Sure, taxes, AI, etc. matter. But my intuition is that the narrative that has driven the software industry "we are changing the world" has run out of steam and

Sure, taxes, AI, etc. matter. But my intuition is that the narrative that has driven the software industry "we are changing the world" has run out of steam and it would have without all those other things. The wild Silicon Valley success stories turned into despised monopolies, extractive middlemen, uprooters of local culture, job destroyers and hijackers of attention. I can name very few large software companies that I would not be ashamed of working for. From talking to more politically minded programmers it seems to be on a lot of people's minds, that glory days of SV/VC are over. This is not to say that software's story is over, just that the incentive mechanisms in place have failed. We could have created protocols, interoperability, local-first apps and novel funding mechanisms but the poisoned VC/shareholder money ensured that we do not.