
Silicon Valley's Problem - sethbannon
http://cbracy.tumblr.com/post/39314979304/silicon-valleys-problem
======
zt
So, as I read through the comments on this post I see a lot of indifference to
her argument and a lot of anger toward the government. Government is broken.
Government uses outdated, bespoke technology from the 90s. Technology is not a
priority. Government is inefficient. (I could say the same things about much
of the not-for-profit community as well). Those are all true, but that's
partially because the exact people in Silicon Valley who are capable of
bringing expertise to the table are not willing to. Government's so broken it
is not worth fixing is exactly the attitude that ensures that government
continues to be broken. There aren't many people who live in the Valley who
ask themselves how they could give back or improve society with the skills
they have.

For example, there was just a search conducted for a new CIO of San Francisco
--what would that position look like if one well-qualified engineering manager
from HN left their job at Google or Facebook, sucked it up and dove in? I'll
tell you what would happen--a lot of good stuff for our city and our society.
I'm currently in the civic tech community of practice nationally (Today is
perhaps the last day I can claim that, more on that below), and there aren't
enough people who “get” it who are willing to work in government, but that's
exactly the problem that needs to be solved. The person I know who is doing
the most innovative work in civic technology is Brett Goldstein, the CIO of
Chicago, who use to be the head of IT Services at OpenTable before becoming a
beat cop, director of analytics for Chicago Police, Chief Data Officer of
Chicago, and now CIO.[1]

Lets take another view of this point--there is to my knowledge no software
developer in Congress. That seems like a problem to me and one that comes from
the fact, perhaps, that developers are less likely to throw themselves in to
politics in their 40s because of a lack of expertise. That doesn't seem to
stop lawyers and other businesspeople though. I think we would be having a
slightly different national conversation about technology, innovation, the
internet and even the very methods by which we solve problems in our society
(for the better) if some Silicon Valley folks sucked it up and got a little
more involved in politics or, you know, in improving the lives of poor people.
The I AM a geek campaign.

(By the way, I'm inherently skeptical of Ron Conway's Sf.Citi, which is
basically a glorified lobbying organization against the payroll tax in SF.
But, having said that, I think the attitude could be useful. I've heard it
said by a few Silicon Valley billionaires that they don't want to give money
to, for example, education because they don't know anything about education.
What they know is how to build software products. Since that's so, why can't
we come up with software products as philanthropy rather than give up on
giving back [2]).

I think some of the passion is there but there needs to be new ways to focus
that energy collectively. Just as an example, I co-founded Datakind (formerly
Data Without Borders), which matches pro bono data science capacity from
people who work at, for example, Google or Bit.ly, with not-for-profits that
have defined data science needs and projects. The hard part here was not in
finding the data science capacity--tons of people volunteered--or the not-for-
profits--tons of them have signed up--but in the interface between the two.
That's why the organization needs to exist, but it also points to the fact
that the ecosystem of doers in Silicon Valley should give some thought of how
to act as a community to bridge those gaps and provide support and help beyond
the peninsula.

Lastly, as a personal note, I am keenly interested in this whole thing. Today
is my last day as Senior Tech Policy adviser to Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker.
I am starting next week at Stripe. The more I have worked on civic technology,
the more I realized I wished I knew more about and had experience in
technology in the private-sector. I feel like a sort of false prophet — one
who had read about revelation but who has never experienced it himself. But my
passion is in and around using technology to innovate in the civic space,
particularly within government. I feel the best long-term play to do that is
to work at an engineering-focused, growing, tech company for a few years. Then
I can tack back to civic tech--because innovation rarely comes from people who
are too far down the rabbit hole of any field. I can likely come back to civic
tech after working in the private sector but there are only a few years
(without a wife/partners and kids) where I am willing to work my ass off at a
startup.

