Well this is partially because the alternative to the right, the Republicans, have gone full retard over the last two decades. A lot of people in the valley mig

Well this is partially because the alternative to the right, the Republicans, have gone full retard over the last two decades. A lot of people in the valley might vote for a moderate Republican like there used to be but will not vote for a party that puts someone who doesn't believe in evolution in charge of the House Science committee, regardless of their fiscal policy. >We have plenty of examples of high-tax, high-regulation economies around the world with no startup scene. Sure, but California is already high-tax compared to most of the US. Why isn't Silicon Valley in a state with no state level income or cap gains tax? There's a number of European countries that have marginal taxation similar to California, why isn't there start-up scene worth talking about there? There is one Silicon Valley in the whole world, sure there is plenty of innovation elsewhere, but for the software industry there is one stand-out and that is the valley. If there were a few of them then we could easily draw parallels between them and see what they have in common, as it is we can't do that because we have an n=1 situation where all we can do is speculate.