10 ms·

Recasting Silicon Valley’s role in society

28 points by mathattack 10y ago

Kurtz79 10y ago
I think it's a healthy discussion to be had. Yes, the vast majority of problems startups aim to solve are really "first world problems". All those "help us changing the world" snippets you find even in job offers here in HN, are naïve in the best case, and insulting in the worst. On the other hand, it's unfair to expect them to take the role of "society's saviors": many of the real problems should be the domain of governments and policy. Expecting for-profit, private companies to solve those it's a huge cop-out and unrealistic. (EDIT) More context: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/solving-all-the-wrong-problems.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/solving-all...
- thatfrenchguy 10y ago
  "many of the real problems should be the domain of governments and policy" I think one of the issues illustrated in the article comes from the fact that Silicon Valley companies, in the name of "innovation", often say that their innovations are apolitical, which is never the case. When Uber becomes the fare-setter for drivers and the government let them push their drivers below min wage, it is a political process.
- misiogames 10y ago
  I'll say not even solve first world problem, just provide a technically enhanced "solution" to problems? that affect very little number of people.
- mobiuscog 10y ago
  For a long time now, entrepreneurs have been solving the 'convenience' problem, as they have found that it what makes them the most money. It's not about solving important 'problems' for most - it's about how they can make the most money, and that is usually by providing more convenience to people. This is, of course, how business works in a capitalist society - the issue is that the problems they solve are often marketed as being the most important, whereas they're just selling a dream. I'm sure they would solve the major problems if they could and there was sufficient money in it - look at how the drugs companies operate - but this is (and has always been) about money. Amazon are running their competition for better robot picking - are they also running competitions for how to help people whose jobs are replaced by robots ? Silicon Valley has a single role - to make (more) money for those people investing into it. That's all. There's little to no philanthropy, and when there is it's generally from people who are already far wealthier than is required to live (an excessively comfortable) life.
  - rvense 10y ago
    Seems obvious, really. The people who have the money to pay others to solve problems for them are likely to have already had all their basic problems taken care of. Tangentially reminds me of Dave Rossum, founder of synthesizer company E-mu systems, who jokes that the problem with building a business on selling to musicians is that your customers are always broke.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    Halfway through your comment I thought of the analogy to drug companies, which solve problems like impotence rather than Ebola because the people with impotence have lots of money and the people with Ebola don't. Worse than even solving the so called first-world-problems, they invest a fair amount of time on "evergreening" which is basically fraud or at the very, very best rent-seeking. Yet, you then used them as an example of an industry solving the big problems.
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      Do you find such reductionism to be actually useful outside of self-congratulations for posting politically correct rhetoric? Or, although I doubt it, do you actually believe that's an accurate and intellectually honest summary?
      - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
        I keep meaning to start a blog that catalogues the many random and bizarre things that are accused of being "politically correct" on HN, but it's the first time it's actually happened directly to me. Which bit of my comment is politically correct? Or, assuming you're using it in the modern meaning of "something I don't like", I'm still not sure what bit of my comment you didn't like. Yes, to re-iterate, I think the incentives of drug manufacturers are tilted in many ways including a) towards drugs that serve wealthy customers, b) towards drugs that will be taken every day for the rest of their lives, c) towards drugs that can be protected by patents. I further think that some of the behaviours in the industry tend towards the unethical, e.g. evergreening a patent-free drug and then using the well catalogued failures of modern science to "prove" that it's better than the patented drug by leaving any negative findings in the file drawer and only publishing the positive ones, and then doing things like withdrawing the older drug from sale and bribing doctors to use the newer drugs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening Quote: "Almost all nations including the United States now have anti-evergreening legislation as part of their public health policy"
- venomsnake 10y ago
  -Why do you rob banks? -Because that's where the money is The people with third world problems just don't have the money to pay the SF rent of a SV developer.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Perhaps addressing that birth lottery inequality ought be discussed.
- Avshalom 10y ago
  Well there's two things: It's not unfair to expect people shouting about changing the world (implication: for the better) to be working on things that change the world (for the better). While certainly not all of them, and maybe not even a majority, there are a lot of loud voices of pro-capitalist boosters who absolutely expect that for-profit, private companies to be the only way to solve real problems and save society.
jkot 10y ago