I mention all this about my own life to say that although government is hard
and addressing societal problems is hard it's only by choosing to care that we
can make a difference. That sounds corny, but if government is broken and
you're an expert at revolutionizing business process, why don't you spend a
few years working on it. I am not suggesting that everyone organize their life
as I have, but if you really cared about the hardest problems you could find
why isn’t addressing civic and social problems on your list?

[1] cf.
[https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/doit/auto_genera...](https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/doit/auto_generated/doit_leadership.html),
[http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/...](http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press_releases/2011/may_2011/Mayor_elect_Emanuel_Names_Chicagos_Technology_Leadership_Team.html),
[http://magazine.uchicago.edu/1102/arts_sciences/byte-
cop.sht...](http://magazine.uchicago.edu/1102/arts_sciences/byte-cop.shtml)

[2] I take a crack at one, not particularly modest, suggestion on this at
[http://www.ash.harvard.edu/Home/Programs/Innovations-in-
Gove...](http://www.ash.harvard.edu/Home/Programs/Innovations-in-
Government/Mayoral-Performance-Analytics-Initiative/Guest-Post-Introducing-
the-idea-of-an-open-source-suite-for-municipal-governments)

~~~
scottkduncan
> if you really cared about the hardest problems you could find why isn’t
> addressing civic and social problems on your list?

Yes. As someone who also grapples with applying technology to public policy
issues, I think part of the reason that more people from the tech sector don't
dive into civic issues is that the challenge there is frequently 10% tech and
90% organizational/personal. Like you said though, those that can
revolutionize business process (and I would add have excellent people skills)
can add a lot to government.

I definitely wish you luck in your next endeavor and would love to connect as
you're making the switch to the private sector (I have been contemplating a
switch of my own).

------
RyanZAG
Meh.

 _The Silicon Valley rich are famously stingy philanthropists and a defense
I’ve heard more than once is that the tools they spend their time building are
inherently good. “Why donate money when people can just download my app and
instantly have a better life?”_

Maybe I have a different view on the this from most on HA as I live in Africa,
but products like cheaper cellphones have had a far more massive effect for
the masses than a few philanthropists donating some money to charities.
Charities in general have almost no effect on the ground.

Charity is not the way to make the world better. The only way to make the
world better is by building methods for more people to take part directly in
the global economy - and as Americans are now realizing, this isn't
necessarily going to be a good thing for Americans who will only gain more
competition.

~~~
radicalbyte
"Give a guy a fish, and he'll have food for a day. Teach a man how to fish,
and he'll have food for a lifetime."

This is why I really love the Kiva model: instead of giving money away, you
instead become a 2nd/3rd world Angel Investor.

