Peter Thiel & Max Levchin: "Silicon Valley Lacks Radical Innovation"
siliconvalleywatcher.com
siliconvalleywatcher.com
Being the only remaining superpower (and having little global military competition) really takes the wind out of government's sails of achievement.
Interstate highways, the Manhattan project, the space program, national infrastructure, aerospace, much medical technology, and even computers were all borne out of military necessity. With so many bad guys around the globe, only a traitor could vote against these things.
Our parents built the stuff needed to save the world. We're building better ways to instantly share our bowel habits. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
Any solution that has to do with process innovation, technology innovation or any sort of thing that would otherwise upset the status quo besides more money is largely ignored. There are so many vested interest involved that the only thing they can all support is even more money being poured down the same old rathole.
Our generation is pushing innovation at a speed that is unparalleled, don't confuse the 47 fart apps in the app store as a complete misappropriation of focus.
Normally, I ignore such responses, but how could I resist bait like that?
Social networking was crucial for a country of high oppressed people to overthrow their tyrannical government.
Ahh, the jury's still out on that one. Let's see how much less tyrannical the next government is. I bet not much.
Doctors can identify diseases from their phone in a way that would have taken days
To what purpose? This is the first generation with worse health and life expectency than its parents. What good is providing so much technology at so much cost to those who push so little value out of the other end of the pipeline?
New times, new problems
No question. All I'm wondering is, "Where is the new value?"
Our generation is pushing innovation at a speed that is unparalleled
Versus what? Citing, please.
Hmmm, lets see...
From 1910 to 1960: The masses received first value from the automobile, the airplane, the telephone, radio, television, electricity, indoor plumbing, sewage treatment, and antibiotics.
From 1960 to 2010: We can carry our phones with us. Cool.
don't confuse the 47 fart apps in the app store as a complete misappropriation of focus
Opps, I completely forgot about smart phones. I was referring to all the instant communications we now have that produce so much activity and so little value. Is that all we've got?
We are more connected with people than ever. And future generations will be even more so. I get that there's a general sentiment that spending more time on Facebook or Twitter isn't valuable "real people time." But I'll be contrarian and say it is.
I've kept in touch with more of the people I care about AND have deeper relationships with them because of social software and mobile communications tech. Yes, because of Facebook, Skype, and the panoply of other innovations that may seem like just pointless activity.
Could you explain why you believe this? The simple timeseries tells a different story.
Not to be overly pedantic, but just to compare correct time periods: electrical distribution really got running in the 1890s, the telephone also is from the late 1800s, etc.
1960 to 2010 brought space exploration, the internet, economical airplane travel, computers, all sorts of cures/treatments for diseases, pretty much 100% of what is now called microbiology, and yes.. even mobile phones.
Just 15 years ago it was such a pain to get things done, due to the lack of widespread web and email. Some may say otherwise, but I feel life is much easier now - at least for those who can use the technologies well.
No, not really. It might surprise you, but repressive regimes have been overthrown for centuries before Facebook. What really helped was high food prices, historically a harbinger of political change. Social media was marginal.
Now try telling them on your facebook wall.
Lets see who pushes change.
It's very naive to tout the benefits of central authority without considering the costs. A government that has the power to push through massive public projects isn't going stop there.
One of the main reasons projects on this scale are so difficult to organize is that there are so many independent stakeholders with diverging interests. Glorifying the state's ability to steamroll these interests for the sake of 'progress' is dangerous stuff.
In sum: fuck nationalism.
Off the top of my head, the Chinese seem to favor both. The old regime in Iraq also had a penchant for both as well. Going back further, Japanese and German nationalists also were huge proponents of both big domestic infrastructure projects and nationalistic wars.
If you are looking at US politics, the wars mentioned by danenania were all started by US politicians who were also proponents of big infrastructure (Truman, Kennedy, Nixon). I don't think they were nationalistic wars, however.
Am I missing something here?
(Note: I'm ignoring former Communists, since Communism officially disavowed nationalism. In cases of other nationalistic wars, e.g. Rwanda or Kosovo, I don't know the opinions of politicians on infrastructure.)
The modern chinese pretty much stay out of the war thing. They got Tibet and that's all they care about.
Communism, well, yeah they said that, but it was really only true for a brief period in between China going communist (solidarity!) and Nixon going to China (they're enemies now!).
EDIT: Also, re: nationalistic wars, I agree on all except for Nixon not wanting to leave Vietnam. There's no other explanation for "peace with honor" besides nationalism and pride. That only half counts since he didn't start it, of course.
