it's hard to pass of as humility; rather, it seems to be a
limitation of wisdom which is hardly unique to SV.

~~~
ewzimm
I do think there are plenty of people who just enjoy creating things, but I've
heard and read plenty of thoughtful consideration of the consequences too. The
problem is that it's almost impossible to predict the full consequences of
transforming society to the extent that the progress of technology does. We
can only try things in limited settings and see how they work. The idea of the
basic income is to give us more room to experiment without having to worry
about the financial viability of each experiment. It certainly doesn't mean
those experiments aren't worthwhile or useful, just that sometimes what makes
money isn't the same as what needs to be done.

------
rm_-rf_slash
The title says it all: Silicon Valley is arrogant, and it's success insulates
itself from introspection.

That's pretty much it.

The rest of the article goes off about how universal basic income is good, or
bad, or liberating, or condescending. Then concludes saying "I sure sure stung
SV where it hurts, huh? Now everybody suggest better ideas than UBI because I
haven't got any but I still want to feel edgy and validated."

~~~
shopkins
I didn't get that impression, but maybe that's because I'm not in the
geographical area of the author's vitriol.

About halfway through he makes a good point about Uber drivers not making much
money from the job. He mentions hypothetically giving drivers equity in the
company. I think the end of the article had a pretty clear call-to-action,
without gloating. Personally it got me thinking about ways I could change
services I've built to pay both myself and users creating content on it. Think
about if you could make money by posting great photos on Instagram. Not many
SV engineers might care, but for others, that could potentially provide a
much-needed source of income and an alternative to the currently _non-
existent_ UBI.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> About halfway through he makes a good point about Uber drivers not making
> much money from the job. He mentions hypothetically giving drivers equity in
> the company.

Which, if you think about it, clearly doesn't work. The driver already gets
the large majority of the fare. It's just that the driver gets most of one
fare whereas Uber gets a small slice of every fare so the driver makes $8 once
and Uber makes $2 times a billion. Even if you gave every single share of the
company to the drivers and left nothing for any other investors, they would
only get the small remaining slice of the fare after whatever administrative
overhead the company has. In other words they would get the equivalent of like
a 10% raise. It doesn't fix anything. The fundamental problem is that the
market is highly competitive so it drives down fares/wages. If you want to get
paid more, you have to do some other kind of work.

> Personally it got me thinking about ways I could change services I've built
> to pay both myself and users creating content on it. Think about if you
> could make money by posting great photos on Instagram.

Which is exactly the same problem. When you post a picture on Instagram,
Instagram on average makes a few cents. They're a billion dollar company
because it's a few cents times a billion people. If you gave all the money to
the people posting pictures they would still be making far less than minimum
wage.

~~~
shopkins
Yes that's all true. But I wasn't suggesting that it would work, just that:

1) I think the parent missed the point that the author was suggesting
potential alternatives to UBI, and

2) It's an interesting idea that some of one's income could come from products
like Instagram.

Of course the companies are the ones creating the value in the first place,
which is why they make the $2 x 1B. But even when Uber rolls out its
driverless cars, the Uber drivers who were automated out of their jobs are
still going to want to work at _something_. Hell, they might even want to try
to _make money_ from their new endeavor rather than live off of some basic
income. And the "arrogance" I think the author is referring to is Sam's notion
[0] that the people working all these soon-to-be-obsolete jobs across the
country are going to suddenly _need_ UBI so they don't end up living out on
the street, which just doesn't seem true.

[0] "However, if we cannot find a new kind of work for billions of people,
we’ll be faced with a new idle class. The obvious conclusion is that the
government will just have to give these people money, and there’s been
increasing talk about a “basic income”—i.e, any adult who wanted it could
have, say, $15,000 a year." [http://blog.samaltman.com/technology-and-wealth-
inequality](http://blog.samaltman.com/technology-and-wealth-inequality)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> And the "arrogance" I think the author is referring to is Sam's notion [0]
> that the people working all these soon-to-be-obsolete jobs across the
> country are going to suddenly _need_ UBI so they don't end up living out on
> the street, which just doesn't seem true.

Doesn't it though?

Automation pretty much has a formula. The cost of R&D for the automation has
to be less than [human compensation for doing X] times [number of humans who
do X] in order for X to be automated.

The cost of developing the automation is highly correlated with how much
intelligence is required to do the job, so the things automation targets most
easily are _anything that pays well, employs a lot of people and doesn 't
require high intelligence_.

Automation replaces jobs starting from the middle and going up and down from
there. So the safest jobs are the ones requiring the highest intelligence and
the ones paying the lowest wages, and as automation improves, the level of
intelligence required to be in the first group will increase and the wages
paid to the second group will decrease.

Now suppose you're someone who is already below the intelligence threshold for
the first group. You can still get the second type of job, but soon enough
that type of job won't pay a living wage (assuming it even does currently).
And if we continue to have minimum wage laws then you will instead find
yourself unemployed, because automation will drive the value of unskilled
labor below minimum wage.

UBI fixes that. It lets you add the UBI to the low value of your labor and end
up with enough to live on. Or use the UBI as the safety net required to do
higher reward work with higher risk of failure.

------
adrianN
The article insinuates somehow that making jobs obsolete and thinking about a
basic income is arrogant and bad. This is, in my opinion, completely
misguided. Making jobs obsolete is the very definition of progress. Being
forced to work >40 hours of a week for most of your live in a job you might
not even enjoy to maintain a basic standard of living seems pretty horrible to
me.

------
justin_vanw
It's not arrogance if it is true.

The trend is very clear: the list of tasks which can be automated is getting
longer. The list of jobs being done by unskilled and/or nontechnical workers
is getting shorter. This is a trend noted by economists for many decades
(we've all heard about how most jobs in America are now 'service jobs', that
is just one example).

It is very lazy to do what this author is doing. See success, demand charity
via a convoluted argument which boils down to "instead of solving everyone's
problems, listen to my populist bullshit and solve them in this obviously
unworkable way that is based on ignorance and doesn't challenge any
assumptions that are widely held. Change is scary and not guaranteed to make
every single thing better, so we should fight it."

