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So many people in Silicon Valley are preoccupied with developing the next killer application; meanwhile, there are tens of millions of poor Americans, white and

• adamnemecek 10y ago
  The main issue is education. its unbelievable that you spend like 8 hours a day for 12 years doing something and in the end you can't really do anything well. The advent of the Internet has really changed things up but we are still wasting people's lives away.
  • Spooky23 10y ago
    Education is bad for you as a technology person. You're a member of a privileged guild.
  • sverige 10y ago
    I would argue that federalizing education has made the problem worse, not better. Much of what passes for elementary and secondary education is silly fluff compared to what was required two generations ago.
    • twblalock 10y ago
      States have a lot of control over education funding, which is far more determinative of the quality of their education systems than the guidelines the federal government imposes. Every state has to deal with the same federal guidelines, but some have far better education systems than others -- due to funding. Want to see education improved? Have the Feds take over funding, and give each school the same amount of money. The quality of schools in poor neighborhoods would increase dramatically, and the quality of schools in rich neighborhoods would decrease. Maybe then, the rich would be convinced to support increased educational funding. In other countries, people don't think about the quality of the local school district when they buy a home, because the districts are all similar in quality. Again, a matter of funding.
• michaelchisari 10y ago
  Thing is, Silicon Valley isn't really going to fix those problems. In fact, we're only really going to make it worse through automation and job destruction. Ultimately, making menial labor obsolete is a good thing, but the transition is tough. And entrepreneurship isn't going to soften the tumble. It requires intervention of a different kind.
  • infinite8s 10y ago
    It requires exactly the transition that Marx posited - redistribution of wealth to those who's livelihoods have been automated away. Taken to the limit of automation, that's pretty much anyone who's living is dependent on labor (this includes programmers).
    • andres_kytt 10y ago
      No. He key idea of Marx was that the person adding value should own the means of doing so. Which, if you think about it, is exactly what's happening. The key element of value creation is the mind and that is owned by the person. Marx has nothing much left for people who _do not_ add value simply because back then that meant being "the problem". He who does not work must not eat. But what if there simply is no need to work? You should not try to apply social theories of late 18th century to the one of early 21st.
    • andres_kytt 10y ago
      No. He key idea of Marx was that the person adding value should own the means of doing so. Which, if you think about it, is exactly what's happening. The key element of value creation is the mind and that is owned by the person. Marx has nothing much left for people who _do not_ add value simply because back then that meant being "the problem". He who does not work must not eat. But what if there simply is no need to work? You should not try to apply social theories of late 18th century to the one of early 21st.
• niftich 10y ago
  Silicon Valley has already "fixed" this by creating a locus of economic and mental capital, unparalleled in the United States in the last few decades, attracting job-seekers from all rungs of the socioeconomic ladder from CEOs and CTOs through front-line workers in the service industry. In the process, it is struggling with the area's incumbent zoning laws, not enough new construction, high cost of living, and, higher than average gap between the rich and the poor. They've concentrated so much capital and opportunity that it doesn't translate well to other places, despite attempts to incubate the same thing in Austin, Seattle, Raleigh, and the like. And if you were referring to "app-based" solutions as opposed to proven injection of capital, you're in uncharted waters. Before Silicon Valley, the miracle non-extraction-based economic engine of the country was Detroit; before then it was Akron, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Buffalo, Rochester, and New York. If history is of any lesson, in the future we'll fondly remember Silicon Valley's "IT boom" of a couple decades, before the circumstances and realities of the situation changed and the next big thing after automobiles, rubber, steel, railroads and meatpacking, electricity, and shipping (respectively) came along.
  • protomyth 10y ago
    > attracting job-seekers from all rungs of the socioeconomic ladder We've had quite a lot of articles on HN about how bad the filter of using certain University enrollments to select a companies job seeks is for diversity in general. Economic diversity is also problematic when you only hire from top 25 schools.
    • twblalock 10y ago
      Not every company has that filter. Many don't care if their employees went to college at all.
      • protomyth 10y ago
        Does Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft care? I know Microsoft targeted specific schools for specific areas. Google is biased towards PhDs from certain schools according to many articles. All that may have changed, but the big corps have their influence on the majority of hires.
