The Government Shutdown Has Revealed Silicon Valley’s Dysfunction Fetish
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That doesn't sound like a better world. That sounds like a worse one. Governments tend to at least have some interest in keeping their citizens alive, healthy, and happy.
The primary purpose of a company is to make money and as history has shown time and time again companies in general are all too willing to sell people dangerous products, work their employees to death, and do other unsavory things in order to make money.
Sure the US government is seeming ineffective, and in many cases less than satisfactory. But a system in which companies have the power definitely isn't better.
Where would such an interest come from?
A government defines a group of people who tend to have some sort of patriotic emotional bond with each other, much like the emotional bond that ties a family together. This is why people all across America felt the pain of the 9/11 attacks despite the fact that realistically the vast majority of us did not have family members or friends that died in the attack.
At a fundamental level this patriotic bond alone seems to make the majority of governments considerably more altruistic toward their citizens than a company would be towards their customers.
After all the leaders of government are also citizens with that bond of shared country and patriotism that they share with other citizens. In a company there is a much larger "us and them" divide between people in the company and people the company is selling to.
So in this light the grandparent's response of "We the People" though short is pretty meaningful and accurate. Governments tend to have interest in their citizens because of this patriotic bond which says that both the leaders and the ordinary citizens are "We the People".
tl;dr: Gov't isn't assumed to care about the people's needs "because it's chartered to do so", but rather because they have specific and explicit dependencies on public approval. By contrast, companies have an explicit dependency on their customers (and shareholders). Everyone else and the externalities that they face are completely irrelevant as far as incentive structures for a company.
I'm glad your argument isn't about how the government is supposed to represent The People "at least in theory", I find that one rather funny given how people of my stripe are usually accused of only thinking in theory.
As much as I want to, I can't convince myself of the aforementioned meme wholesale, there must be some counterbalance or we'd all be slaves. But I want people to break out of what at least seems to me to be the notion that while private companies are selfishly motivated, they can invent the institution called government that's free of perverse incentives and selfishness just because they think society needs it to function.
Your point about nationwide approval of the government versus specific approval of companies is a good one. Consider some counterpoints: 1) the politicians need not pander to everyone, only those who care to vote. 2) expanding on the reluctance to bother voting, there's reluctance to be informed, since your vote had miniscule chance of effecting your life. It's known as rational ignorance, Bryan Caplan has a lot to say about it if you're interested in looking it up. In contrast, choosing one company over another always has immediate effect.
A small group of people who have decided that government is ineffective have managed to get themselves elected with the help of a couple billionaires and have managed to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that, as long as a small group of people who have decided that government is ineffective are in power, that government will be ineffective.
It's almost tautological.
In other words, we should be grateful for the gifts blessed upon us, rather than greedy children asking for a seventh or eighth serving of ice cream.
Companies don't make money killing people, they make money improving the lives of customers and employees by offering them something they value more than their money/labor. If someone is working under poor working conditions, it's because their next best alternative is even worse.
I would be more scared about cozy relationships between government and corporations. That is when you get the most egregious offenses, eg. British East India Company + Great Britain vs. India and China, oil companies + US vs. the Middle East, Chinese government + Baidu in censoring their own people, Blackwater Associates + US in Iraq, etc. It is sometimes good to have the interests of corporations and government diametrically opposed, because that means they are not conspiring against the people they serve.
No, they don't make money killing their CUSTOMERS. But they can make a lot of money by not giving a fig about people impacted by their operations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
This is why we have regulations, by the way. So when amoral idiots find themselves in a position to do serious harm, there's some external force to compensate (as much as possible) for their lack of suitable ethics and working moral compasses.
In a free market the initiation of force is not tolerated. The Bhopal disaster you cited is a perfect example of an initiation of force.
The government legitimizes the initiation of force on those who have done nothing to violate the rights of others -- similar to the disaster you cited. It seems you have a problem with companies initiating force, but not the government. Why is that?
Why does it seem that way? I don't know, it's your impression. You tell me.
Oh really ? Are you really so naive? I'm sure the people in Syria and Libya are certainly happy about what their government is doing for them. Oh, and in modern democracies, apart from raising taxes every year and making more debt for the future generations to come, I fail to see the "good deeds" provided by governements.
But it it makes you happy, I guess that's what matters.
http://www.amazon.com/Losing-Ground-American-Social-1950-198...
Come back after reading.
That's not a strawman, comrade - that's called a logical conclusion.
I don't really know why you focus so much on food stamps (which I never mentioned - that's why I called your comment a strawman- i.e. "informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position" which is exactly the case here), and do not focus on any of the points I raised in my first comment above. If you don't even bother making a point...
What of the people on food stamps, you ask.
They are very important people. They matter. People in need of food and shelter are of deep concern to many people. It's good of you to ask such a fundamental question. Social welfare is critical in many areas. However, the means by which it exists is open to great evolution. Peaceful transitions are critical. Increasing the amount of care in the world and increasing the ways with which people can leverage their individual and collective power (not through violent systems) is critical. Likewise, it's critical -- to many people -- to reject systems and methods one cannot ethically abide by, and to not increase the size and scope of what one recognizes as the unbridled power of suited machines and ulterior, menacing interests.