~~~
Thrymr
> It's not arrogance if it is true.

No, it's still arrogance to believe you're right and the rest of the world is
wrong. Even if you believe it's "true".

~~~
justin_vanw
If it is arrogant to believe you are right and the rest of the world is wrong,
then every genius or great leader in history is arrogant. Thankfully so, or we
would never have made any progress whatsoever.

If you are right, then arrogance is a wonderful thing.

------
tetrep
>How do we change ownership structures to prevent Snapchat, Instagram, and
Whatsapp from distributing billion-dollar windfalls among only a couple dozen
people?

This seems to be the crux of the argument, that concentrated wealth is bad but
direct redistribution via taxes/Government is also bad. The "proposed"
solution in the article is to construct a most certainly complex set of
laws/regulations such that companies themselves are forced to redistribute
their wealth amongst their employees, which only works if you have employees
to share with. If 3 people make an awesome mobile game that makes millions of
dollars, even split evenly, they're helping virtually nobody with their
product yet accumulating a very non-trivial amount of wealth. UBI or similar
tax schemes would naturally capture this wealth and redistribute it, I'm not
aware of a cleaner/simpler alternative than that.

Note: I think the discussion this article is creating is good, but that the
article itself is quite poor.

------
Wintamute
What, exactly _is_ Silicon Valley in this argument?

The article does not provide a definition, and seems to repeatedly make the
hilarious mistake that Silicon Valley can be "personally" deserving of the
sort of moralistic/authoritarian pseudo liberal browbeating that's so common
in the media nowadays.

It isn't a person that can be shamed on social media. It isn't a nation, a
government body, a think tank or any other sort of institution that owes you
or society a damn thing. If it even can be viewed collectively it's an
expression of capitalism and technological progress that is single mindedly
interested in providing value to shareholders.

------
Sven7
I fully agree with this piece.

I am sick of the Larry Ellison type role model of leadership that is
encouraged and celebrated.

Mindless ambition is not a bad thing if you want to climb a mountain or walk
to the north pole in winter on your own. But if you want to rule the world you
will do harm in unimaginable ways.

------
mindslight
BI reeks of the same lazy centralized thinking responsible for the very trends
that cause BI to seem necessary. After feedback, BI will just raise rents a
corresponding amount - broken monetary policy simply speeds up the debt
treadmill to funnel the added surplus upwards. And income _always_ comes with
strings attached, so increased centralized command would be inevitable. The
end result is an even larger underclass being socially engineered from
Washington.

Restore sane monetary policy so _most_ people can accumulate wealth. Rebuke
the broken Silicon Valley VC model of proprietary systems that further
concentrate the N^2 wealth from Metcalfe's law into a few rendezvous
bottlenecks. Only then can we have a chance at a functioning economy in the
face of increasing technological progress.