• twblalock 10y ago
  All of the fixes people normally think of have already been operational for these people. They live in the richest country in the world -- a country with free and compulsory public education, and a social safety net that is better than most people think (not as good as Europe's, but a lot better than nothing). And yet, these people have nothing to offer to anyone -- no job skills of any kind, in many cases. We can't bring the manufacturing jobs back for these people, either. Let's dispel the notion that the collapse of manufacturing jobs in the rust belt, where many of these people live, was the result of political choices. It was inevitable -- the rise of China, southeast Asia, and Latin American countries has revealed the truth that US manufacturing was not globally competitive, but merely sheltered. NAFTA sent some jobs to Mexico, but in the absence of NAFTA, those jobs would have gone to Asia instead. If the US government had decided to protect US manufacturing jobs at all costs, we would have quickly learned what "all costs" means -- the cost of protecting those jobs would have risen quickly over the years until we could not have afforded it anymore. The tariffs required to do so would have been an enormous drag on the economy, and on the well-being of most Americans, and therefore unsustainable economically and politically. So the political choices involved in the collapse of manufacturing jobs could at best have delayed the inevitable. So, whatever we can do for these people is by degrees -- improve the free public education they already have, improve the welfare benefits they already have, maybe cut their taxes, if they earn enough to pay taxes. We can't bring the jobs back, and it's naive of them to believe candidates who promise that they can. But maybe we shouldn't feel sorry for these people, who grew up in the richest country in the world, with free education, and have nothing to offer to anyone. A lot has been done for them already, and unlike almost any other group in this country, they cannot point to any injustices visited upon them as an excuse for their current state of affairs. Let's keep in mind that they were never enslaved, and that they were sheltered from competition from non-whites and foreigners for decades. They have managed to fail in a country designed to promote the success of white people, often at the expense of other groups. Their lives are significantly better, more comfortable, and more secure than those of people in many countries of the world. Billions of people live in poverty these poor white Americans could never imagine. These Americans have housing, enough to eat, clothes to wear, cars, TVs, video game consoles, government-provided health care (Medicaid) and welfare payments in many cases -- all the trappings of middle-class life in many parts of the world. What else do we owe them? Self-actualization? Frankly, I'd rather give my money to some of the billions of people in the world who live in ramshackle houses with dirt floors, no electricity, no education, and no way out. These white Americans have enough that I don't see how they are entitled to any more unless they earn it themselves.
• duckingtest 10y ago
  It can be fixed with biotechnology. 1. A device that allows knowledge uploading would make most of education obsolete - everyone could know everything there is to know (which is not the same as understanding, but I don't think it's possible to teach understanding anyway, only help someone understand). 2. An equivalent of a drug gland from the Culture series would fix most mental problems, especially motivation and lack of self discipline. 3. An implantable electric powered CO2 to glucose/triglycerides converter would decrease basic survival costs by orders of magnitude, at the same time freeing lots of agricultural land for other use. With no risk of starving everybody would be much more entrepreneurial. 1 requires sf technology, but 2 and 3 is 'just' an engineering problem.
• bdcravens 10y ago
  I grew up white and very poor. We often had to choose between food and electricity. We had people giving us clothes. Our house was filled with filth and roaches and head lice. We didn't go to dentists and doctors. (Main reason why I wasn't diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis until age 13) In my situation, problem was caused by two main issues: * Alcoholism. My dad functioned well, so it wasn't necessarily a matter of drinking up all the money, as much as getting to the drink was a primary objective, leaving little room for motivation to do more in life. He was quite intelligent, but didn't care. (I've personally taken a few trips down that road myself, but have fortunately gotten out of it, and am currently 15 months sober) * Mental health. My mom had serious undiagnosed mental health issues. Like talking to people who weren't there, the inability to function as seemingly routine tasks, explosive temper at virtually nothing. Like the alcoholism, I can see elements of this in myself as well. I'm obviously on HN because I'm a developer, and doing well for myself, but these issues are still there, and I still feel "poor". My family still is, and I put as much distance between me and that situation as possible. I could possibly help them be a little less poor, but it's not a money thing. It's a mentality thing.
  • lisper 10y ago
    > 15 months sober Congratulations!
    • bdcravens 10y ago
      Thank you. Each day is a new opportunity to have to start over. Don't get me started on tech conferences, lol....
    • jomamaxx 10y ago
      Yes, double congrats. And 'tech conferences'? Loserville. No offence. I like techies, and like talking tech. But getting drunk with nerds is not fun.
      • bdcravens 10y ago
        Trust me, I'm probably Exhibit A why getting drunk with nerds isn't fun.