It also makes me think about Hans Rosling's excellent TED talk about
population growth and globalization:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...](http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth.html)

~~~
crucialfelix
I keep a bunch of money in rotation on Kiva myself. But it's not angel
investing, it's just small loans for very small businesses. If a decent sized
business showed up on there then they wouldn't get sponsors I think because
they would seem too well off.

and actually angel investors or crowd funding for african tech entrpreneurs is
a much needed thing right now.

------
sridharvembu
Let me add my perspective as an Indian living in the SF bay area, spending
about 20-25% of my time in India. The poverty of India is inescapable, it is
everywhere around you. The reason I got into business, particularly business
in India, ultimately is that in my mid-20's I found myself simply very
depressed about this, and decided that business was the only way I could make
a real difference. I was inspired by the examples of Singapore, South Korea
and Taiwan and similar places, which went from miserable third world poverty
to middle income prosperity within about 30 years.

About charity, in the here and now, when you are surrounded by such need that
you see all around you in India (I personally know hundreds of stories), small
and local acts of charity are very necessary and helpful.

At the same time, I do not believe that charity can work on any kind of large
scale. First, given the vastness and diversity of India, it is impossible for
any one person to know more than a small fraction of India. With that said, I
firmly believe that the part of India that I am familiar with - the Southern
part accounting for about 25% of Indian population - could have been a Taiwan
or South Korea or Southern China, if only the Indian government had pursued a
relatively sane economic policy. No I am not complaining about corruption and
so on - South Korea or China did not develop because they had enlightened,
corruption-free governments. Even today, Indian economic policy is miserably
wrong-headed. It hurts the very poor the most, but our political class is
simply oblivious to it.

One example would suffice: today, the second largest textile exporter in the
world, after China, is Bangladesh. With all the political turmoil, corrupt
government and so on, Bangladesh has made more progress in lifting its poorest
citizens than India, and the 3 million textile industry jobs are a primary
reason. Why couldn't India do it? Policy, in one word. Textile industry is the
classic climb-the-ladder industry. China is just about ready to vacate the
lowest rungs of the ladder, and Bangladesh is getting on it. India's poorest
are still waiting.

To summarize, I believe in charity-in-the-small, in the here and now, but
large scale economic development, lifting hundreds of millions of poverty in
India (which accounts for most of the world's poor) needs something different.

------
fatbird
Love this:

 _Their goal is to make themselves as appealing—or threatening—to a big player
as possible so they can get bought out for a few hundred million dollars and
then devote the rest of their lives to a) building Burning Man installations,
b) investing in other people’s widgets, or c) both. They really don’t care
that much about making the world a better place, mostly because they feel like
they don’t have to live in it._

~~~
sskates
Alright, I'll bite. I intensely care about maximizing my positive impact.
After looking at a lot of things in college, including academic research,
finance, consulting, nonprofits, and engineering at a big company, I concluded
starting a company was the best way to have an outsized impact on other
people's lives. That is why I'm running a company now. I am trying to build a
Microsoft.

It's very easy to be dismissive of widgets. For example, the entire internet
is a mechanism to instantly teleport bits of information from one place to
another. That's all the widget does. It doesn't help you do anything physical.
It just lets you send bits from one place to another, nothing else. It sounds
so trivial. Who would have thought that a widget for sending bits from one
place to another could have such a big impact?

Now I'm wondering- can you give a specific example of the company/person being
described? These criticisms of Silicon Valley are always so abstract, it would
be nice to have a few examples.

~~~
fatbird
Instagram. An app for doing what we were all doing already anyway, but now
with a lot of faux-effect filters. Sold for a billion dollars. All that time,
energy, and money that did not one thing to help anyone else or measurably
improve the world.