~~~
drabiega
Consider that BI has been agreed to be a good idea by a variety of well
regarded intelligent people on both sides of the political spectrum. If
anything, offhand dismissal is the lazy attitude here.

> After feedback, BI will just raise rents a corresponding amount

Basic Income is inherently redistributive. The prices of goods are inherently
based on the distribution of income. It is pretty reasonable to expect the
balance of prices to adjust given the income redistribution.

> And income always comes with strings attached

The point of BI is income without strings, so could you explain how this is
impossible?

> Restore sane monetary policy

Could you explain what you regard as sane monetary policy?

~~~
mindslight
(My criticism could seem like "offhand dismissal" because you're quickly
reading it, not because I spent little time thinking about it.)

> _Could you explain what you regard as sane monetary policy?_

Restoring the ability for non-upper-class people to _save_. Specifically,
ending the policy of forced inflation that prevents the lower class from
saving in cash, and pushes the middle class into simulated "investments" to
slow the erosion. Technological progress means prices should be getting _ever-
cheaper_ , so the effects of forced inflation get ever-worse - an economic
treadmill that favors _income_ (with accompanying requirements) over minor
_wealth_ (which can be wielded as one pleases).

> _The point of BI is income without strings_

That is the initial intention and design, but all systems evolve. BI creates
an income stream at the mercy of politics, which are the biggest strings that
can be attached. Imagine the same "drug users on welfare" rhetoric applied to
even more people.

> _Basic Income is inherently redistributive_

But still subject to the rent treadmill, which will simply recollect the
distributed money upwards to the money printers and associated artificial
industries (eg by increasing the arbitrary capital cost of a place to live,
raising the carrying cost aka rent). BI _seems_ like a solution because it
goes right along with the trends of centralization, but it's those very trends
that are causing the economic pain in the first place!

------
evook
An article about being smarter than the rest of the world and UBI written
without mentioning Milton Friedmans concept of negative income tax or Götz
Werner's basic income concept left me skeptical about the scientific
entitlement of Ross Baird and Lenny Mendonca. E.g. Falsely crediting Nixon
makes me furious. IMHO this Click-Baiting pseudo journalism constitutes a lot
more about silicon valleys ignorance instead of its arrogance.

------
danvoell
"We have some ideas, but would love to hear from you as well." \- I didn't
hear any ideas in that article, let's hear some.

------
arh68
As bad as the article makes it sound, it's not like Sam's ignoring the problem
entirely. Awareness is half the battle. Funding's the other half. In fact,
there's an _explicit_ request [1] for startups to solve this problem, check it
out:

    
    
        We want to fund companies that have the potential to 
        create a million jobs.
    
        There are a lot of areas where it makes sense to
        divide labor between humans and computers-—we are very
        good at some things computers are terrible at and vice
        versa—-and some of these require huge amounts of human 
        resources.
    
        This is both good for the world and likely a good 
        business strategy—-as existing jobs go away, a company 
        that creates a lot of new jobs should be able to get a 
        lot of talented people.
    
    

That's putting money where your mouth is. No, automation and SV2SV startups
are not the solution, but you can't put the future on hold until someone
figures this out.

[1]
[http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#million](http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#million)

------
clumsysmurf
Douglas Rushkoff touches on parallel themes in his new book. I haven't
finished it yet but recommend it so far.

"Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity"

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1617230170](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1617230170)

------
batz
So he's saying that decades of poor public education based on creating docile
worker drones is creating an underclass that is increasingly separate from the
people who had access to better, rebelled against, or beat it.

People are poor because they are lied to about how the world works. They are
lied to by the true believers whose paychecks depend on them repeating the
same tired post-modern bunk. Poor kids drop out of school because they know
they are being lied to, but don't have the tools to manage the cognitive
dissonance - because they point of most public education these days is to
indoctrinate kids into accepting and submitting to dissonance instead of
reasoning about it.

I will help anyone who wants out, but anyone who wants me back in can drop
dead.

------
joshstrange
I don't disagree that engineers solve problems they know, there is no doubt in
my mind this is true and maybe we can do better at trying to "know" more about
these immediate problems that author mentions so that we can solve those
problems (Like Flint). But aside from that this author is way off base. If
it's arrogant to see that automation will undoubtedly consume a large number
of jobs and we need to have a plan for that then yes I'm arrogant and I stand
fully behind basic income. Also BI solves way more problems than just
"Automation took my job" which the author briefly mentions then acts like they
aren't important. This article was a waste of time.

------
antoinevg
In the headlong rush towards exploiting the easy and trivial gains one can
pilfer from the cost reductions achieved through automation I fear many of you
fine HN folk may have forgotten other applications of technology in the
workplace that can both uplift the human spirit and create super-fulfilling
jobs.

Come on hacker folk… you can (and have!) reach higher than this.

Oh… and before you hit that vote or reply button… take a deep breath and read
