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> Pay. People. More. Money. The problem is that this has really bad social consequences. People look at the new high-tech economy as invasive. In the beginning

> Pay. People. More. Money. The problem is that this has really bad social consequences. People look at the new high-tech economy as invasive. In the beginning, it's not a big deal - a few unfamiliar faces, and the town treasury finally has a surplus year, so everybody wins, right? But when the higher salaries start to pull up the cost of living, pretty soon everybody who grew up there starts to feel squeezed, and resentment grows. The town's no longer recognizable. The global economy's been throwing money at the Gulf States for decades now. And the wealth is pretty evident in places like Dubai. But when the oil money dries up, Dubai will turn into a ghost town, because the underlying social drivers of underdevelopment were never addressed. "My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel." -Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum If you want to catch up to California, you have to nurture local talent. For sure, you have to give it not just the proper funding, but also the proper human resources from abroad, to give the benefit of their experience. But the growth must always have a local flavor, taking from and giving back to the local community, if it's going to be sustainable. Otherwise, it'll all just brain drain when the global economy changes course and faraway opportunity calls.

thriftwy 9y ago
The problem is, nothing pays other than IT in the modern world. So it's either stagnation or invasion by IT. I'm not sure how the given town will no longer be recognizable - there's not enough people who do IT for that. Who said California was sustainable? I think it never was. It was always fueled by brain drain. Never by local talent. If you're building somethind sustainable you're playing a different game and you'll never catch up.
- solatic 9y ago
  > Who said California was sustainable? I think it never was. It was always fueled by brain drain. Never by local talent. It's important to note though how/why California's growth was fueled by brain drain. Why did all these brains come to the Bay Area? If you think historically, where most of the incumbent money and players were, you would think that the talent would've gone to Seattle, Detroit, or New York, maybe Research Triangle Park. The brain drain flowed to Northern California because of the area's openness and counter-culture. That's what allowed people to challenge the status quo through entrepreneurship and find like-minded people willing to get on board with that vision. And that's why, even as money becomes more readily available world-wide for IT entrepreneurship, and the Bay Area becomes less and less affordable, people will still keep coming out to the Bay. What sustained the flow of brain drain fuel to the Bay Area was the local culture, not the money - the money just sought that culture.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    I'm not sure about that. Bay Area had Shockley Semiconductor and then eventually Intel. If you don't have something like that, counterculture won't help.
    - solatic 9y ago
      And Intel came out of Fairchild Semiconductor, which also had roots in Shockley Semiconductor, and William Shockley came out to the Bay Area from Bell Labs to be closer to his ailing mother, being that he grew up in Palo Alto, the son of a mining engineer father and a Midwestern transplant mother who came to Stanford to study and became a mining surveyor. Which makes William Shockley not just home-grown talent, but talent that brought the benefit of decades of research out in New York back with him. Further to the point, Shockley couldn't convince any of his colleagues out in Bell Labs to join him, since they didn't have the same roots in the Bay Area and the Bay Area didn't have the same draw then as it does now. But Shockley put in the leg work and recruited from the experience-less - the rest is history. The point is that money didn't bring Shockley back to the Bay Area, and Shockley/Fairchild/Intel didn't spring out of nothing.

thriftwy 9y ago

The problem is, nothing pays other than IT in the modern world. So it's either stagnation or invasion by IT. I'm not sure how the given town will no longer be recognizable - there's not enough people who do IT for that. Who said California was sustainable? I think it never was. It was always fueled by brain drain. Never by local talent. If you're building somethind sustainable you're playing a different game and you'll never catch up.

solatic 9y ago
> Who said California was sustainable? I think it never was. It was always fueled by brain drain. Never by local talent. It's important to note though how/why California's growth was fueled by brain drain. Why did all these brains come to the Bay Area? If you think historically, where most of the incumbent money and players were, you would think that the talent would've gone to Seattle, Detroit, or New York, maybe Research Triangle Park. The brain drain flowed to Northern California because of the area's openness and counter-culture. That's what allowed people to challenge the status quo through entrepreneurship and find like-minded people willing to get on board with that vision. And that's why, even as money becomes more readily available world-wide for IT entrepreneurship, and the Bay Area becomes less and less affordable, people will still keep coming out to the Bay. What sustained the flow of brain drain fuel to the Bay Area was the local culture, not the money - the money just sought that culture.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  I'm not sure about that. Bay Area had Shockley Semiconductor and then eventually Intel. If you don't have something like that, counterculture won't help.
  - solatic 9y ago
    And Intel came out of Fairchild Semiconductor, which also had roots in Shockley Semiconductor, and William Shockley came out to the Bay Area from Bell Labs to be closer to his ailing mother, being that he grew up in Palo Alto, the son of a mining engineer father and a Midwestern transplant mother who came to Stanford to study and became a mining surveyor. Which makes William Shockley not just home-grown talent, but talent that brought the benefit of decades of research out in New York back with him. Further to the point, Shockley couldn't convince any of his colleagues out in Bell Labs to join him, since they didn't have the same roots in the Bay Area and the Bay Area didn't have the same draw then as it does now. But Shockley put in the leg work and recruited from the experience-less - the rest is history. The point is that money didn't bring Shockley back to the Bay Area, and Shockley/Fairchild/Intel didn't spring out of nothing.