I think SV first needs to solve its own problems: transportation, infrastructure, homelessness, housing cost.
- hueving 10y ago
  SV has these costs because people come here to work for tech companies solving tech problems. A great way to eliminate those costs would be to force everyone to work on those lame problems with known technical solutions (at which point anyone looking for a technical rather than political challenge would just leave). The solution to housing problems is to build more housing. Period. There is nothing interesting there. The only reason it hasn't been done is because it's blocked politically by current home owners that "don't want the feel to change".
  - flubert 10y ago
    >The solution to housing problems is to build more housing. Period. There is nothing interesting there. The only reason it hasn't been done is because it's blocked politically by current home owners that "don't want the feel to change". The interesting problem would seem to be convincing home owners to want the change. Here's one innovative perspective on the issue: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF Certainly there could be others as well. It seems like a lot of people are locked-in to the position that nothing can change unless we get a political coalition together to force the existing homeowners into a situation they don't desire (without properly compensating them). What has been/could be done to make them partners in the growth instead? What kind of new financial structures/contracts could be invented to deal with the types of issues that have been traditionally solved with "eminent domain"?
    - hueving 10y ago
      >What kind of new financial structures/contracts could be invented to deal with the types of issues that have been traditionally solved with "eminent domain"? True, there is room to innovate there, but that's mainly political work. As a software engineer I have next to 0 interest doing that.
mseebach 10y ago
"People sometimes build software that sometimes have undesirable outcomes, so I have broad and vague concerns towards all software being build. Hey, why can't people instead build software that contributes towards other broad and vague (but this time good!) outcomes instead?"
- return0 10y ago
  I think its more nuanced than you make it to be. To me the message is "improve people's lives rather than disrupting them"
  - mseebach 10y ago
    It basically is, just without bothering to elaborate on why disruption is bad, and what improvement actually means -- except in broad and vague terms.
hueving 10y ago
The author bashes ride sharing and home rental apps then goes on to talk about how we should improve markets. Both of these served to discover the real market value of things (taxis are garbage and people were forced to use them so now people flock to uber/lyft/whatever, rent control is literally an attempt to regulate that something is worth less than it is). Then the author asks the ominous "do we want a 150mph thing driving itself"? Self-driving cars are still in development and they are already safer than people. Planes travel 500mph and they fly themselves. A spacex rocket flies itself. I'm starting to think this author is a bit daft and is just reducing things to, "I don't like the change that is happening because it's scary. I'll stick to my horse and buggy."
- uola 10y ago
  Regulation of markets has a purpose. You might disagree with it, how it was implemented or say that it's not keeping up with reality but that doesn't mean that skirting regulation doesn't give us just another flawed market. People don't seem to understand that we have entered the information age. The challenges are increasingly not technical, but in really understanding the what you're doing.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    Regulations have a purpose, but using that as a blanket reason to accept foolish regulation is a non-starter. Maybe your comment has some other meaning I'm not divining but that is all I can get from it.
  - hueving 10y ago
    Very frequently regulations are blunt hammers that solved one problem and created many more. The people attracted to politics that actually make these rules normally have almost no grasp of economics and pass rules that are completely brain dead. I'm happy companies are willing to take risks to challenge obviously stupid protection rackets.
- dilemma 10y ago
  >Planes travel 500mph and they fly themselves. Case in point: Why Tesla's naming of Autopilot is misleading.
dpierce9 10y ago
I was almost hit by an Uber driver who shouldn't have been on the road so, while I love this new taxi stuff, I have first hand experience with real negative externalities. I was almost hit the day after a blizzard in Maryland this past January. My street had more than a foot of snow and was impassable for non-trucks. I was out walking my dog and there were dozens of other people playing and shoveling when an Uber driver in a small sedan came barreling down the street. I jumped out of the way while he went another 20 feet before he got stuck. I took a picture of his plate and yelled at him for driving recklessly. Before telling me to f-off he told me that 'if he slowed down he would have gotten stuck'. Being from a Northern state and knowing how to drive in snow, I was flabbergasted by the recknlessness of this. I contacted Uber and they assured me that despite endangering the health and safety of people, they gave the driver a stern talking. I haven't stopped using Uber (though I use Lyft more now) but it wouldn't surprise me if that driver was operating an unsuitable vehicle in an unsafe manner because of the incentives created by surge pricing. These are real risks and costs which are not born by Uber and we shouldn't stick our head in the sand or shout down those who point them out as Luddites. It also doesn't mean we should get rid of these services.

