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Comment by dmode | Hacker News Reader

This is not a profound statement, but rather obvious. If may calculations are right, there are roughly 6 billion 993 million people outside of Silicon Valley

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Why did Silicon Valley ever become what it is, and why did it continue to be dominant in the tech industry for so long, when there were billions of people outside of Silicon Valley the entire time?

Clearly population numbers are not sufficient in themselves to explain why the situation will change.

Thanks for the down votes. But if you haven't realized, the world has changed dramatically since valley became Valley. There is a lot more wealth distribution around the world and technology is easily accessible. Look at the 50s and look at now and see how Asia has emerged as a dominant economic force. China is #2 in total GDP, and India is #7. Couple this with the fact that these two countries have unlimited workforce, it is quite obvious that big growth companies will start forming outside of the US, often focused on their local market. And capitalizing in capturing a lion's share of the local economic growth. And that's exactly what's happening. Alibaba, Tencent, Didi, Ola, FlipKart, OYO rooms, Grab.

This is not some profound statement from Thiel, but something very obvious.

No actually, it's not that obvious.

Look back to the 1980's. I remember watching news clips on TV of people smashing up Japanese electronics because they were taking over the US. It was plainly obvious they were going to displace the US as the leading economic power. Hell! They were buying up all the largest buildings in the US!!

Didn't quite turn out that way, huh?

It is not about "displacing the US". It is about a monopoly being over. Which means, there will be big tech companies from SV, but also from China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Europe etc. etc. And it is already true. Chinese companies raised $56bn last year.

The world is also significantly different from 80s. China's GDP in 1980 was $200 bn. Now it is $11 trillion

> Thanks for the down votes.

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Massive amounts of government speeding on defence and tech going back to ww2

Silicon Valley is not dominant now. It is merely perceived as dominant by a cult of silicon valley, which exists primarily in the heads of people who live in SV.

It's not a uniform distribution.

Huh? Me and Warren Buffet together are worth about $81 Billion, it varies daily but around that range.

Another way of phrasing that is that if Warren Buffet walks into a baseball stadium, on average everyone there is a millionaire.

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