Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

“What of Portland,” indeed. For years, tales of old claimed the Pacific Northwest city was the promised land—a new Eden upon this earth, where men and women would be free to think, and live, and love. A blossoming Eden teeming with hope and food trucks.

But the old tales are clear reminders that the devil himself could not craft a trap so beautiful in its deceitfulness.

quality lol, was reminded of robert caro

looooooooooool

20 years ago my mom worked for a pittsburgh-area local-government consortium, and their foremost long-term concern was 'how do we keep young adults from leaving?'

it seems like a worthwhile endeavor -- whether you want to create a silicon valley or not -- having decent jobs in a place where people might want and could afford to live. it's a virtuous circle, and making the place seem 'cool' is a low-cost input.

(my real father, who lives in houston, periodically wonders aloud why so many companies have headquarters in nyc where it's so expensive -- why not just put everyone in a cheap office park in topeka or albany? whatever dude.)

tbh i had much the same reaction to that nyt foodie article that the silicon valley guy did -- that would *never* have happened when i grew up. and yeah, gentrification kind of sucks, but being the kind of place where ppl reminisce about how kraft american slices used to be so much better is both worse and a dead end.

btw the fries-on-sandwich thing is just good marketing; no one ate that when i was a kid, because it's stupid

Pittsburgh's probably going to "happen" if it isn't already, hope they're ready to upzone.

I'm sure it can be the next Portland or a regional sort of Portland, I just think the jump from there to being an international tech capital is a long one.

Probably a lot of these cities can become like local portlands if the trend continues toward young people wanting to be in cities into their 30s and even beyond.

I was friends with some musicians and artists who lived in Pittsburgh and they were pretty chill. Definitely left a good mark on my mind about the place ... seemed a lot better than the cut-throat hipsterism of NYC. Honestly, I'm sick of New York, it's like all the things I think make it worth it just keeps shrinking, and rents keep ascending into the stratosphere, and obnoxious rich shits are multiplying by unthinkable numbers, which I didn't think was even possible. It seems like all the traditional "good cities" are going that way, so maybe it's time to look at the "b-list" cities.

Portland is a nice town and I like it here, but hearing people talk about it as if it were some sort of ideal paradise feels kind of strange to someone who grew up here. We need Mt. St. Helens to blow up again and dump a couple cubic miles worth of volcanic ash on our heads to bring those expectations back down to earth. But if the only remedy is that 9.0 earthquake we're due for, I think I'd rather live with all the starry-eyed newcomers and take a pass on the universal ruin and devastation for a while longer.

Xp I think it's been true for at least a decade that NYC is not really a good place to live the bohemian life - too expensive, too competitive.

It seems like all the traditional "good cities" are going that way, so maybe it's time to look at the "b-list" cities.

― larry appleton, Wednesday, April 13, 2016 8:42 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea this feels true to me

Every US city in the top three tiers needs to start upzoning and making inclusive and egalitarian housing plans about five years ago, but, failing that, right now.

I've thought about Philly for years. I think the things that keep me from doing it are (1) closeness to in-laws who help with kids, (2) my job, although I have contacts in Philly for similar kinds of work (3) slightly embarrassed about this one, but just a feeling that Philly is *less safe* compared to what I've gotten used to. Like stuff has happened to friends there that I don't hear about happening to friends in NYC.

But yeah, NYC does suck in certain ways. I've gotten very accustomed to it but it's not the place I'd probably choose if I were starting over.

In my musician days I though it seemed like a much better place to be, but I wound up in Jersey City for various reasons, and didn't really like it much.

philly's the one i think about too

xxxp I'm an office drone, I'm not necessarily talking full bohemian here. Even in the past 10 years things have changed a lot, and they're changing in such a way that it's like, what's the point anymore. Nearly everyone I know who lived here through that time has left, mostly to start families, some because the places where they worked closed down and were replaced by I don't know, BMW dealership/art gallery hybrids with their own on-site artisan micro-brew. Maybe my own priorities have changed. I'm going to soak up the educational and career opportunities while I can, though.