~~~
sskates
Instagram had 13 employees when it was acquired- not that much effort to
impact 30 million people. You might dismiss Instagram's innovations, but
dismissing the importance of an interface is like dismissing a new programming
language because there are already programming languages that are Turing
complete.

~~~
fatbird
Not seeing the impact there. Not seeing anything that couldn't be trivially
handled by something already existing.

I'm not saying Instagram is worthless. I'm saying Instagram is a new flavour
of toothpaste. There's something kind of distasteful about a new flavour of
toothpaste marshalling the attention and money that it did, but it's not that
I blame Instagram for that. But I do compare it to, say, the Gates Foundation,
and it's hard not to think "boy, that whole enterprise could have had vastly
greater beneficial impact to a lot more people than it did."

Where does the billion dollars that Instagram commanded go? Into a constantly
recycling pool of geeks and cash in the Valley who keep funding more companies
inventing new flavours of toothpaste, hoping to be either the next Instagram
or the next Facebook buying Instagram. Ms. Bracy's whole exhortation is just
this: Maybe direct some of that energy, some of that attention, some of that
money and time, outside of the incestuous enterprise that is Silicon Valley.

------
AndrewKemendo
At the D.C. TechMeetup groups you can always expect to have a public policy
aspect to the tech offerings the problem is the majority of these fail. As
someone who works in the government and is part of the start-up culture, I can
tell you: these attempts are typically terrible at coming up with ways to
blend tech and bureaucracy. I have no idea why. Well, not no idea. I think the
main hurdles are as follows:

1\. The people who make the best change in industries or start-ups are people
who have been working in it a while.

2\. Few people who have worked in government are the types to become high-
growth entrepreneurs. They exist but in general the mindsets are reciprocals.

3\. It takes a long time (in start-up time) to understand how a
federal/state/local government does things. Anyone who wants to make a mark
from the outside isn't going to identify a problem/solution efficiently. So
anyone who has a real solution has likely been in government for 5-10 years
and is established in a comfortable position - not likely to break out. Not
only that they probably have schooling in something political
science-y/history/etc.. versus math/CS/physics

4\. As a general rule, it takes a long time (infinitely long in start-up time)
to actually get a federal/state/local government to implement anything. Part
of this is by design and the other part is incompetence or ignorance because
they have...

5\. Really really poor understanding of how to implement technology. For
example $25,000 for a shitty 4 page web 1.0 government website because that is
what was budgeted and Booz Allen took the contract because...

6\. ...they promised to make the whole thing comply with the IT requirements
(ie: IE7 is the most recent browser) and security requirements.

So yea. It's kind of hard to solve tech problems for the government. Even
moreso, having whole programs handed over from the government to a bunch of
18-30 year old's who haven't made all the right friends and gone to the right
schools.

------
pelle
I think she has a point about bubble that Silicon Valley and SF lives in.

Where I think she misses the boat is that the solution isn't to lobby
government. Rather people need to remember the world outside the bubble so
they can see real problems to work on, rather than the latest cool X-sharing
(yes it's a cliche but still true) app to brag about in front of their friends
in the coffee shop.

Many of the real ground breaking startups are not coming from the bay area
nowadays for exactly these reasons.

------
jsherwani
Cell phones may have done more for international development than charity, but
that's a great example of improving things _by accident_ rather than _by
design_.

I moved to the Bay Area to start a startup, before which I worked on
international development issues, and having seen both sides of the coin, I
totally agree with the author's views.

It would be great if we could harness some of our technological expertise to
engage directly with the world's problems, starting at the problems rather
than our own individual itches. This is something I personally intend to do in
the future, and I would love to engage with others that are interested in
doing so too.

In fact, a few years ago, my co-founder and I thought about doing something
for-impact rather than for-profit, and we volunteered with Khan Academy (when
they didn't have funding), but quickly found that you can't do a great job on
something unless it's the main thing you're working on (PG's "top idea in your
mind" concept totally applies).

One great example of using technology for social change is SamaSource
[<http://samasource.org>] — I'm a huge fan of their work and the founder's
politics.

------
sethbannon
TLDR: "What if, instead of imploring people to vote on Facebook’s privacy
policies, we were pushing Florida lawmakers into fixing the state’s broken
voting system? ... Why can’t we, the tech community, figure out how to harness
our talent and influence to fundamentally change the way our democracy works —
not just for us, when it suits our interests, but for everyone?"

------
jacoblyles
It surely is embarrassing that California's two senators were strong
supporters of PIPA and that they are still in office. Silicon Valley is
sending a strong message - "Mess with us, and we'll be very angry for about 4
days. Then we'll go back to trying to get rich."

If the Tea Party could throw out dozens of fiscal moderate Republicans from
the Congressional caucus, surely we - the technically savvy citizens of
Silicon Valley - can play the political game and win?