28 points by mathattack 10y ago

I think it's a healthy discussion to be had. Yes, the vast majority of problems startups aim to solve are really "first world problems". All those "help us changing the world" snippets you find even in job offers here in HN, are naïve in the best case, and insulting in the worst. On the other hand, it's unfair to expect them to take the role of "society's saviors": many of the real problems should be the domain of governments and policy. Expecting for-profit, private companies to solve those it's a huge cop-out and unrealistic. (EDIT) More context: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/solving-all-the-wrong-problems.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/solving-all...

thatfrenchguy 10y ago
"many of the real problems should be the domain of governments and policy" I think one of the issues illustrated in the article comes from the fact that Silicon Valley companies, in the name of "innovation", often say that their innovations are apolitical, which is never the case. When Uber becomes the fare-setter for drivers and the government let them push their drivers below min wage, it is a political process.
misiogames 10y ago
I'll say not even solve first world problem, just provide a technically enhanced "solution" to problems? that affect very little number of people.
mobiuscog 10y ago
For a long time now, entrepreneurs have been solving the 'convenience' problem, as they have found that it what makes them the most money. It's not about solving important 'problems' for most - it's about how they can make the most money, and that is usually by providing more convenience to people. This is, of course, how business works in a capitalist society - the issue is that the problems they solve are often marketed as being the most important, whereas they're just selling a dream. I'm sure they would solve the major problems if they could and there was sufficient money in it - look at how the drugs companies operate - but this is (and has always been) about money. Amazon are running their competition for better robot picking - are they also running competitions for how to help people whose jobs are replaced by robots ? Silicon Valley has a single role - to make (more) money for those people investing into it. That's all. There's little to no philanthropy, and when there is it's generally from people who are already far wealthier than is required to live (an excessively comfortable) life.
- rvense 10y ago
  Seems obvious, really. The people who have the money to pay others to solve problems for them are likely to have already had all their basic problems taken care of. Tangentially reminds me of Dave Rossum, founder of synthesizer company E-mu systems, who jokes that the problem with building a business on selling to musicians is that your customers are always broke.
- ZeroGravitas 10y ago
  Halfway through your comment I thought of the analogy to drug companies, which solve problems like impotence rather than Ebola because the people with impotence have lots of money and the people with Ebola don't. Worse than even solving the so called first-world-problems, they invest a fair amount of time on "evergreening" which is basically fraud or at the very, very best rent-seeking. Yet, you then used them as an example of an industry solving the big problems.
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    Do you find such reductionism to be actually useful outside of self-congratulations for posting politically correct rhetoric? Or, although I doubt it, do you actually believe that's an accurate and intellectually honest summary?
    - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
      I keep meaning to start a blog that catalogues the many random and bizarre things that are accused of being "politically correct" on HN, but it's the first time it's actually happened directly to me. Which bit of my comment is politically correct? Or, assuming you're using it in the modern meaning of "something I don't like", I'm still not sure what bit of my comment you didn't like. Yes, to re-iterate, I think the incentives of drug manufacturers are tilted in many ways including a) towards drugs that serve wealthy customers, b) towards drugs that will be taken every day for the rest of their lives, c) towards drugs that can be protected by patents. I further think that some of the behaviours in the industry tend towards the unethical, e.g. evergreening a patent-free drug and then using the well catalogued failures of modern science to "prove" that it's better than the patented drug by leaving any negative findings in the file drawer and only publishing the positive ones, and then doing things like withdrawing the older drug from sale and bribing doctors to use the newer drugs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreening Quote: "Almost all nations including the United States now have anti-evergreening legislation as part of their public health policy"
venomsnake 10y ago
-Why do you rob banks? -Because that's where the money is The people with third world problems just don't have the money to pay the SF rent of a SV developer.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Perhaps addressing that birth lottery inequality ought be discussed.
Avshalom 10y ago
Well there's two things: It's not unfair to expect people shouting about changing the world (implication: for the better) to be working on things that change the world (for the better). While certainly not all of them, and maybe not even a majority, there are a lot of loud voices of pro-capitalist boosters who absolutely expect that for-profit, private companies to be the only way to solve real problems and save society.

jkot 10y ago

I think SV first needs to solve its own problems: transportation, infrastructure, homelessness, housing cost.

