6 ms·
Silicon Valley is broken and heading for social unrest
- convexfunction 11y agoI 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-problems/ http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/01/28/san-franciscos-tech...
- danharaj 11y agoMisses 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.
- convexfunction 11y agoWhat actions would which people need to take to satisfy you?
- ac29 11y agoThere is currently a $400+ million funding shortfall in electrifying and otherwise modernizing the Caltrain corridor [1]. Companies large and small everywhere between SF and SJ stand to benefit, and a lot of public goodwill would come to Google, Apple, Facebook, etc, if they put some of their money towards getting that project done instead of just running private bus fleets. [1] http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/Modernization/PeninsulaCorridorElectrificationProject/Cost_and_Schedule.html http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lhnz 11y ago> Let the sham that is the social contract collapse and reveal the exploitative nature of capitalism for what it is. So basically you just want to watch the world burn? Peculiar to hear this moral stance from a position of high self regard.
- danharaj 11y agoNo, i don't believe the world would burn if the social contract were to break down. It would signal the failure of the current system, which i believe is fundamentally unstable, and would force people to reexamine the question of how to build a society. the social contract is a foundational concept of Liberalism. without it, the current relations of property, state, government, and people are unintelligible. a breakdown of the system is a breakdown means a breakdown of its premises.
- lhnz 11y agoDon't you worry that a lot of people would die if the social contract was to break down or is this an acceptable loss to you? I understand that you might expect something better to rise from its ashes, but it seems like in the short term it could be horrifically bad for many people.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago"No, i don't believe the world would burn if the social contract were to break down." History disagrees. Strongly.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoThe social contract is a bankrupt concept. The proof is very simple. Show one instance of assent to this contract. Or, maybe, just show us the text of this "contract".
- umanwizard 11y agoTypically 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 11y ago> 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 11y ago> They're not legally required to then there shouldn't be any expectation
- tdaltonc 11y agoYou must be a fun roommate.
- EGreg 11y agoBack then those barons didn't pay as many taxes, and the towns relied on their charity. The Federal government, for example, took 3% in taxes at the beginning of the 20th century. And I'm pretty sure the robber barons are criticized more than the current Googles of the world. What you are saying when you say these companies should be doing social projects and planning, is that the cities are failing the citizens to do those projects and planning. I agree that they can do it from a perception point of view, but I've found that Social Justice is usually 80% distraction and opportunism, and real solutions should be properly architected by the right entities, and usually have the character of benefiting everyone, not just the oppressed group. Just as a couple examples: body cameras and inverting the clasroom, are not particularly "Black lives matter" solutions, more like improving "all lives" and yet they'd help more than Al Sharpton's opportunistic appearances and all that type of activism. All these movements that make an enemy of those who they should instead try to enlist in the solution, just wind up doing more harm than good. Take for example the BDS movement. And before that, the other "social justice for Palestinians" movements. It's been decades and Palestinians are still stateless. Is BDS gonna topple Israel? No, it's just an outrage-fueled meme to protest Zionism. It doesn't actually help. The way things move forward is not by activists yelling against an enemy, but rather when people constructively get the stakeholders all together and do something that benefits everyone.
- rybosome 11y agoThat this is being down voted suggests that we (people in tech) find it difficult to imagine ourselves as contributors to dischord and stratification. My initial reaction is to disagree, but that is defensiveness. What if there is some truth to it? The influx of tech workers really has raised the cost of living in SF substantially (although zoning laws and insufficient development are implicated as well). danharaj, in what ways are tech companies relying on social and economic infrastructure to the detriment of others? I'm well aware of the tragedy of the commons, so what is the finite resource in this case?
