I don't think the problem is with the Californian model. Silicon Valley knows how to do technology right for its own sake, and every technologist everywhere can learn a lot about how to do technology right by looking at Silicon Valley. Sure there is a gold rush mentality driving media and politics, and there is a lot of greed at play as well. But rich guys in Silicon Valley are no more greedy (and the true technologists among them are probably less greedy) than rich guys everywhere else in the world. The big difference between finance and tech is that deep down at the heart of tech is a natural curiosity and passion for problem solving, whereas finance is fundamentally about arbitrage.<p>In order to take the right lessons from tech's failings you need to separate the tech from its social consequences. The fundamental problem with tech is that it kills jobs. It is about seeking greater efficiency in all things. This is why politicians are wrong to try to solve unemployment with tech. It would be great if everyone could move up the food chain in terms of creative and technical work and that tech could create more jobs, but the problem is that by its very nature, the 1% in the tech world will be more efficient than the bottom 90% no matter how much training they receive. 100 great developers will produce better returns than 10000 bad developers. There's no way around this fact. Hell, if you have a powerful enough intelligence that was orders of magnitude smarter than the smartest human then it could obsolete developers entirely by being more productive <i>on its own</i> than all the worlds smartest developers.<p>Increased efficiency is theoretically good, but we're reaching the point where we don't have the social capabilities to cope. We are wired to work, and to need to feel needed, and to feel that we have an upward trajectory in life. These things make it very difficult to cope with the impending unemployment crisis and the environmental consequences of a ballooning disposable culture. Tech is at the very heart of these issues, but Silicon Valley is not the cause of these problems, it's just one microcosm of them.