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I live here in Oakland, California and I can attest to what the article is analyzing. There is not a single thing I like about California except weather/natural

I live here in Oakland, California and I can attest to what the article is analyzing. There is not a single thing I like about California except weather/natural beauty and SV's dynamism which is fleeting away. Infrastructure and quality of life is in strong decline.

wahern 5y ago
> I think it's fair to say that Silicon Valley is dead. Cheap venture capital, minimal startup cost, access to university researchers, and good inter business communications fueled an engine which turned ideas into products. You can now find venture capital elsewhere, with the discount rate being what it is. The cost of housing and office space has spiraled out of control, thanks to the environmentalists and Prop 13. The trade secrets and intellectual property mania have pretty much destroyed open cooperation. The universities remain, but aren't the driving force they used to be. > The place has a much different, more ossified feel to it than it did seven years ago. Paul Flaherty, alt.folklore.computers, March 11, 1993, "Re: Sillycon Valley history" (Message-ID: <paulf.731874319@abercrombie.Stanford.EDU>)
- thatoneguy 5y ago
  Yeah, there is a lot history of people calling the Bay Area over and the Bay Area always wins. It shows up even in fiction with those two cops in Vertigo complaining about how San Francisco had changed since the late 19th or early 20th century and how it sucks now in the 1950s.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Everyone declared NYC dead once. People should read some goddamn history books these things wax and wane.
  - willnonya 5y ago
    These things don't "wax and wane" they respond to the incentives created by those locations, whether politically cultural. NYC declined until they changed course. They've slowly been reverting and experiencing similar declines.
  - Mountain_Skies 5y ago
    That doesn't mean that quality of life doesn't suffer during the waning periods. Someday it will make a comeback. In the meantime, there's lots of suffering to be had.
  - csdvrx 5y ago
    NYC dared to tackle its crime problem and clean up. I don't think that'll ever be possible in California.
    - hparadiz 5y ago
      Crime is out of control in every city in the country. I left Philadelphia for the same reason. That said there's always the suburbs so I don't understand why it's specifically a whole state problem.
      - gnopgnip 5y ago
        >Crime is out of control in every city in the country By what metrics?
        hparadiz 5y ago
        Compared to pre covid
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Roman Empire never fails until it actually does. I want things to get better in California and be the best place on planet earth to live. The first step in doing that is actually admitting that things are getting worse and there is a dire need to change things. At some point your argument won’t hold anymore. The decline is real and the arguments made in the 90’s stood on a different truths than today. This defense hides the fact that people are still believing the falsehoods and instead of introspecting, they're not even believing the facts presented in the article. The first comment on top is an ad-hominem attack on the credibility of the Economist instead of its substance. We need to take a hard look at what went wrong. Imagine if we're a team trying to do a post-mortem of an outage in our company. We'd dig into what the real root cause is. Here, Californians like myself are fed up with decline and all you see is people getting into tribal "Us vs Them (Texans)" game. That's what I see on HN.
barney54 5y ago
But the weather and natural beauty is a big thing! I have this though every time I visit. California.

wahern 5y ago

> I think it's fair to say that Silicon Valley is dead. Cheap venture capital, minimal startup cost, access to university researchers, and good inter business communications fueled an engine which turned ideas into products. You can now find venture capital elsewhere, with the discount rate being what it is. The cost of housing and office space has spiraled out of control, thanks to the environmentalists and Prop 13. The trade secrets and intellectual property mania have pretty much destroyed open cooperation. The universities remain, but aren't the driving force they used to be. > The place has a much different, more ossified feel to it than it did seven years ago. Paul Flaherty, alt.folklore.computers, March 11, 1993, "Re: Sillycon Valley history" (Message-ID: <paulf.731874319@abercrombie.Stanford.EDU>)

thatoneguy 5y ago
Yeah, there is a lot history of people calling the Bay Area over and the Bay Area always wins. It shows up even in fiction with those two cops in Vertigo complaining about how San Francisco had changed since the late 19th or early 20th century and how it sucks now in the 1950s.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Everyone declared NYC dead once. People should read some goddamn history books these things wax and wane.
- willnonya 5y ago
  These things don't "wax and wane" they respond to the incentives created by those locations, whether politically cultural. NYC declined until they changed course. They've slowly been reverting and experiencing similar declines.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  That doesn't mean that quality of life doesn't suffer during the waning periods. Someday it will make a comeback. In the meantime, there's lots of suffering to be had.
- csdvrx 5y ago
  NYC dared to tackle its crime problem and clean up. I don't think that'll ever be possible in California.
  - hparadiz 5y ago
    Crime is out of control in every city in the country. I left Philadelphia for the same reason. That said there's always the suburbs so I don't understand why it's specifically a whole state problem.
    - gnopgnip 5y ago
      >Crime is out of control in every city in the country By what metrics?
      - hparadiz 5y ago
        Compared to pre covid
systemvoltage 5y ago
Roman Empire never fails until it actually does. I want things to get better in California and be the best place on planet earth to live. The first step in doing that is actually admitting that things are getting worse and there is a dire need to change things. At some point your argument won’t hold anymore. The decline is real and the arguments made in the 90’s stood on a different truths than today. This defense hides the fact that people are still believing the falsehoods and instead of introspecting, they're not even believing the facts presented in the article. The first comment on top is an ad-hominem attack on the credibility of the Economist instead of its substance. We need to take a hard look at what went wrong. Imagine if we're a team trying to do a post-mortem of an outage in our company. We'd dig into what the real root cause is. Here, Californians like myself are fed up with decline and all you see is people getting into tribal "Us vs Them (Texans)" game. That's what I see on HN.

barney54 5y ago

But the weather and natural beauty is a big thing! I have this though every time I visit. California.