Silicon Valley Culture, It's Time to Lead, Washington DC is failing

[Arthur Hanson]

Silicon Valley is about making continuously accelerating improvements at accelerating lower costs. Companies that violate this pay a horrible price of being rendered irrelevant and even being put out of business. Washington DC has shown to many times it not only allows failure, but rewards it. It is time for Silicon Valley to work on the world economy. This will have to be done in new and creative ways that have to replace the failing system we have.

Technology has improved much, but this is just the beginning

Increased food production by several factors, with even more dramatic improvements to come (algae/microbes for food and animal feed promises 10X to 40x plus production gains as just one example)

Low cost education through using MOOCs/online for the bulk of it

Water, vast improvements in desalinization and reprocessing sewage to drinking quality(Singapore and others)

Energy increases through solar, wind, better recovery of fossil fuels and numerous other technologies, many just in their infancy

Vastly increased efficiency in everything from homes to aircraft

Ways of lowering the cost of medical (wearable technology, potential one shot cure for diabetes, etc.)

Almost free communications of all types compared to previous costs

Computational costs still dropping ever faster

Lower cost research equipment and robotics

Vastly increased transparency and free flow of information

Social Media has become powerful enough to change the direction of governments and has proven it can bring transparency to governments that don't want it

WASHINGTON DC

Accelerating increases in waste

Accelerating imprisonment

Accelerating education costs

Accelerating student debt

An expanding, failing military at staggering cost

Accelerating pay, benefits and retirements for failure (infrastructure, education, medical, health care, imprisonment, military, police, poverty, etc.)

Failure actually not punished, but rewarded

Increasing lack of transparency on all issues, but especially the above two

It is up to the Silicon Valley culture to reach solutions our government can't and won't. This has to involve all tech, from semis, big data to social media and everything in between. This is going to require true heroism to figure out how to work through and around the culture of failure of Washington DC. Just like all revolutions Silicon Valley has created, it will involve failures along the way. This is the time for the leaders of Silicon Valley step up and not just discuss solutions, but implement them. When there is no answer, no culture has had success like the Silicon Valley culture. It is time to step forward and be true patriots, not just to our country, but the world. I feel Silicon Valley's greatest asset is its culture and it's time for this culture to yet again step into the unknown to solve problems it hasn't confronted before. There will be failures, but the successes should be greater.

 

[Daniel Payne]

Yes, the Silicon Valley culture is successful at creating the semiconductor landscape and high-tech ecosystems, however trying to translate that domain-specific skill set into political activity and policy making is a bit of a stretch. Success in one area of business doesn't directly translate into running a government or leading a people.

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Dan, Politics has become very ugly and corrupt. I know from my construction experience that if we applied high tech technology and mind set to infrastructure, we could not only cut the cost by a third, but deliver a far better product. The same goes for almost every area of the economy from medical, patents, education, military to law enforcement. This would free up massive amounts of capital both human (from better medical to ending the morals war that creates more crime than it solves like Prohibition) and financial. We need to apply some intelligence, strategy and technology to all areas of government otherwise the Enron/Bernie Madoff government accounting will spell the end of our empire. We should not underestimate one of the newest areas of tech, social media linked to big data. We have been given a unique gift and if Silicon Valley doesn't use not only the power of its culture, but its political and financial power the world decaying around it could bring the great culture of Silicon Valley down. The future is ours, we can let others trash it or expand it and show the world what can be done. It's better to lead the world by example than by force. Respect for women and every individual is key for we need to maximize our human capital. We can win for many of our opponents minimize half their human capital by not fully respecting and honoring the female population. Economical, efficient, effective education on a life time subscription is key. Respecting and honoring women is but one of many key reasons we have achieved many of the accomplishments that made us great, while other countries have suffered.

Comments, thoughts and criticisms welcome and wanted

 

[lilo777]

Arthur,

When you speak about "Silicon Valley" what specifically do you have in mind? Sure there are some innovative companies in SV. On the other hand, SV as a sociopolitical entity (let's take greater SV - SF and Bay Area) is nothing special. It has enormous problems: poor housing (and getting worse - turning into suburbs that want to be cities but as a result lack both city and suburb appeals), horrendous traffic, so-so public transportation, bad public education (compared to, say, New England) etc. If looked from this perspective one would probably have to conclude that SV is not really a good candidate to lead the nation. In a way it's not that different from Texas/Oklahoma which lead innovation in other type of economy - oil/shale production. Would you be as enthusiastic about Texas taking over the innovation process in D.C.?

 

[Arthur Hanson]

lilo777, All the problems you mention are in areas that are under government control. It's a testament to the Silicon Valley Culture that it can operate in such a hostile environment the government has created. California government and especially the SF Bay Area is run strictly for the benefit of government employees and their pay to play friends. I live in the heart of the SF bay area and have for many years. An example is a transit information booth attendant for BART averages about a 150K a year in pay and benefits and doesn't even require a high school diploma and many have a very, very light work load. Teachers unions dominate education as they do almost every government job in the area. They control the government through campaign contributions and campaign work. Despite this, Silicon Valley has persevered. No where can one see the contrast in a very highly productive culture and an extremely wasteful one. This is why the leaders of the Silicon Valley Culture need to step up to the plate and deal with a government that delivers low quality, low productivity, poor results at a staggering cost up front and in debt. Many governments in the area have practiced Bernie Madoff/Enron accounting with bond issues and unfunded pension and medical debt. This is why I say if they don't step up, the surrounding destruction may engulf them. The pay structure is so bad in government that some retire in their early fifties at 200k with medical by heavily gaming the system. Gaming the pay and benefit system by government employees has become a blood sport on the tax payer in the SF Bay Area. This is now well documented thanks in part to social media and the web.

 

[lilo777]

So, apparently SV problems are more severe than an infrequent visitor (like me) can see. But this just advances my point which is that the same people who push the technological progress in SV turn out to be totally inefficient when it comes to governing themselves. I can't blame them. Democracy is hard And we can't install a board of directors to govern the whole country (in political terms that would amount to having a junta). And even in purely technological/economical sense I am not sure SV recipes would work on the scale of the entire country. As you said, SV does not really do anything special to enable this progress. It's just a moment in time when this progress is happen to be so strong (just like the industrial revolution in the past). Geographically it should be located somewhere. Obviously it's not just SV but SV does provide a nice climate, does not it? Also, we all know that in significant part SV growth is fueled by population growth and immigration. None of it is applicable to D.C. and US in general. I do not think we want to import government officials from India for those have not proven themselves yet

 

[Arthur Hanson]

SV problems are related to government and a Washington DC based government that controls even much of local governments through federal law and regulation. SV will have to step up its game and see if they can solve the problem at the source, Washington DC. That's the bottom line, Washington DC makes the rules or at least most of them.