- danharaj 11y agoI don't live in SV, I live in NYC, so I'm more familiar with the interactions of the tech community here with the rest of the city. Tech in NYC is rather small compared to the behemoth that is the financial industry, so our impact on our fellow New Yorkers is more subtle. The issue ultimately is that the people that constitute a city, work in it, construct it, maintain it, live in it, are completely subject to the whims of capital and private property. Whole districts can be destroyed or forced out by market forces and replaced with a more profitable set of human beings. We are supposed to accept this as not only natural and inevitable, but good! It is fundamentally undemocratic and inhuman. that's why people are angry, because there is no room for their interests in such a system. living in such a system is dehumanizing. The compromise of Liberalism is that the people control the government, which acts as a counterbalance against the market. When government fails to mediate the conflicts between the workers and the capitalists and property owners, class conflict gets worse. i would just like tech workers to realize that we're workers who sell their labor for a wage and that means we're exploited. Economic security, even petty wealth is always a temporary illusion for the worker. Events out of our hands can and often do plunge us into economically precarious situations. We have more in common with people who work for less than us than we do with the people who pay our salaries. furthermore, in a society that is increasingly based on technological structures, we have a civic duty to make sure that technology serves to create a more equal, democratic society. one thing that i personally do towards that end is offer my clients reduced rates if they open source the code i write for them. i'd like to do more activist programming when i'm in between contracts. I'm probably going to get rate-limited on my replies so i'll stop responding to comments. i sure kicked up a hornets' nest here.
- jordanb 11y agoSure tech companies have a lot to answer for, also the NIMBYs who are restricting the housing supply. But these trustafarian activists focus most of their energy on tech employees---who are just trying to find a place to live just like everyone else.
- pslam 11y agoNerd bashing, at scale.
- DannoHung 11y agoThe two biggest issues that San Francisco faces are housing and transportation. You say that they would be accused of influencing local politics, but I am reasonably sure that busting the building height cap and using money to get better mass transit options would be viewed very favorably by all but a few of the NIMBYest citizens. In any case, the fundamental underlying problem is that tech has created a monotonous economy in the Bay. No locality that has one has good economics for citizens.
- convexfunction 11y ago(I'm not the author of that article, just a friend of mine) I expect that if the tech companies were deeply involved in encouraging development and mass transit, then a sizeable percentage of people in SF and elsewhere would decide that this is bad. Most of the press would focus on individual personalities with bad optics and on sub-issues that involve sacred victims, since those are the kinds of things that the readers want to hear about, and "tech companies are villains who do bad things" is an established narrative that it's easy to understand new events by; public opinion follows naturally. And if that's not the case, one of my takeaways is that there would be something else that people decide is intolerable about the tech companies. The issue is not the issues; the issue is the narrative, into which a limitless number of stories can fit.
- adzicg 11y agoI'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.
- YeGoblynQueenne 11y agoRushkoff argues that the profit Uber drivers make is not sustainable in the long-term, and that Uber doesn't mind because once that runs dry they can then use their profits to jump to another line of business entirely, while Uber drivers will have to always live hand-to-mouth.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoThe 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 11y agoAre you familiar with the 'Gulf of Mexico' and in particular 'Galveston.'
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoSomewhat. 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.
- 11y ago
- kazagistar 11y agoThat 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 11y agoThis is not meant to be an essay but review of Douglas Rushkoff ideas about the very current days.
- oldmanjay 11y agoI'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
- zepto 11y agoI can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. You do realize that this is the exact attitude that is being complained about, right?
- vadym909 11y agoI 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.
- kornork 11y agoI'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.
- msvan 11y agoMany tech markets are ruthlessly competitive and will be swallowed by the companies that are designed for growth. Code's biggest advantage is that it scales so well. Lifestyle businesses exist but still take hard work to pull off.
- sanowski 11y agodo these actually exist?
- kornork 11y agoOne that comes to mind is Basecamp.
- badsock 11y agoAnecdotal 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.
- 11y ago
- manishsharan 11y agoThis article is essentially a promo piece for an upcoming book.
- peter303 11y agoThe headline invoked a scene of a horde of menancing nerds in horn-rimmed glasses and slide rules.
- dave_sullivan 11y agoAnd 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 11y agoThat logic can't be right. Because if it were, almost nobody would have the right to criticise google.
- dave_sullivan 11y agoNaw, 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.
- jorleif 11y agoThe 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.
- atemerev 11y agoThe 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 11y agoThat'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 11y ago>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 11y agoIf you hadn't stopped there you would have seen that he addresses why Airbnb/uber aren't counter examples in the next paragraph.
- kukx 11y agoNow 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 11y agoIt 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 11y agoAre 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.
- DrScump 11y agoDoomsayers 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 11y ago> 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.