If you actually care about what someone else thinks, you shouldn't make statements for him or her. For instance, at the very least, you could've instead asked, "Are you proposing that the state should wither away? Do you think the only other way food can be provided is by it trickling down?"
That would've still been a leap to conclusion from what I said, or possibly display a lack of understanding of what I said, but at least it'd be your asking.
I would've asked you to elaborate on what you mean by a state withering away. There's a difference between social safety nets in the context of free choice vs. involuntary constraint. There's a difference between "the state" at present vs. how "the state" can be reformed to justify itself to more humane roles. Finding major faults with [current state systems] is not the same thing as believing [all state systems] must vanish. I would've explained how I'm an advocate of peaceful, open systems wherever the public's trust is at stake. Territorial systems can have net positives in certain domains, such as in violent crime. However, the current system of US criminal law/code is devastatingly unethical. (I find nothing ethical about imprisoning human beings for nonviolent crime, especially when it's a state serving corporate law.) At best, the US system is a stepping stone best understood in historical context, for people of good conscience to step above on a path to something better.
I would've wondered why you're implying that the alternative to food stamps is food "trickling down" [from the rich]. The status quo of US taxation is very akin to "trickle-down" economics. Mass forced funding of a public -> flows into centralized pools governed by small bodies who have the capacity to serve personal, secret, and corporate interests in often closed contracts and closed courts -> devaluing and siphoning value and labor -> distributed fractionally to a public that waits for crumbs to flow back (hopefully) to people in need, pennies to the dollar. It's one of many forms of trickle down economics; it's a form that happens to overlook a great amount violence and corruption of the system by increasingly putting society at the mercy of the system. Nationalists, large corporations, prison systems, and warmongers love it though. The answer to your non-question here is that what I want society to aspire to is ultimately neither approaches -- for both are violent and narrow. We can do better. My aspiration for a freer, more peaceful society is not a switch I can flip on and off. It does, however, start with at least promoting peace and benevolence in culture, for people to begin to aspire to social problems solved by more directly open, fuller democratic (when democratic), voluntary, consensus-based models. Where there are pooled resources, I prefer that they be within a transparency that's more likely to arise when people are able to revoke funding, disassociate, and take part in reformation. The ability to assemble and disassemble is one area where a state can play a greater role in: preventing people from suffering the tyranny of involuntary systems.
My views are not binary. Presume nothing. I ethically value systems that cut out corrupt interests and increase free choice. I like more bottom-up solutions. It requires time. I choose to be a part of increasing the amount of social support on an ethical, voluntary basis by showing people that their actions can have definitive, accountable results and real-world feedback. I strive for a continued cultural shift in how people can empower themselves. Nothing happens overnight. Like I said, I don't want to flip any switches on people most in need.
I want peaceful evolution.
Most of my time is focused tirelessly on a project in this area. I hope to someday help people act upon their better and freer instincts. The least of what I can say from my observations so far is the following. People are far more generous and kinder than most people can imagine. Love and social compulsion is deeply rooted even in this violent species that we are. Action, input, and output are severely dependent on access, information, awareness, and the architectures that form transparency and accountability. True change is best predicated on attitude and culture. Change happens most meaningfully when it's natural: not shaped through dictation. The systems of governance that exist today are neither the end nor the beginning of answering a timeless call to some people who want freer, happier lives for themselves and for the world. The internet is barely scratching the surface of a use for human potential.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/10/us/business-groups-see-los...
Read the first paragraph. Executives are expressing concerns on their influence over Republican, primarily over the Tea Party. As TP is constantly fighting with the other Republicans, these executives see poor prospect in Republican's re-election.
Take immigration for example. Sure SV excutives have moved a bunch of people to start working on the immigration reform bill early this year, the group is broken. I believe all but one Republican is left in the group of 7 drafting the bill. Which means the bill will not get through neither House nor Senate in the next 6-12 months unless the seven congressmen sit together again.
Surely government is relying on the Internet to spread their agenda and is constantly working with new startup to make government operation "more efficient", but these people, IMHO, don't really make politicians move.
On the other hand, bankers continuously influence economic policy. This is an extremely specialized area (and since Federal Reserve board is made up of bankers around the country).
SV is still not close enough. They shake a President's hand, but that's pretty much it.
It sounds like a dystopian cyberpunk nightmare. And who better to lead us into the world of High Tech and Low Life than Silicon Valley Zaibatsus? I can never really tell when art and life are imitating each other.
That BSD code is of course not only the foundation of the Internet, but of your iPhones and iPads as well. Actually I believe it is fundamental to Windows as well, since my understanding is that the TCP/IP implementation in Windows is BSD code.
Silicon Valley doesn't have the foresight for the technical foundations of society (and I say that having worked here for over a decade). The web wasn't invented by Silicon Valley either. Neither was e-mail. Neither was Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby. Python was actually government funded too.