~~~
lubujackson
It's important to remember how tiny the tech crowd really is vs. the size of
California.

~~~
jacoblyles
Oh I'm sorry, I missed the unsuccessful Silicon Valley attempt to defeat
Dianne Feinstein in the primaries.

------
5vforest
I really enjoyed this post, and I have a few reactions to it.

The author is lobbying for online advocacy, which I hate to say, will not be
fruitful without some kind of major political shift in our country's political
processes and institutions. Our two-party system doesn't allow for a member of
congress to suddenly say "I'm going to let my constituents decide how I vote
on each bill." I'm sure it angers some when I say this, (I only mean to state
a fact,) but the real way to make an impact is through lobbying. SOPA and PIPA
were amazing, yes, but time has proven that their impact cannot be replicated.
When it comes to internet regulations, the bigger players in Silicon Valley
have already started to realize this and opened a lobby shop in DC.
[http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-
valley/technology/250205-i...](http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-
valley/technology/250205-internet-lobbying-group-goes-live)

My second point is that because our government is so broken already, it makes
it even harder for citizens to have an active say in how it operates and the
decisions it makes. Even the White House realizes this, but they don't have
the power to change this overnight. However, their steps forward have been in
the right direction; Obama created the "Chief Technology Officer" position and
appointed Todd Park, an extremely accomplished entrepreneur, to the role.
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/03/09/todd-park-named-
ne...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/03/09/todd-park-named-new-us-chief-
technology-officer) (Disclosure: I'm a Presidential Innovation Fellow in a
program that Todd heads up.) Bringing government technology into the 21st
century is something that will benefit every American citizen by allowing
government to beter serve him or her.

Finally, I want to stress that the onus to create change is not entirely on
Silicon Valley. Tim O'Reilly, in one of his essays, has a great chapter
entitled "Government as a Platform".
[http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596804350/defining_govern...](http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596804350/defining_government_2_0_lessons_learned_.html)
Until our government moves beyond Open Data and to full read/write APIs, there
is a significant limit to how we can interface with it. Most government
information systems are only accessible via web portals built in the 90s.
Think about it... if your internal business tools were restricted to software
built in 1995, how productive would your organization be? And we're not
talking about the best software of the era, we're talking about custom-off-
the-shelf pieces of crap, built by huge government contractors who make most
of their money by launching satellites and building tanks.

So if there's an overarching point to my post, it's that the problem is much
more nuanced than just "Silicon Valley doesn't care." Changing that apathy,
though, is still a good first step.

~~~
zt
I think government is starting to move. We could cite CTO Park and the
Presidential Innovation Fellows program as you have, but also mention Brett
Goldstein (CIO) and John Tolva (CTO) in Chicago, Rachel Sterne (Chief Digital
Officer) in New York City, the Offices of New Urban Mechanics in Boston and
Philly, etc. But, in general, I think revolutions rarely come from within and
that addressing apathy in the technological class is a method through which we
could see a lot more change in the way our governments functions.

------
elwin
It's easy to talk about using political power for good purposes when you don't
have it yet.

If Silicon Valley actually tried to become a political force, it might
discover that the tech community doesn't agree on what the nation's most
important problems are. Or that there is little correlation between the
ability to make a lot of money putting advertisements on people's screens and
the ability to find practical solutions to complex social problems. Or that
the rest of the country doubts the goodness of its motives.

~~~
fatbird
I suspect that she's less interested in the big players getting together to
lobby effectively, than for the energy of all the small players to be directed
at problems outside of the Valley and the Stanford crowd.

------
WiseWeasel
My impression is that the tech culture pervading SV is built on a foundation
of decentralized problem solving on a global scale, finding people who share
an interest in the solution to some problem they're faced with, and working
towards that solution with them. Intermediaries such as NGOs and governing
bodies are not valued, because their operation isn't transparent or
accessible. National borders and the government agencies they contain are
becoming increasingly irrelevant as we are able to work and play with people
regardless of locality, and the influence of national organizations is seen as
a liability for more global-minded projects. The author seems to place a great
deal of faith and value in institutions which have failed to keep pace with
the workings of modern human society.