through some of Papert's earlier works.

It's easy to take an intellectual position on your reading of the (assumed)
flaws in a critics commentary but, as most smart kids learn sooner or later,
once the tide turns against you it becomes a lot harder to win people's trust.

------
logicallee
In my personal opinion the problem is a lack of arrogance throughout the rest
of the world. In most geographic areas, you can clearly describe a specific
set of actions that will result in a material creation of utility for huge
numbers of people, and people will not _only_ not support you in executing
those actions, nor join you in building it, but they will tell you to get a
grip on yourself and not to do it.[1] This isn't conjecture on my part, I've
personally witnessed this.

In fact, a study of startup markets shows that an extremely large percentage
of founders in other cities are transplants from Silicon Valley (or lived
there in the past). Why is that?

I would bet that when it came to pure ability, 80% of the people reading this
post have what it takes to potentially do something used by millions of
people.

Though we can't learn it, it is a matter of cold data where anyone who
actually _will_ do so is located. That data is very skewed geographically, and
in my personal estimation, it is skewed toward Silicon Valley. This could
probably be demonstrated.

[1] articles about the "arrogance of Silicon Valley" can themselves be
construed as being someone telling people to get a grip on themselves and to
stop changing the world. "You're not special enough to change the world"
means: stop doing it

------
jpgvm
Very poor article. I doubt anyone in Silicon Valley, especially Y-Combinator
is postulating that the rest of the world isn't capable of being successful or
any other nonsense like that.

All that is being observed is that the natural tendency for technology is
remove the need for manual labor. This first happened to agriculture, then
manufacturing and now the push is to automate services that can be. Over time
this naturally leads to people needing to move into work that creates this new
technology or create new industries in order to work in. If indeed they need
to work.

The idea that technology will eventually power our basic needs without human
assistance isn't that far from reality, sure we may still be decades away but
decades aren't really that long. We need to think about the problem well
before then because even small amounts of unemployment (10-15% or greater)
causes serious problems given societies current structure.

It's not just work that breaks down on this automation horizon though but also
money/wealth/capitalism. Whatever you call the current state of affairs.
People will still need to live, do something day to day etc but they will no
longer need to work just for society to function. So money as an incentive
doesn't really need to exist at that point.

Ofcourse this is very pie in the sky but even so I don't think people realise
this is a very real possibility and may happen sooner than many of us think,
not in it's completion but sufficiently to force significant numbers of people
out of work and make people consider it as a real future.

------
api
Unchecked arrogance vs... Wall St.? DC? Do those power centers help people
build wealth? I see a bit of East side West side rivalry in this stuff.
Silicon Valley didn't implement regressive taxation and unfair trade policies
in the 1970s, and that's when the great liquidation of the American working
class started. SV is being blamed for a trend that pre-dates its ascendance to
the world stage by 25 years.

------
KirinDave
I couldn't help but laugh incredulously as I read this article. It checks all
the boxes I'd expect it to check. You can practically shout "bingo!" at the
end.

• "Silicon Valley isn't spending time working on stuff _I_ think is valuable."

• "So what if kids find Snapchat to be critical. Those kids are "connected"
and therefore don't matter! _I_ don't get it, therefore it's dumb!" (Even
though it's very easy to demonstrate many social networks do in fact engage
with and edify kids in low income families because of specific allotments of
social media time in schools.)

• "Universal Basic Income is bad because people have a deep seated desire to
work and their basic needs aren't being met, so rather than triaging that
problem and lifting them out of the toxic debt spirals that entrap them in
this state, we should focus on _educating them._"

• "Taxpayers as a whole have no business helping the less fortunate. This is
the sole responsibility business." (Even as we then mock them."

• "Therefore businesses should have the mandate to _make_ people's lives
better, rather than offering them better solutions. That's not presumptuous at
all."

These are all implications of the worldview of this article. It's cleverly
couched in terms mocking Sam Altman's naive view of the world and then somehow
using that to pave over the huge amount of work all over the country on
technology centering around education, medical treatment, financial
improvement, legal automation, etc.

And in the end, of course, this article is about... DISRUPTING VENTURE
CAPITALISM. Because again, THAT top-down view of the world is bad, but OUR
top-down plan will be totally great.

------
TTPrograms
Wow is that ever a click-baity title for an article primarily about difference
in perspectives between classes.

------
pascalxus
It's a typical response of denial from someone who's job is at risk: the
journalist.

First of all, before any of this can come to pass, SV will have to deal with
the government. They control over a third of the country's spending. And
they're not just going to allow subcontractors to automate all those jobs away
to the most cost effective bidders/ most efficient solutions. Ever hear of no-
bid contracts - they're the norm. There's no rule that says Government has to
use tax money in an efficient manner, just look at what's going on right now.

There will eventually be some degree of automation. But, unfortunately for
society, I don't think it will ever become as widespread as alluded to in the
article.