Also don't forget that Bill Clinton and the government made all your location-based apps possible, by opening GPS satellites to the public in the 90s.
it is no wonder that someone who has private transportation, private insurance, private retirement, private everything... does not care about government. he is the embodiement of the capitalistic dream. government for those people is only for taxation. of course they would cheer.
the weird part is the middle class worker with the obama bumper sticker cheering for them. this i will never understand,
I'll trade my roads, my Linux, my Android phone, whatever in exchange for the ending of killing those overseas and domestically.
Key quotes around 8:30 - 9:00, but the whole thing is excellent. DARPA was funding all sorts of different networking and operating systems, which in those days were all incompatible. But they wanted them to cooperate, hence open source BSD and the Internet.
Silicon Valley doesn't get this kind of cooperation. In stark contrast, a proven business tactic is to undermine cooperation by poisoning open standards (e.g. embrace and extend).
I doubt Marc Andreessen loved gridlock when he was working on Mosaic @ the NCSA
> The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomput...
Anyone with even mediocre critical thinking abilities and a general knowledge of markets would understand that the reason the stock market went up during the shutdown is because investors know the government will be back. This understanding and expectation is obviously priced into the market. If they are implying that the stock market would remain resilient if the federal government disappeared overnight never to return, they are quite simply idiots.
The #1 reason the US and other western nations are able to attract capital and have sophisticated economies is because of their predictable, reasonable legal systems and regulatory environments. Capital commands extremely high rates of return in risky legal frameworks, when an investor doesn't know whether they will be hit up for a bribe or seized by a populist government, they are obviously going to demand much more. A well-developed legal system and the power of the government to enforce laws and judgments is the reason the US is a "safe haven."
This is a much better instance of him speaking on various affairs, not just on government:
Isn't there a argument, then, that increasing the number of laws (or pages in any given law) beyond a certain point begins having negative returns on your predictability and reasonability, because of the power-law increase in interactions between laws?
And for the comments on this thread suggesting that silicon valley can't be critical of government because government once had a hand in the valley? That's roughly the same level of hypocrisy as a government-fan shopping at Walmart.
I try not to engage in political discussions on HN so please do not interpret my question as me challenging your point. I am merely interested in what you find hypocritical in the Wal-Mart shopping example.
We live in the world we live in, and failing to live a perfectly pure life should not disqualify you from having opinions.
- The Executive branch enforces laws.
- The Judicial branch interprets laws.
- The Legislative branch makes laws.
What this means is that the only time we aren't adding more restrictions to our lives is when Congress is gridlocked. Gridlock is the system functioning as designed. What's not to love about it? We don't want a government that moves fast and breaks things. For startups and lean companies, it can be a real pain in the ass! It's hard enough to keep up with compliance issues when you're just starting out; having to change your policies every 6 months due to the whims on Congress would be practically anti-business.
1) increase the # of representatives. Why was the # capped? Now I believe there are an average of 700k per representative. I am going by memory here. But I know the original recommendation was 35,000 per rep as per the Constitution. This needs to be allowed. So what if we end up with about 6,000 representatives! At least we would have a more direct access to our rep.
2) House of Representatives shouldn't run for 11 months a year. Make it 6 or 7 months. Let them come back to their districts for one month every 3 or 4 months. They need to spend more time with their constituents.
That's basically how it is now.
> They need to spend more time with their constituents
That's what campaigning is, and they do it.
I don't think that's quite right. Its job is to change the laws. That can mean adding laws, repealing laws, updating existing laws in the light of changing circumstances, etc. And "changing the laws" includes one-off things that do something once and don't leave much enduring cruft behind, like the Hurricane Sandy relief bill.
There's no reason in principle why they couldn't do their job while keeping the total amount of law constant or even reducing it. If in practice they do spend almost all their time (when not gridlocked) making new laws without trimming the resulting bloat, the problem isn't simply that their job requires them to do that.
Actually, there is! The reason is because Congress can only make laws -- that includes laws that repeal other laws! Note how we still have the Eighteenth Amendment despite it being nullified by the Twenty-first Amendment.
While there can be, in theory (and again, with such a large mass of people, it's really only in theory) laws whose sole purpose is to repeal other laws, such laws almost never make it to the President without a sizable layer of pork slathered on top in order to gather enough votes.
"For them, government is mostly a hindrance — a regulatory obstacle to the kinds of disruptive start-ups they fund, and an enemy of a looser immigration policy that would allow their portfolio companies to recruit more talented foreign engineers."
Not to mention inaccurate. Companies are certainly powerful, but what is the power or influence of Silicon Valley compared to the titans of industry such as IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon, and yes, the financial firms and banks of NYC?
Becoming? Corporations have been the transcendant power in the developed world since the collapse of feudalism.
So if Silicon Valley were to become the true seat of power in the US, how would they approach international relations? And how would they handle the military? And what would they do in the event of a war?
This does seem like an article written about an off-hand, not so serious comment. But it touches a nerve on something I hear echoing around my world (and I don't live in California) -- people believe Tech companies are the new driving direction of the economy and they think that makes them the new direction of power. I can't help but feel it's the wishful thinking of a new middle class.
We need to collectively work towards a solution than silencing a few.