~~~
cbracy
I think you're misunderstanding. I think it's exactly that decentralized,
networked approach to problem-solving that holds the potential for
technologists to fix big problems. The issue is that in SV most are not
focusing on those problems. I WANT the tech community disrupting those old
institutions, and I'm frustrated we're not doing more of it.

~~~
shashashasha
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I think one issue is actually
Silicon Valley's model of "disruption" — ie new solutions replace old ones.
For example, instead of fixing public transit in San Francisco (or SF -> SV)
we now have all of these new private infrastructures for transit within SF
(Uber, Lyft, Cabulous, etc) and SF -> SV (all those shuttles, see:
<http://stamen.com/zero1/>).

What happens then is that the people with apps, the people with jobs at
Google, Apple, Facebook, live in a completely different urban landscape than
ones who aren't in the ecosystem. When we can't see the problems of MUNI we
don't feel them, and when they aren't problems for us we won't feel like
fixing them. I'd love for us to have more of a civic sense as well, vs this
complicated and classed (but faster to build!) layering of private
infrastructures.

~~~
cbracy
Completely 100% agree with you, and have been mildly obsessed with Uber and
other ride-sharing apps since I moved here because of their conflict with city
government and the implications they have for public transportation.

One of the most jarring San Francisco experiences I had when I first got here
was getting off Mission/16th BART and then walking a block to Valencia street.
The difference that block makes is a good metaphor for what I'm trying to
describe in this article, but I'm not creative or articulate enough to
describe it in this context and have it make sense.

~~~
jfb
Of course, that sort of extreme income gradient exists in a lot of cities, and
predates any one particular industry -- try walking south from the University
of Chicago buildings to 63rd street to see a non-SF example.

------
edderly
Reading between the lines it sounds like the author is just struggling with
the amoral nature of most businesses. Superficially company mission statements
and slogans may appear to contradict this assertion, but they are best
guidelines rather than constitutional legislation. At least in Tech as a
creator you can find a path within your job to generate something meaningful
if at worst only for personal / technical pride.

Personally, I cordially dislike most attempts by corporate (and entertainment)
celebrities to influence domains outside their primary interest. It's easier
to appreciate Bill Gates as a full time philanthropist than Bono the singer
and part time pamphleteer.

------
not_that_noob
One of the most perceptive posts on Silicon Valley I have read in a long time.
Very spot on.

------
martythemaniak
I spent a few months there and I think the post touches on a lot of truths. I
found the place to be pretty unreal - an idyllic and unique slice of America,
both in a good and bad kind of way.

The good part is that there's a lot of energy and optimism there, a great
openness to new ideas and a general sense of building the future. I think this
is the part that attracts people and allows for new companies to take hold and
grow big.

The bad part is expressed as a kind of refusal to engage with the rest of
society. The analogy I would make is when one is building a company - the
easiest part is to put on some headphones and start coding, it is most geeks'
comfort zone. But that's only part of it, you also have to do engage with your
users, do support, get the word about about your product and a myriad of other
things that are not pleasant but absolutely necessary.

Likewise, doing your own thing out west is very appealing and comfortable, but
do get anything done you have to engage in the dirty, messy, horse-trading
cacophony that is politics. The tech industry for example is notable for not
having any significant lobbying capacity in Washington.

------
eaurouge
Silicon Valley != San Francisco. In fact, the idea of San Francisco being _a
part_ of Silicon Valley is a very recent one. The article makes some good
points. But if you're going to write about Silicon Valley, the first thing you
must do is understand what it is.

~~~
cbracy
Yeah, as you can probably tell I struggled a lot with the term "Silicon
Valley." I meant to describe more the culture than the geographic place, but
since I'm based in SF it all kind of got conflated. Good point, I'm going to
think a bit more about how to make that distinction clearer.

------
fleitz
The underpinning idea in US governance is the idea that if you don't like the
society you live in you can build a new one a little further out west.

Until seasteading becomes feasible SF/the internet is as west as it gets.
Amazingly, or unsurprisingly to libertarians, we can build our own society
with out government telling us what to do.

What is wrong with people solving their own problems rather than lobbying
government to provide a half-assed solution for them?

