<i>Companies are transcending power now. We are becoming the eminent vehicles for change and influence, and capital structures that matter.</i><p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Those expressing the views described in this article seem to be painfully ignorant of the Federally financed origins of Silicon Valley:<p><a href="http://steveblank.com/secret-history/" rel="nofollow">http://steveblank.com/secret-history/</a><p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo</a>
> His statement mirrors what venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said last year, when he proclaimed, "I love gridlock!"<p>I doubt Marc Andreessen loved gridlock when he was working on Mosaic @ the NCSA<p>> 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.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomput...</a>
It's frustrating that someone with such poor critical thinking skills can become so rich.<p>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 <i>know the government will be back.</i> 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.<p>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 ridiculous article. It leaps from a couple of government-critical comments to declaring a "fetish" for "dysfunction"? Based on what, exactly? Why aren't the people tirelessly defending the clusterfuck that is democratic government in most of the western world the fetishists?<p>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.
Kevin Roose clearly misunderstands what "functioning" means in Congressional terms. Perhaps he was absent on the day that his 4th grade class learned:<p><pre><code> - The Executive branch enforces laws.
- The Judicial branch interprets laws.
- The Legislative branch makes laws.
</code></pre>
Think about that: The Legislative branch's ONLY JOB is to make laws. Now, I'm a big-government-loving bleeding heart liberal, but even <i>I</i> have to admit that it's completely ridiculous to put 535 people representing 3.8 million square miles of land into one building for 11 months out of every year for the <i>sole purpose</i> of making new laws. How could you <i>not</i> end up with tons of unnecessary cruft and bloat?<p>What this means is that the <i>only</i> time we aren't adding more restrictions to our lives is when Congress is gridlocked. Gridlock is the system <i>functioning as designed</i>. What's not to love about it? We don't <i>want</i> 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.
For all the rhetoric in the article, Mr. Roose never actually refutes this belief:<p>"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."
Without extensive government funding, it would never have become <i>Silicon</i> Valley.<p><a href="http://video.pbs.org/video/2332168287/" rel="nofollow">http://video.pbs.org/video/2332168287/</a>
The cyberpunk genre has existed for almost three decades. His embrace of the fears of that dystopian movement is pretty disconcerting.<p>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?
> Companies are transcending power now. We are becoming the eminent vehicles for change and influence, and capital structures that matter.<p><i>Becoming</i>? Corporations have been the transcendant power in the developed world since the collapse of feudalism.
Strange that there seemed to be no mention of why the US government shut down in the first place: they failed to raise the debt ceiling on time, right? And who has primary interest in US debt? Other governments, like China for example.<p>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?<p>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.
I don't like this Chamath guy, but he has recognized something that's real. Though his words are mostly hyperbole, <i>power is shifting</i> to the valley.