~~~
emodendroket
This article is about you.

------
danielrm26
This piece skirts perilously close to ad hominem. There is no actual
addressing of the central point: that few people will have the money and most
will not.

Does anyone actually disagree with this? And if not, why write an attack
against that position?

------
canistr
So given that YC wants to fund studies on UBI and Ontario recently announced
that it begin looking into implementing it, wouldn't it be best if YC assisted
in funding the Ontario experiment?

Even though it's outside the natural scope of the YC (that being a Canadian-
based study vs US-based), there's no reason why this can't be done.
Particularly with the cultural similarities between Ontario (at least Southern
Ontario) with parts of the US.

~~~
jdoliner
Why would that be better?

There's huge value in having 2 independent studies that can check each other's
assumptions than putting all our eggs in one basket.

------
saturdaysaint
Is the tyranny of location really Silicon Valley's fault? I didn't read
anything here that circumvents the fact that any big new idea in technology is
going to need a deep pool of technical experts that's going to be hard to find
outside of a few areas.

And Valley companies are doing just about everything they can to work on
spreading the expertise via online education, telepresence, open source, etc.

------
jpadkins
One huge fallacy in the article: "Instead, we’d posit that many of the
“winners” in Silicon Valley are part of a faux meritocracy — being born into
the right city or social network."

Vast majority of those who work in SV were not born there or started in some
social network. They moved there because they were highly skilled, and then
they entered the social network.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
In order to develop those skills, most of them had to be at least born to
families that weren't poor. The number of true 'rags to riches' stories is
small.

~~~
jpadkins
relative to US middle class? Sorry I have too many friends from Asia and
Eastern Europe who were born into a much lower standard of living than US
middle class who are now successful in SV.

I was raised by a single working mother, and went to a state university. Not
rags to riches, but definitely not a life of privilege.

Meritocracy in SV isn't perfect, especially when you consider the supply
feeding into it. But it's the best example of meritocracy the human race has.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Meritocracy in SV is a myth. Some of the highest paid executives in SV are
some of the most intellectually handicapped people I've ever encountered.
Irresponsibility, blowing more money than I've ever even seen in my life on
frivolous pursuits. Petty squabbles throwing years of progress down the drain.
Sundar Pichai, now the highest paid CEO in the US, set Android platform
development back two or three years due to his own vanity.