Safety in NYC is definitely a bonus. I moved back to the suburbs in NJ for a while; a nice looking middle class place just outside of the city, but I got to taste some street violence here. 10 years living in NYC and I never once had a problem, and I get to the suburbs and it's like a totally different world, safety wise. Weird how things have shifted.

aw yeah baby https://www.desmoinesmetro.com/en/dsm_metro_info/rankings/

I feel like Milwaukee is filled with very cool young people who live well and don't really care whether Milwaukee is the next Portland. (Milwaukee is not the next Portland.)

there are very nice neighborhoods just outside philadelphia in terms of safety + family friendliness and yr like a 10 minute drive into the city

NYC has a lot to offer, I just don't think I'm the kind of person for whom those things matter enough for it to make it worth my while. I mean we have the "best" in so many cultural and culinary type things. I like museums a lot, for example, and NYC is great for those. But I have two small kids and live out in Queens, which is the only place I can really afford a family-friendly life in (i.e. a reasonable-sized apartment, decent public schools), and it's such a schlep to go to the Manhattan museums as it is -- either drive and pay a lot for parking, or take two small kids on the subway and change trains. All the "high" performing arts stuff is great but expensive, especially with babysitter. I'd actually love to see classical music concerts more often, for example, I just can't realistically do it very often. Same thing with the good restaurants, and honestly I love food but I really don't give too much of a shit about high end restaurants with big deal chefs. I enjoy them, but I could go the rest of my life without eating in one. I find the faddy stuff that excitement gets manufactured about (cronuts) boring, I like nature, and I don't really like convenience culture. I also, weirdly, don't enjoy Central Park all that much when I get to it, I find it too crowded and overwhelming -- it feels more like a destination than a park, if that makes sense. In fact too many parts of the city are like that for me, always feeling surrounded by tourists and strangers.

I live in a nondescript red brick co-op in an area that is many square blocks of near-identical, non-descript red brick co-ops. I sometimes call them bourgeois housing projects. The commercial stuff in my neighborhood is pretty much indistinguishable from a suburb with a walkable downtown, and not an especially nice one (Gap, Banana Republic, Verizon Store, three Starbucks, mediocre overpriced restaurants, TGI Fridays), and I have this butt-ugly quasi-highway called Queens Boulevard in the center of my neighborhood. I have better QOL than a lot of people I know but it's still not great.

I kind of feel for you here, because it seems like you have a setup that's pretty similar to what most people around America have (you're used to it, it works, it's fine, in-laws nearby which is kinda huge when you have kids) but it's embedded in this cultural expectation that living in New York is supposed to be AMAZING and also AN IMPOSSIBLE CRISIS when for you it is neither and I feel like that would create some kind of internal dissonance

Yeah, actually I think it's sort of the feeling that I have to work harder and have a better job than most people just to have an ordinary standard of living, not that there's actually anything wrong with the standard of living. I never actually aimed to live here for all the "AMAZING NYC" stuff, it just sort of worked out that we live here. But that stuff sometimes feels like this fantastical simulacra that exists just beyond the threshold of my actual life.

Like I have more stress for that same standard of living.

My own issue is maybe I'm getting older. When I first moved to NYC I was in my early 20s, and I was a wannabe hipster scumbag. New York was awesome for that. Now that I'm a little more mature, it's like, have a normal life in a more expensive, more stressful environment ... it's worth some thought.

tbh most people, especially parents, tend to live that way -- commute to a job, spend the rest of your time in and around a neighborhood, with the exception of occasional excursions for shopping/entertainment or regular semi-commutes for kid activities (sports, dance class, music lessons)

Silicon Valley is kind of a weird one in that a lot of smaller companies are now in SF, but the larger employers remain in big suburban campuses. Apple, Google, etc have a number of people doing the reverse city-to-suburb commute, but a lot of people who are settled in those businesses live in the outlying suburbs closer to work

afaik Google is still working on a campus in Boulder, Colorado, which is relatively self-contained and would have a minimal commute, at least until housing dries up completely and people are driving from the next town over

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cihoxn-UgAAlbU0.jpg

apparently marc andreessen posted something about how india would be better off if it was still a colony

He didn't quite say that - he said anti-colonialism had been disastrous for the Indian economy for decades. It was in the context of the country rejecting Facebook's 'free basics' model.

sounds like a moldbugism xp

facebook's free basics thing is a poor fit for India and is pretty much the most neo-colonial capitalist endeavor

Yep. There was a good Guardian article about it last week.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg

Senior people at Facebook, the executive said, had convinced themselves they had special pull with the prime minister. “They believed Modi would do it for them,” he said, recalling meetings where people discussed the similarities in “managing” India and Africa: “It worked in Burundi, so it should work in India.”

