Occupy Google: Income Inequality Backlash Hits Silicon Valley

Wow. I thought this was satire.

I guess this kind of happens in Singapore, too. As the billionaires come in, the poorer locals encounter rising housing costs. And unlike the US, Singapore is an island-city-state, so there's nowhere to run.

I can't think of any solutions to this. Anybody have any ideas?

This made me chuckle: "haves" versus the "have nots". How about we change that to: "made smart decisions, studied hard, work hard" versus the "made bad decisions, jealous of others"

This and yesterday's thread [1] are fascinating. Here we have lower-classes seeking direct retribution against higher-classes. Contrast to yesterday's article involving upper-classes discussing how to uplift lower-classes via social policy changes and enforcing certain belief doctrines, e.g., do XYZ, not ABC.

Of course it's easier to rail against the the former camp than the latter; we all believe in some degree of property rights, i.e., you bare the fruit of your labor. However, I propose both positions are unjustified and both parties need to bow out of one another's business.

Not trying to push libertarian beliefs (I am not one). But everyone is an asshole, out to serve their own ends, trying to sculpt the world in the way they would have it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6885226

This has nothing to do with dumb vs. smart, lazy vs. workaholic or privileged vs. unprivileged.

It has to do with the fact that decisions in life have consequences. I can't help myself and have to quote a fantastic line from Star Wars: Your Focus Determines Your Reality.

Coincidentally, I had a long conversation with my oldest son, now in High School, last night.

He screwed up in a big way. He was given a book project a month ago. He had to read "To kill a mockingbird" and annotate it profusely. He read the book over several nights but procrastinated when it came to the annotation work. The work was due today.

On Sunday he came to realize he made a big mistake. What did he do? He stayed up 'till 2:00AM every day to get the project done. He decided to do this on his own.

Neither my wife nor I made him do it. He recognized his mistake and made the decision to right it entirely on his own. Up until yesterday afternoon we had no idea why he was working so hard. I have never been a micro-manager, professionally or at home. I assume and expect responsible behavior of others and, of course, try to lead by example. So I asked my kid if he really needed to stay up late doing this work and, when he said "yes" I just got out of the way and supported him by staying up, making tea and generally being there for him. I would get down to the bottom of it once he got done.

He got done last night. We had a talk. He is getting an A in English. This was extra credit work he didn't need for grades and didn't really need to complete. Yet, he told me he had committed to doing the work and explained how sorry he was he procrastinated and to such a degree.

I think my reaction surprised him. He's never screwed up on anything to this extent. He thought I might be angry or disappointed. The summary of a two hour conversation boils down to this:

In life we are guaranteed to make bad or non-ideal decisions from time to time. Not one person is immune to this. What matters in life; what defines a man is how he chooses to deal with these mistakes. Some will cave in and sink into a dark hole of self pity and agony. Some will find every possible creative way to deflect the blame and rationalize what happened as being someone else's doing or fault. And yet others will look you straight in the eye, own the problem and do whatever is necessary to fix it.

I said: "Son, you screwed up. You took responsibility for your actions and worked incredibly hard to make good on a promise you made to yourself and nobody else. You didn't need to do this for a grade. You already had an A. You did it because you are becoming a man with high values, morals, ethics and honor. I am proud."

I almost cried when i said this. It is an incredible feeling as a parent to see your kids make the right decisions.

In a country like the US the whole business of income inequality has two facets.

The first is that of Liberal politicians manipulating the masses because it is far easier to get them worked-up en-masse with stuff like this and then you get their votes...by e millions. That's the nasty reality of the Liberal party: They benefit directly from low education voters' suffering because that is easy to convert to votes. This is the oldest trick in the books and it is not monopolized by US politics. I lived in Argentina for a while and learned quite a bit about their Politics and history. Evita was known for sending trucks into poor neighborhoods to give out blenders, refrigerators and other vote-buying crap. At the same time they kept the poor down because, not surprisingly, without them they'd get no votes. Things are not done the same way here but it really is the same. Pit the masses against the successful, throw them a bone here and there (minimum wage, union pay and pensions, etc.) sit back and collect the votes. It's sick. It's all about pandering and manipulation.

The other aspect of the income inequality situation has to do with a massive change in the work ethic of the American worker and American youth over decades. We have devolved into an entitlement society where people want it all, don't want to work hard for it and everything is someone else's fault.

When I owned an electronics manufacturing business I made it a point to hire students from the local junior college. I would say maybe one out of ten, if not twenty, had a reasonable work ethic. I had a couple who stole components and expensive tools (crimpers, etc.). Others screwed around and played on the Internet if nobody was watching. In general, most were down-right disappointing in their performance and attitude towards the job. A select few were absolutely exemplary. I have no doubt the will become valued members of society.

What will become of the rest? Once they realize their mistakes in life, rather than work hard to correct them they will fall back on the simple idea of blaming it on others. They will undoubtedly become tools of the only political party that will roll down the street handing out virtual blenders and refrigerators. They will scream bloody murder at someone like my son who will get where he is going because he worked hard, made good decisions and, when he made bad ones he busted his ass to own and fix them.

It's about the decisions you make in life and whether or not you are man (or woman) enough to own them.

Your Focus Determines Your Reality.

I have really mixed feelings about this. First of all, the "victims" were probably Google peons, not the insufferable royalty. The vast majority of Googlers are people I like (I worked there) and they aren't responsible for the problem. Like I said in another post here, the engineers doing all the work will soon be priced out to make room for product narcissists and those horrible executives that VCs implant to grant a favor to a friend, making twice as much money as engineers while working 11-to-3. It has already happened in New York, except it's bankers and traders. At least traders are respectable (it's pretty meritocratic) and the bankers actually work. Startup executives tend to be the people who failed in New York and in finance, so they seek them some VC coattails to ride on into someone else's company.

In 2008 when Wall Street tanked the economy, people were saying, "I wish all that talent were somewhere useful like Silicon Valley." This seems laughable now. Silicon Valley? Useful? Anyway, "tech" had the good faith of the nation for a long time, we were the "good rich" as opposed to the people on Wall Street-- and, in the next 5 years, fucking blew it thanks to debacles like FWD.us, Sean Parker's wedding, and all the bad behavior that Valleywag so excellently chronicles.

We were the good guys. We still should be. Most of us, by population, are. The fuckers at the top, who don't even code and 90% of whom are MBA/private-equity types, have ruined not just our industry but our reputation. Now, people associate "techie" with spoiled brats, misogynists, and entitled, crypto-right-wing fuckheads (like the character played by the union organizer when impersonating a Google engineer).

Engineers and technologists and real visionaries (not executive bikeshed painters) need to take technology back. Now. No fucking excuses. We are the good guys-- the bad guys are private equity douches with no business in our world-- but if we don't take back our industry, it and our work will be used for bad (as we see in the Bay Area) and we will be the ones to get the blame.

Why is "Google" the default shothand for "silicon valley"? And not just in this case.