I'm sad at how much could be accomplished with the waste created by SV
incompetence. It's incredible how little merit people have considering the
amount of money they're paid. I feel like the compulsive gambler is the best
analog to Silicon Valley: Blowing every last penny you have, over and over, on
the belief that you'll someday strike it rich.

~~~
DrScump
<I feel like the compulsive gambler is the best analog to Silicon Valley>

There are several infamous SV examples of _literally_ gambling, such as the
former Fry's executive who embezzled $65M to feed his gambling habit:

[http://www.dailytech.com/Frys+VP+Arrested+for+Embezzling+ove...](http://www.dailytech.com/Frys+VP+Arrested+for+Embezzling+over+65M/article13782.htm)

(How do you release a guy on a $300K bond when he's already stolen $65M _that
you know of_? That's a heck of a bargain for him!)

------
hacknat
The criticism that Y Combinator tells companies that "they have to move to SV"
is misleading. That quote is about being a part of Y Combinator. You are free
to leave once you graduate your cohort and get funding, and many have...

------
DickingAround
It's hilariously wrong. Tech is scooping people up from all over the world.
And it's having to pay super high salaries because the supply is so limited. I
guess maybe startup funding only goes to a few, but there's a lot of
programmers from every walk of life who do a lot of work and are all getting
good money. The idea that drivers are going to be left aside by automation is
100% true. The idea that they had no chance to get into tech is 100% false;
learning materials have never been cheaper and self-taught people are the
kings of tech. Now some tech people foresee the world with good automation and
want to try to help others, and suddenly they're being condescending for not
recognize their privileged? This word drawn in the article don't match up with
facts. It is based on so many falsehoods it's factually incorrect.

~~~
lefnire
>learning materials have never been cheaper and self-taught people are the
kings of tech

I've had English & PoliSci coworkers who couldn't find rewarding work in their
degrees; so they self-taught tech and landed well-paying jobs in short order.
Smart cats. I remember one venting about an English-degree colleague berating
him for his privilege. Same degree; A made a choice, and B blames privilege.
It's a general sentiment I see towards coders, like we were born with a laptop
and capital.

~~~
untog
> I remember one venting about an English-degree colleague berating him for
> his privilege. Same degree; A made a choice, and B blames privilege.

Privilege is still involved, though. You need to have a lot of spare time in
order to self-teach programming - that's very easy for people with comfortable
incomes and/or the support of people with one. If you're drowning in student
debt and taking on multiple part time jobs in order to make ends meet, self-
teaching is never going to be able to get high enough on the priority list.