• ajamesm 10y ago
  Or even small challenges. There are so many little fixes to be made, bureaucracies and applications that could be streamlined or informational asymmetries that could be smoothed. Even someone applying for food stamps has to jump so many hurdles, sometimes including in-person interviews! As if someone who has difficulty affording food every day has an excess of time and reliable transportation. (Then again, these people aren't easily monetized, unless you're comfortable exploiting them. c.f. check cashing.) I'm hopeful for initiatives like the US Digital Service. And I wish our culture stopped glamorizing startups for being worth a lot of pretend money, and instead valued them on how much they did to advance us as an equitable society.
  • twblalock 10y ago
    Many startups may be worth "pretend" money, but many are worth real money. And even the ones that are worth "pretend" money create jobs, not just for engineers. > And I wish our culture stopped glamorizing startups for being worth a lot of pretend money, and instead valued them on how much they did to advance us as an equitable society. It is not the job of businesses to pursue social engineering goals like an equitable society. That is the job of government, and government needs money to do those things, which can come from taxing successful businesses. People who suggest that businesses ought to pursue social goals don't fully understand what would happen if they got what they wished for -- a world where social goods and services are privatized -- provided by unaccountable private companies instead of elected governments. For example, consider the state of public transit in Silicon Valley. There isn't much of it, and what there is sucks. So companies have started paying for their own bus routes, which are only open to their own employees. Taken together, those bus routes would comprise a very comprehensive public transit solution. But the general public can't use them. This is what happens when companies do the government's job. Consider also the backlash against Bill Gates' education initiatives in Seattle: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13085/charitable-plutocracy-bill-gates-washington-state-and-nuisance-democracy http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13085/charitable-plutocr... Besides, if we rely on corporations for social progress, they could easily promote right-wing policies, which is the opposite of what you seem to want. It's really much better when businesses stay out of politics entirely and maximize their wealth creation, and the government redistributes that wealth to the extent necessary to accomplish its social goals.
• yummyfajitas 10y ago
  There's a very easy way it can be fixed. Those people can leave their world and go join a better one. They can migrate to the American southwest and do agricultural labor, competing with the illegal immigrants doing jobs that "Americans just won't do". They can migrate to the distant outskirts of high productivity cities (e.g. NY, SF), then commute in and provide domestic labor to high productivity individuals. There is plenty of opportunity out there; if there weren't then people from around the world wouldn't be desperately attempting to enter the US. Hundreds of millions of Indians, Chinese and others engage in internal migration, moving themselves to where the jobs are. Americans could too. This is just not a fix that Silicon Valley can do; if a man doesn't want to fix himself, then Peter Thiel can't build an app to do it for him.
  • arjunnarayan 10y ago
    Do note that oppressive land-use regulation and NIMBYism has made this avenue harder and harder over the years. The cities with jobs and functioning societies have closed themselves off, or at least raised the buy-in to very high prices. This isn't the only barrier stopping people from internal migration, but it certainly is a fairly important one.
  • dennyabraham 10y ago
    Are you suggesting a root cause for why they haven't en masse made the migration? Without that, I can't see how this amounts to more than a moral argument.
  • jomamaxx 10y ago
    "competing with the illegal immigrants doing jobs that "Americans just won't do"." So your answer is to work on farms for $5 an hour with no benefits, no worker protections? Is that satire? You do realize that Americans will 'do those jobs' once wages and working conditions rise to the acceptable, but they will never be so long as mass illegal immigration is kept in place? Illegal immigration is a very corrosive trap: once one farmer, in economic trouble hires illegals and cuts his costs, all of the others have to follow suite - it's a thin margin game. And then it's a trap the industry cannot get out of. Most farmers would happily employ Americans for higher wages and better conditions if economics allowed for it. But so long as there are tons of illegals, and 5% of farmers who will take advantage of it - the rest have to follow suit. Open border / illegal immigration is a very corrosive thing. Also - the Asians that come to America are not 'mobile'. They don't go to Alabama and Georgia, generally. They go to areas where there are many other Asian people, which is rational on their part. I don't think it's fair to compare people who have lived in some area for 5 generations to newcomers. Jobs for the less skilled are not plentiful in America. There is a lot of opportunity for the upper 50%, but it's not the same for others.
• bcoates 10y ago
  Crack down on the businesses mass-importing slave labor from outside the US. Unskilled labor isn't being replaced by robots and outsourcing, it's being replaced by imported labor that can be kept in line with various legal and extra-legal threats.