hueving 10y ago
SV has these costs because people come here to work for tech companies solving tech problems. A great way to eliminate those costs would be to force everyone to work on those lame problems with known technical solutions (at which point anyone looking for a technical rather than political challenge would just leave). The solution to housing problems is to build more housing. Period. There is nothing interesting there. The only reason it hasn't been done is because it's blocked politically by current home owners that "don't want the feel to change".
- flubert 10y ago
  >The solution to housing problems is to build more housing. Period. There is nothing interesting there. The only reason it hasn't been done is because it's blocked politically by current home owners that "don't want the feel to change". The interesting problem would seem to be convincing home owners to want the change. Here's one innovative perspective on the issue: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF https://www.dartmouth.edu/~wfischel/Papers/00-04.PDF Certainly there could be others as well. It seems like a lot of people are locked-in to the position that nothing can change unless we get a political coalition together to force the existing homeowners into a situation they don't desire (without properly compensating them). What has been/could be done to make them partners in the growth instead? What kind of new financial structures/contracts could be invented to deal with the types of issues that have been traditionally solved with "eminent domain"?
  - hueving 10y ago
    >What kind of new financial structures/contracts could be invented to deal with the types of issues that have been traditionally solved with "eminent domain"? True, there is room to innovate there, but that's mainly political work. As a software engineer I have next to 0 interest doing that.

mseebach 10y ago

"People sometimes build software that sometimes have undesirable outcomes, so I have broad and vague concerns towards all software being build. Hey, why can't people instead build software that contributes towards other broad and vague (but this time good!) outcomes instead?"

return0 10y ago
I think its more nuanced than you make it to be. To me the message is "improve people's lives rather than disrupting them"
- mseebach 10y ago
  It basically is, just without bothering to elaborate on why disruption is bad, and what improvement actually means -- except in broad and vague terms.

hueving 10y ago

The author bashes ride sharing and home rental apps then goes on to talk about how we should improve markets. Both of these served to discover the real market value of things (taxis are garbage and people were forced to use them so now people flock to uber/lyft/whatever, rent control is literally an attempt to regulate that something is worth less than it is). Then the author asks the ominous "do we want a 150mph thing driving itself"? Self-driving cars are still in development and they are already safer than people. Planes travel 500mph and they fly themselves. A spacex rocket flies itself. I'm starting to think this author is a bit daft and is just reducing things to, "I don't like the change that is happening because it's scary. I'll stick to my horse and buggy."

uola 10y ago
Regulation of markets has a purpose. You might disagree with it, how it was implemented or say that it's not keeping up with reality but that doesn't mean that skirting regulation doesn't give us just another flawed market. People don't seem to understand that we have entered the information age. The challenges are increasingly not technical, but in really understanding the what you're doing.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  Regulations have a purpose, but using that as a blanket reason to accept foolish regulation is a non-starter. Maybe your comment has some other meaning I'm not divining but that is all I can get from it.
- hueving 10y ago
  Very frequently regulations are blunt hammers that solved one problem and created many more. The people attracted to politics that actually make these rules normally have almost no grasp of economics and pass rules that are completely brain dead. I'm happy companies are willing to take risks to challenge obviously stupid protection rackets.
dilemma 10y ago
>Planes travel 500mph and they fly themselves. Case in point: Why Tesla's naming of Autopilot is misleading.

dpierce9 10y ago

I was almost hit by an Uber driver who shouldn't have been on the road so, while I love this new taxi stuff, I have first hand experience with real negative externalities. I was almost hit the day after a blizzard in Maryland this past January. My street had more than a foot of snow and was impassable for non-trucks. I was out walking my dog and there were dozens of other people playing and shoveling when an Uber driver in a small sedan came barreling down the street. I jumped out of the way while he went another 20 feet before he got stuck. I took a picture of his plate and yelled at him for driving recklessly. Before telling me to f-off he told me that 'if he slowed down he would have gotten stuck'. Being from a Northern state and knowing how to drive in snow, I was flabbergasted by the recknlessness of this. I contacted Uber and they assured me that despite endangering the health and safety of people, they gave the driver a stern talking. I haven't stopped using Uber (though I use Lyft more now) but it wouldn't surprise me if that driver was operating an unsuitable vehicle in an unsafe manner because of the incentives created by surge pricing. These are real risks and costs which are not born by Uber and we shouldn't stick our head in the sand or shout down those who point them out as Luddites. It also doesn't mean we should get rid of these services.