*reads up about the people of Burundi and its government*

ummm

Smartest guys in the room

andreessen framing it as some anti-western influence thing when it was actually indians having a public discussion about net neutrality and corporate influence

and people in silicon valley wonder why we're so skeptical of their techno-utopianism

Zuckerberg is apparently going to meet with Dana Perino and Glenn Beck after the pathetic WATB fallout from FB's insipid "lock j-school grads in a basement and make them do 3 line summaries of news" experiment. Maybe he can finally convince social conservatives like Curt Schilling to start using Facebook.

perhaps ‎andrew schlafly will be inspired to start his own version of facebook

misread as andrew ridgely, was surprised

fingers crossed xp

I miss the days when the super-rich would just start dumb ineffectual charities and not try to usurp the role of government.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/plutocrats-at-work-how-big-philanthropy-undermines-democracy

this "free basics" thing has very little to do with charity and a hell of a lot to do with getting more facebook users and expanding their advertising network

Caek that essay is terrific, thanks for that link.

yup i enjoyed the opening rant i saved my highlights which were...

“One hundred years later, big philanthropy still aims to solve the world’s problems—with foundation trustees deciding what is a problem and how to fix it. They may act with good intentions, but they define “good.” The arrangement remains thoroughly plutocratic: it is the exercise of wealth-derived power in the public sphere with minimal democratic controls and civic obligations.”

“The main rationale for both the tax exemption and the charitable contribution tax deduction (created in 1917) is to stimulate private giving. Yet this is a weak rationale when applied to the super-rich; a more effective way to stimulate their giving would be to raise the estate and capital gains taxes. It is a meaningless rationale for the 65 percent of American taxpayers who don’t itemize their deductions and therefore can’t use the charity tax break.”

“Sycophancy is built into the structure of philanthropy: grantees shape their work to please their benefactors; they are perpetual supplicants for future funding. As a result, foundation executives and trustees almost never receive critical feedback. They are treated like royalty, which breeds hubris—the occupational disorder of philanthro-barons”

“When the creator of a mega-foundation says, “I can do what I want because it’s my money,” he or she is wrong. A substantial portion of the wealth—35 percent or more, depending on tax rates—has been diverted from the public treasury, where voters would have determined its use.”

The fact that gigantic charitable foundations, such as the Ford Foundation or Rockefeller Foundation, are merely alternative methods for their boards of directors (often controlled by their founder or by their founder's heirs) to exercise power over society is an open secret. This was one of those compromises that were made at the time the income tax and estate taxes were being imposed on the plutocrats who arose in the last decades of the 19th century. It was always understood that this arrangement allowed wealthy people to continue to control their money as they saw fit, provided some sort of philanthropic fig leaf was applied to the transaction.

i ended up looking into the alternatives in case i am a billionaire one day and it seems the options are either:

voluntarily pay down the national debt (lol this is dumb) https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm

and "gifts to the united states"

http://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html
Citizens who wish to make a general donation to the U.S. government may send contributions to a specific account called "Gifts to the United States." This account was established in 1843 to accept gifts, such as bequests, from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States. Money deposited into this account is for general use by the federal government and can be available for budget needs. These contributions are considered an unconditional gift to the government. Financial gifts can be made by check or money order payable to the United States Treasury and mailed to the address below.

hmm we should have beers more often

your treat

tangentially reminds me of the savings bonds my grandma bought for me. not the most interest-bearing investment, but at the time they were something like 6% compounded annually. so $250 worth of bonds every year or two turned into a couple grand for me after 20 years

current bond rate is something like .1% for EE series :(

I have no money rn but I believe in the American Dream xxp

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CixMwpfXAAA5rvI.jpg

dude is disrupting the shit out of the status quo