Frankly, it's rude to go to Washington and tell them how to live their lives,
they can see how others live and decide for themselves whether they want to
operate that way.

~~~
rayiner
It's particularly hilarious because the west coast wouldn't exist without
massive federal investment over decades. From getting people out there to
irrigating what is mostly a desolate wasteland, places like Nevada, Arizona,
New Mexico, Southern California are creatures of federal investment.

~~~
natrius
Southern California has paid off that investment many times over, and Nevada
and Arizona probably have as well.

~~~
rayiner
That's not how investments work. If someone invests $100,000 in your startup,
and you IPO for $10 billion, you don't just pay back $100,000 and call it
even. The way I see it, the federal government should own basically half of
California.

~~~
natrius
I don't understand why you think it's instructive to compare government
investments to venture capital. The government engages in plenty of
investments, and none of them operate that way.

~~~
rayiner
The fact that government makes an investment on favorable terms does not
change the underlying nature of the investment. The point is to challenge the
self aggrandizing west coast narrative of rugged individualists setting out
and building civilization from the desert. In reality, the west coast was an
investment of the taxpayers of the east coast. Without that investment,
California would be Mexico, or perhaps a private colony--a wholly owned
subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase.

~~~
001sky
Its not an investment, its a public good. By definition, that is how they
work. You're using a very flawed anology.

Parkland is common public good, and most of the west is publicly accessible.
And where it is not, it is most often military in use. Or, it has been set
aside for rich people to benefit from.

Think about who really gets the value of Central Park in NYC vs Who can afford
a home closeby.

~~~
rayiner
Irrigation isn't a public good. Public goods are non-excludable and non-
rivalrous, neither of which apply to public infrastructure.

~~~
001sky
Right, but this is a minor subset of your initial premise. And even in that
subset, outside of water/mineral rights[1], you are talking edge cases. A road
is a quasi-public-good until there is a traffic jam. Central park is a quasi-
public good until it is occupied by a permit holder, etc.

Second, The public policy rationale for these "investments" is to provide
quasi-public good as services. For example, the public ownership of military
installations is not a "public good" in terms of property (you cant take a
walk at area 51) but defense is a quasi-public good (avail at ~zero marginal
cost to the broad public).

___________________

Its important to just keep some perspective. Public goods and "profitable
investments" (eg, rent seeking ones) are quite distinct concepts. And in part
we entrust assets subject to massive rent-seeking to be held in common
ownership "for the public good" expressly to avoid exploitation their rent
seeking potential.

[1] The exploitation of water/mineral rights relating to public land are often
well trodden areas of legal and policy debate, and span levels of abstraction
(state/local/regional etc).

------
namank
Actually, that is exactly why I like SV.

It's about the ecosystem, not the players. The kind of problems the author
talks about are offshoots in an ecosystem that is built to develop and sustain
massively huge ideas. This is not only expected but required to keep ecosystem
healthy. Can you imagine if there were no such companies and only 15 ideal
ones? It would make for a very unhealthy _startup_ land because startup is
about trying new things, ideal or not.

------
dredmorbius
Page reads vastly better without the background images (and then with anchor
color set to something other than white).

1997 called, it wants its page designer back.

------
javajosh
This post sucks. There are a lot of reasons for sucking, such as describing a
non-problem. That's not this posts problem. This posts problem is that it
describes a very real problem, and then basically throws up it's hands in
defeat. That's actually worse than not saying anything at all, as it leaves
the reader upset, but with no balm for the wound.

Thanks for wounding me and not giving me a bandage. Or, as I've heard it put,
"If you're going to show someone a pile of shit, you better also show them the
shovel."