In the last 60 years China fought wars of aggression in Tibet, Vietnam, North Korea, and the Indian border. China constantly threatens Taiwan and to some degree Japan as well. I don't understand your Nixon/China comment-- you need to learn some facts, Nixon began America's slow detente with China. (They're friends now!)
Bro. The Iraq war happened. John Boehner is speaker of the house right now, they're in a huge budget standoff over slashing domestic spending (while ignoring military spending and entitlements).
Hence, "the modern conservative movement is about nationalistic military stances and cutting domestic spending". This isn't really a hard statement to substantiate.
We effectively have a one-party system in the US.
Now, people in their 20s and 30s, the ones that are supposed to be revolutionary, are worried about finding jobs, putting food on the table, and keeping work so that they can keep their healthcare plan. So, the big companies that used to work on big things and revolutionary technology, can now focus on extracting as much profit per product as they can (not that they didn't before, but there was, as you and this article admits freely, more focus on radical innovation and Doing Big Things). Instead of "revolutionary new products and projects" we get "refreshes" and marketing of said refreshes as "revolutionary". The bottom line is more secure, the worker subjugated, and thus the Empire retreats, stage right.
For example, Feynman, one of the "young kids" of the Manhattan project, was born in 1918.
But then it begs the question: Why do they want to do that?
If the next generation isn't "greater", then the USA is in decline and the one who didn't enable their children to be greater shouldn't be held up as greatest.
Strauss and Howe's book "Generations" or "Fourth Turning" seems pretty reasonable. (http://www.timepage.org/time.html)
While I might not push the "redact the boomers" button (maybe...), it would pretty much fix all of the major problems in the US. Their outsize numbers have imposed a lot of costs on society, so even if their politics and economics weren't also destructive, they would have seriously stressed medicare and social security. Couple that with that seems to be the worst of both conservatism (lack of investment) and liberalism (lack of discipline), and they're a serious threat.
I think Wilson and FDR's group did more damage to the future US generations than the Baby Boomers did.
Things like robotics and artificial intelligence are probably the most radical technologies since the industrial revolution. probably much more radical.
And what about clean energy and clean technology ? the solution to the biggest problem of the 21th century ? and on the way make our chemical manufacturing clean ?
And what about stem cells ? they hold the potential to be a cure to many chronic diseases.
And telepresence , the holodeck at every home?
Things just take time , that's all.
We aren't becoming more short-term focused, rather the future is shrinking. A 20 year time frame in past generations is now 3 years. In this day, if you have a long-term scope and vision you will become obsolete in five years. Adaptation is crucial to innovation as well.
Its not about changes in innovation, its about changes in exit strategy.
Moving your flag while keeping your offices in the US is even trickier - you run into risks like double taxation (e.g., paying taxes on profits in Canada, then paying taxes in the US when you move the money from Canada to the US).
Also, the benefits of being traded on TMX are not as large as the benefits of being traded on NASDAQ. Lower liquidity, the "huh?" factor, etc. That could change if many companies move to TMX, but there is a Chicken&Egg problem here.
I think the reason you don't have the radical innovation is because everything has tipped heavily towards web and consumer/convenience oriented innovation. This isn't a bad thing, the costs for writing code are much smaller than R&D costs for most anything else, and it puts people to work and solves problems.
There are still some companies like Tesla/SolarCity in the valley (or technically, on the East bay) changing the name of the game, but even Tesla is valued less than Groupon, for instance.
What makes my life 1% more fun does nothing for someone in a third-world country. This is compared to, say, 50 years ago, where something that made my life better, e.g., an advance in refrigeration tech, could be distributed out to the third world better. I'm pulling examples out of a hat here, and I'm sure that other and better examples could be found.
There are a ton of more fundamental projects done by companies, people, and universities out there. But they don't get the buzz right now, generally speaking.
Interesting how different his opinion of Groupon's valuation is from the prevailing sentiment.
Skepticism about the ability to maintain that growth rate, and the suspicion of many (especially here) that they're burning bridges with the companies they work with put a high valuation in doubt, but that's a matter of opinion at this point. Evidence that Groupon is having any trouble finding partners to offer coupons is so far anecdotal.
I never thought there'd be this much money in coupons, but so far it looks like it's a great business model. It wouldn't shock me if those valuations were true.