  • twblalock 10y ago
    No, it's actually being replaced mainly by foreign competition. In the case of jobs that cannot be outsourced, like agricultural jobs (you can't harvest American crops without being in America), illegal immigrants have been doing that work for a very, very long time -- way before the manufacturing jobs started disappearing for white people.
• ting_bu_dung 10y ago
  What about MOVING? Do you know what stops the very poor in such a rich country from simply moving to a better state or city with more jobs and resources? Is it fear? sadness? lack of confidence? lack of expense to move? too much attachment to the place they grew up in? Studies have repeatedly shown that metropolises are the future. Big cities have the jobs, healthcare, education, networks to help everyone, especially the needy. Why aren't more needy people moving?
  • sverige 10y ago
    Big cities also have an entirely different culture from rural America. It includes higher crime rates, higher prices, more commute time, and less sense of being connected to a community. I have lived in several cities (Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Charlotte) and ended up hating all of them. They are especially brutal if you move to them with little money and no connections to decent jobs. Then you have the worst of both worlds.
    • ting_bu_dung 10y ago
      Right so it's just not liking big cities or manual jobs. Well, when you're dirt poor, you suck it up, and go to the city, do manual labor, save up money/learn skills until you can get out of being dirt poor.
      • sverige 10y ago
        I said nothing about manual labor. I have done a lot of it myself, and find it to be far more rewarding than the so-called "knowledge work" that I have also done. The work ethic in what is called "white trash" societies is very strong. Most are unafraid of manual labor. But moving everyone to cities is not the answer, since it ignores a lot of things that rural people find valuable.
  • allengeorge 10y ago
    Here are some factors you may not have considered: 1. It may be very hard to interview for a job at your destination. It's disingenuous to tell someone on the poverty line "Move, start paying out a ton of cash, and hopefully pick up a job". It's even harder to do that if you don't have the family structure to help you out. 2. Many people may have equity tied up in homes in dying communities. Yeah, it's not worth very much - but it's paid for, and way cheaper than rent in a much more expensive city. 3. The skills you have may not be in demand in cities. If you're a steel worker, moving to New York City isn't going to help you out very much.
• pastProlog 10y ago
  Can Silicon Valley take care of its own long term needs? Basic math and science research now is the soil Silicon Valley needs in the future. But government budgets are cut, and there's a philosophy that predominates that government is not the answer. So Larry Page has Google do research and development. But there is the beginning of a stockholder rebellion. The trend is toward focus on short term ever-increasing stock returns each quarter. The powers-that-be want funding for basic math and science research trimmed down to nothing - both government and corporate. Plus treaties like TPP are being pushed. If Silicon Valley profits on the increased spread of information, the TPP tries to tie down information in rules which seem out-of-date. Also telcos (read AT&T and Verizon) are using their last-mile land/airwave monopoly power to redirect bad DNS calls to ads, hijack sessions and place cookies on them, they want to use their monopolies to charge upstreams fees etc. Then there's the Eastern District of Texas patent racket. An example of this discussed recently - in the years after World War II, the transistor was implemented and Moore's Law took effect. As everyone knows, that has slowed down in recent years and soon the current methods will hit a brick wall. If you look at constant non-military R&D dollars coming from the federal budget, they are less this year than they were in 2003. The population is growing, the economy is growing and becoming more complex, but federal R&D dollars are shrinking. Also, you talk as if wasting human capital was not an intention of our current mode of production and economic system. Look at this 1999 Businessweek article, "When is the jobless rate too low?" ( http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1999-10-31/when-is-the-jobless-rate-too-low http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1999-10-31/when-is-th... ). The worry by the people controlling the economy starts when unemployment gets too low, not when it's too high. Of course, if it starts climbing up to 25% like it did in 1932 in the US, turmoil starts to take hold, so in that respect they're against high unemployment on the other end. Why do you assume wasted human capital is the concern of those making the economic decisions? By the people making the economic decisions, I mean the people pressuring Larry Page to cut Alphabet/Google R&D, who pressured Facebook to go public, who beat the drums for years for Apple to have a special dividend etc. Wasted human capital, unemployment - the existence of a reserve army of labor is a cornerstone of the existing economic system.
• sevenless 10y ago
  > Talk about BIG challenges: how could this be fixed, assuming it can be fixed? A military coup followed by a dictatorship, in which massive, forcible wealth redistribution would take place. Silicon Valley, as the country's second greatest concentration of wealth, would not survive this. The solution is dictated by the boundary conditions. Politics is a desperate struggle for who gets what.