~~~
stuxnet79
See I rarely ever see anybody in HN make this observation which is very much
true. You can easily tell that the average HN reader is unaware of the "spare
time" privilege they may possess and how others are hamstrung by their
circumstances.

~~~
DickingAround
Privilege: Yes. But it's still merit-based-pay when someone can do some work
and someone can't do that work. Maybe that first person had everything going
for them. Maybe they were groomed at the DNA level for this job. But they can
get it done. And the second person can't. So it's still merit-based.

------
msvan
I don't think we'll be running out of jobs anytime soon, though I do worry
about the social and economical consequences of technology. I agree that
technology has disturbing effects on society. But this article gets it wrong.

> In its mind, Silicon Valley creates the future, while the rest of the world
> will soon become the “idle class.” What if they instead helped people build
> wealth for themselves?

The idle class is a desirable end state. I for one would take that deal
immediately if offered: to have the rest of my existence unconditionally
funded, without anyone forcing me to do work I don't want to do. I think there
are many people who would be happy to not have to sell their labor to survive.

The authors' premise clings to the idea that everyone needs to derive their
self-worth from the illusion of providing for oneself. Everyone who grows up
in the Western world owes their survival to their family, society and the
government. In reality, you are not independent. Selling your labor on a
market is just one way of partaking in the enormous system you were born into.
In the future, you'll be able to work on whatever you want, irrespective of
the market, and that's how you'll contribute back. Make art. Organize
communities. Study the nooks and crannies of the universe. Play sports. Live.

> And you wonder why political candidates on both sides are tapping into anti-
> elitist anger with great success.

It is only elitism if it denigrates. On the contrary, automation is supposed
to be relief from drudgery. If anything, it denigrates the work, not the
person. The major challenge is to have our political systems keep up with the
pace of change. This is a huge challenge.

> The idea here is borne from an underlying assumption that capitalism has
> winners and losers, and the victors have a responsibility to take care of
> the rest. Instead, we’d posit that many of the “winners” in Silicon Valley
> are part of a faux meritocracy — being born into the right city or social
> network.

The system can be unfair and still have winners and losers. I think most
people in SV understand how exceptionally lucky they are to not have been born
into slavery in Mauretania, even though they don't exactly go out of their way
to show it. The authors are right: SV is not meritocratic in any sane
definition of the word. SV is unfair. It should be improved upon, but it's
never going to be perfect.

In the authors' view, you are not being taken care of by your society if you
sell your labor. I disagree.

> When India didn’t go for a Silicon Valley-led internet proposal, Marc
> Andreessen gained global denunciation (including from Silicon Valley CEOs
> such as Mark Zuckerberg) for a tweet

This is a cheap attack on Andreessen. His comment, while horrendously worded,
was clearly meant as a complaint against knee-jerk reactions. (That said, I
think India made the right choice in rejecting Free Basics.)

> the world will eventually be out of work and become a burden on the
> enlightened few

Hopefully, by the time we get there, redistribution will be extensive enough
that everyone can live a lavish life.

> the resulting social unrest

Probably. The political climate will not adjust lightly.

> Snapchat may be solving an important problem for well-connected young people
> in America who don’t have to worry about basic needs. But whether it’s
> unemployed young people in St. Louis looking for their next paycheck or a
> family in Flint, Michigan worried about clean water, many Americans have
> more immediate problems.

There is a difference between problems that capitalism can solve and problems
that politics can solve. Capitalism solves market problems. Politics solves
the rest. St. Louis and Flint are political problems. The problem is politics,
not tech. Imagine if politics were more efficient.

> What if a percentage of the $50B valuation were shared among the drivers,
> based on a merit-based system?

This would be a nightmare to implement, notwithstanding that it's a terrible
way to influence the market. The market is good at figuring out what things
are worth. It often makes very unfair decisions, and in those cases politics
should come in and rescue the day. The American model is increasingly
incompatible with technology, which is increasingly demanding more
redistribution. Why try to shoehorn a very complex equity-sharing system into
the market, when some simple redistribution could achieve the same end? It's
all for the sake of preserving the faux ideal of being independent.

> But the conclusion — that the automation of these jobs will create a lot of
> wealth for a few people (of course the brilliant ones in Silicon Valley) but
> leave most out of work (the rest of us) — is reflective of Silicon Valley’s
> arrogance.

Politics. We'll just take the money from them :)

> How do we change ownership structures to prevent Snapchat, Instagram, and
> Whatsapp from distributing billion-dollar windfalls among only a couple
> dozen people?

Whatever the imagined solution is, it is redistribution. You can dress it up
in a wig and an evening dress, but it is still redistribution. The only
difference is perception. Redistribution via UBI is seen as robbing people of
their independence, whereas redistribution via unspecified market intervention
is not.

Technology is going to go the way it wants to. I've said it a million times
but I'll say it a million times more: politics politics politics politics
politics politics politics politics politics politics politics politics
politics politics.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Let me add my two cents. Reposting my comments from another post of this same
article:

This reads like somebody just wanting to complain.

YC says that their startups need to move to SF/SV? Yeah, they do. They do it
because they see real, concrete value for a startup being there. YC has actual
experience with startups, so they have a reasonable basis for knowing what
they're talking about. This isn't "Silicon Valley Arrogance", it's some people
who are actually involved seeing that there are concrete benefits to being in
SF/SV.

YC is talking about basic income because they think SV's going to have all the
money and everyone else is going to be left behind? YC's talking about basic
income because they see people being left behind, and they actually care
enough to want to do something about it. That's not arrogance; it's
observation plus compassion.

~~~
Apocryphon
YC could help by opening satellite offices in other cities. Hell, even outside
of the NY/Boston/Seattle/Austin.

------
brandonmenc
If you've ever spent time working "among the people" \- like, in a factory, or
running a cash register, or cleaning toilets - you'd know that most people
aren't smart enough to "build wealth for themselves."

In fact, most of them (and likely also you) are alive only because modern
society is full of rubber bumpers and safety nets. I don't mean things like
Social Security - I mean things like grocery stores and municipal water.

This isn't a bad thing, and it doesn't mean those people aren't good, or not
worthy of basic human care and comfort. After the robots take their jobs, we
need to give them a guaranteed basic income or they'll be dying in the
streets.

There's nothing arrogant about acknowledging that - I think it's arrogant to
assume that every person is smart enough (like you) to take care of themselves
in a shockingly changed economy.

~~~
hmahncke
Pretty sure everyone on HN is only alive because modern society is full of
rubber bumpers and safety nets like grocery stores and municipal water.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
The water and sanitation, particularly.