It's also no secret that monetary policy is as loose as ever, so it doesn't take a lot of dot-connecting to see which forces are driving these valuations, especially with Fed bedfellows like Goldman are getting involved. Would people be so willing to throw their cash behind 10-100x PE companies if they had to obtain that cash at market rates and without implicit government backstopping of losses? I'm sure no one involved in tech investing wants to recognize this situation for what it is, but come on now, anyone can see that something's fishy.
Companies…like Slide?
In my opinion, the notion of "radical innovation" depends on one's point of view: one could argue that, although the spectacular innovation during the space race, e.g, like landing a man on the moon, was indeed remarkable, it was, for all practical intents and purposes, little more than a political publicity stunt to the average individual, i.e., it did not have a profound effect on a personal level.
In contrast, the developments of the past 20 years -- internet, cell phone, facebook -- have profoundly changed individuals around the planet.
I don't think the question should be whether a thing is more or less innovative than another thing, but rather what effect the thing has had on a group of people on an individual level.
IMO Google brought radical innovation and it is only what, 10-12 years old? The next big thing is probably in works, but we can't foresee the future so we'll know that is radical, when it's here.
This from a huge libertarian?
Being a libertarian doesn't conflict with wanting to be forward looking, or with wanting to do ambitious projects. And a "small 'l' libertarian" might even be OK with the State managing the construction of something like the Interstate highway system. A "Big 'L' Libertarian" would oppose funding such a project through coercive, involuntary taxation, but wouldn't necessarily oppose the idea in itself. They would just argue that a means of funding should be found that doesn't involve coercion.
That said, I don't know Peter Thiel and I don't know how deeply his libertarian roots run, or how much of an ideologue he is. There are a lot of people who call themselves libertarians that I wouldn't necessarily call libertarians myself. <shrug />
These days, if you go by majority vote, it generally means "doctrinaire conservative who decided deficits were really important on January 20th, 2009".
http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf
But I'm talking about the totality -- check out Fox News and the Tea Party if you want the beating heart of the conservative movement. These are the exact same people, not figuratively, literally, who defended the Bush admin for 8 straight years. And CATO? How many pieces did they put out as cover for the Bush admin during that same time period? They're basically part of the republican messaging system.
Here is the Cato archive, form your own opinion: http://www.cato.org/pubarchives/index.php?type=opeds#year=20...
For the one month I bothered to look at, most of it seemed pretty anti-bush (with the exception of one article advocating for looser immigration rules).
Anyways my original point was that if you add up all of the people calling themselves libertarian these days, you generally get the guy saying "keep the government out of medicare" who had no idea he was a libertarian until about 5 minutes after Obama was inaugurated. It's not about government, it's about Obama and all that he represents (liberals, anti-americanism, illegal immigrants, manchurian candidates, radical islam, etc etc etc crazy talk).
Sorry that your movement's been hijacked.
(notes that someone went down this thread blindly modding you up and me down -- this is what I'm talking about when I say sorry about your movement -- it's not about reasoned opinions on how government should work, it's about "us vs them" cultural warfare).
Which opinions? I doubt you comprehend the first thing about any of them. Let's see if you can even restate them correctly.
P.S. You can disagree with someone without mudslinging. I disagree with Paul on a number of things as well, but all his ideas have a large amount of thought and scholarship behind them (a hell of a lot more than anything the establishment parties come up with). Dismissing them out of hand with no backup is definitely below the standard HN tries to reach.
I'm not falling into that "restate them correctly" trap where you interpret some phrase differently than me so I'm an idiot. Gold standard is crazy without even needing an explanation.
Seriously, the goal here is to have mature discussions. If you aren't even willing to back up your assertions, just don't post.
The gold standard is a position of "I don't care what's been proven to work in the real world or what's possible to actually accomplish, I care about what I find emotionally satisfying".
EDIT: Regarding civil discussions, you might consider chilling out on the ad hom attacks yourself. You've called me uninformed multiple times while misinterpreting my comments to mean something that I don't see any possible way to construe from what I said. Bringing Chinese actions from the 1950s and 60s into a discussion of "modern china's" propensity for militarism above, as if anyone would consider maoist China the same thing as the current regime, and implying that I had no idea such events happened.
International food prices recently hit an all time high. Americans really need to wake up from their fantasies quick. Their incredible ignorance of how their leaders operate is costing the world a nearly unimaginable toll of suffering and death, and it's getting worse every day.
Most of the libertarians I know would argue that the government has no business being involved in creating innovation - regardless of how it is funded. They would argue that government can't innovate and the private sector is where the market can decide what innovations will succeed.
And yes, Peter Thiel is a huge libertarian. I find it comical that he would then list off an entire list of government projects as examples of driving innovation.