So, taking my own medicine, here's the shovel for a post like this: stop
writing posts describing problems that you have no ability, no ideas, and no
real capability to solve. Otherwise you're just indulging in self-centered,
self-hating navel gazing which does absolutely nothing for the world. I
realize that sounds harsh, but it's a useful filter to apply to yourself. Only
share _actionable_ anxieties.

~~~
cbracy
Sorry. You're right. But I don't think I'm throwing up my hands. I think there
are many solutions and certainly not ones that are easily laid out as a final
paragraph in a post like this. I'll definitely follow up when I think I have
ideas (or share other good ones when I see them) but for me this post was an
important first step to clarify my thinking about what the problem is.

~~~
Synthetase
If it's such a huge problem why don't you go fix it?

Or are you volunteering other peoples time?

~~~
orionblastar
It takes more than one person to fix this mess.

For example it takes having not only a working business plan, but a working
business plan that makes sense.

For example it takes a quality control, six sigma program to make sure
hardware and software costs less to support than the revenue it brings in.

For example it takes VCs not afraid of investing in teams and organizations of
people not heard of before, that have good ideas, but need to hire experienced
people to guide them.

For example it requires companies to hire more people in the USA instead of
offshoring to cheaper labor markets in foreign nations. Make it affordable by
doing cross-training of different factory positions like New Balance Shoes
does, only do it for hardware.

For example it takes people who actually know how to run a business instead of
the inner circle of elite social kliks who either lack degrees or have the
wrong ones.

For example it takes giving the public what they want, instead of telling them
what they want and changing how your product works just because it has a 'new
look' or is 'shiny' but confuses a majority of the users. (Windows 8/RT)

For example it takes reforming the way business is done in SV, end the
overpaying of executives (esp when the company turns a loss) and make
executive pay based on how profitable the company is, and pay the employees
more salary with better benefits by cutting executive salaries.

~~~
Synthetase
I'm aware that many systemic problems require multiple people to resolve as
your incredibly insightful comment notes.

This post however, is complaining for the sake of complaining. I for one do
not rail against the Second Law of Thermodynamics for destroying my beautiful
perpetual motion machine ideas.

Similarly, offering vague pablums on the state of business in Silicon Valley
without real solutions is at best indulgent.

------
dreamdu5t
There is no Silicon Valley problem.

She assumes that everyone shares her progressive/leftist view of government.

Why is it Silicon Valley's responsibility to "fix government" and not hers?

~~~
cbracy
It's my responsibility too. I'm working on it. Just coming off the Obama
campaign and rolling into a new gig in the coming weeks. Not ready to announce
it yet, but I'm proud of it and think it's part of the solution.

~~~
thematt
When you were on the Obama campaign trail were you voicing opposition to his
policies? Specifically FISA?

~~~
cbracy
No, I wasn't. I wanted him to win--and am so glad he did--and criticizing him
on FISA would have been counterproductive at best. I don't agree with every
one of the hundreds of positions he's taken, but I'm not a one-issue voter.
Despite his flaws and disagreements I have with him on some issues, he's
probably the best President I'll ever see in my lifetime. Helping to get him
re-elected is one of the greatest things I'll ever do.

------
rprasad
The solution to the SV problem is not to lobby the government or to try to set
up some libertarian outpost in the desert.

 _Just move out of SV_. The air is different outside of SV. People don't care
about apps, or financing rounds, or VCs.

Want a truly different perspective? Move to Detroit, a struggling city with a
half-abandoned core, or to Akron, a former industrial megapower that hasn't
been relevant in decades. In both cities, new manufacturing technologies
and/or processes are needed to vitalize their local industries. In the Central
Valley cities of Fresno and Merced, water and air quality concerns impact both
the quality of life and the strength of one of California's primary
industries. In the southwest, access to water will be _the_ ultimate arbiter
of growth in the decades to come. These are all real problems, but they're not
problems that you'd ever come across in SV.

------
nerdfiles
That's why I am now here.

I'm starting with bringing dyslexic fonts to peoples' awareness (my blog is
always rendered in Eulexia), and then moving on to building dragons (
<http://nerdfiles.net/rattelyr-dragon/> ).

