Posted on 09/18/2018 8:22:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
“LIKE Florence in the Renaissance.” That is a common description of what it is like to live in Silicon Valley. America’s technology capital has an outsize influence on the world’s economy, stockmarkets and culture. This small portion of land running from San Jose to San Francisco is home to three of the world’s five most valuable companies. Giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Netflix all claim Silicon Valley as their birthplace and home, as do trailblazers such as Airbnb, Tesla and Uber. The Bay Area has the 19th-largest economy in the world, ranking above Switzerland and Saudi Arabia.
The Valley is not just a place. It is also an idea. Ever since Bill Hewlett and David Packard set up in a garage nearly 80 years ago, it has been a byword for innovation and ingenuity. It has been at the centre of several cycles of Schumpeterian destruction and regeneration, in silicon chips, personal computers, software and internet services. Some of its inventions have been ludicrous: internet-connected teapots, or an app that sold people coins to use at laundromats. But others are world-beaters: microprocessor chips, databases and smartphones all trace their lineage to the Valley.
Its combination of engineering expertise, thriving business networks, deep pools of capital, strong universities and a risk-taking culture have made the Valley impossible to clone, despite many attempts to do so. There is no credible rival for its position as the world’s pre-eminent innovation hub. But there are signs that the Valley’s influence is peaking. If that were simply a symptom of much greater innovation elsewhere, it would be cause for cheer. The truth is unhappier.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
The reasons for this shift are manifold, but chief among them is the sheer expense of the Valley. The cost of living is among the highest in the world.
One founder reckons young startups pay at least four times more to operate in the Bay Area than in most other American cities. All this is before taking into account the nastier features of Bay Area life: clogged traffic, discarded syringes and shocking inequality.
Here’s what’s happening:
Other cities are rising in relative importance as a result. The Kauffman Foundation, a non-profit group that tracks entrepreneurship, now ranks the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area first for startup activity in America, based on the density of startups and new entrepreneurs.
Phoenix and Pittsburgh have become hubs for autonomous vehicles; New York for media startups; London for fintech; Shenzhen for hardware. None of these places can match the Valley on its own; between them, they point to a world in which innovation is more distributed.
Don’t laugh at this post. I don’t want their politics here but I tell you where some of these folks might end up. Detroit. Especially w/ Ford moving 5000 people to Cork-Town for their E-Car/Autonomous efforts. It fits in w/ the Silicon Valley mobility thing, real-estate is relatively cheap, you want to go high end you can get a place with a view of the water and yes the food scene is on fire.
Because startups can’t compete with Facebook and Google paying developers $100K+ just so they can live like sharecroppers in insanely overpriced housing.
Very easy to answer.
Real Estate is way too expensive to setup a startup.
Everyone now can work remote so why do you need to be there.
SV is not the nice place it used to be back 20 years ago.
I looked at the article for more of its arguments. (I also wondered whether it mentions, such as in a matching ending, that we're no longer drawn so much to Florence in particular. It doesn't.)
Near the end, there's an explicit mention of Donald Trump: we need more immigrants and stuff. We also can use more "government largesse" with more "state spending for public universities," "funding for basic research."
One more passage: "A more even distribution of wealth may be one result [of the decreasing need for people to work physically together], greater diversity of thought another. The Valley does many things remarkably well, but it comes dangerously close to being a monoculture of white male nerds. Companies founded by women received just 2% of the funding doled out by venture capitalists last year."
Here I'm reminded of the recent attention to things like gender diversity, mainly from the left, and to political diversity, mainly from the right. If Silicon Valley were more notoriously conservative, we'd see a lot more complaints in our Centrist Media about those "white male Nerds."
I’m not.
Detroit is perfect, and the sheer volume of cash the automotive sector is pouring into ADAS is stunning.
A self-driving car is their moonshot. They are all committed to making it happen. They have enacted standards they are holding themselves to which hands the tort bar a reliable standard by which they can be sued.
It’s unprecedented. They aren’t waiting for the government to come in and say, “You aren’t being responsible with this tech, and now we have to do something about it.”
And Detroit has loads and loads of cheap land.
One more passage: “A more even distribution of wealth may be one result [of the decreasing need for people to work physically together], greater diversity of thought another. The Valley does many things remarkably well, but it comes dangerously close to being a monoculture of white male nerds. Companies founded by women received just 2% of the funding doled out by venture capitalists last year.”
...
Why don’t they complain about women dominating healthcare, or how 60% of university students are female?
I, for one, hope that some gender equality happens in the modeling industry. Male models make about 25% of what female models make. That’s got to stop.
Somehow I have gotten the sense that Utah of all places is becoming a big draw for nascent tech firms. I have no stats, on that, just some anecdotal “we’re moving to Utah” stories that are beginning to stack up.
I’m acquainted with a woman whose daughter is with Google making $275K a year, and her husband is a freelance director for several YouTube series and one on Netflix, pretty decent income as well. They can’t afford the down to buy a house, starters are pushing $2 million where they are. I told the woman to advise her daughter to sit tight, that this is unsustainable when income at that level doesn’t even get you into a starter house. Bubble time, deja vu all over again.
Who in their right mind would want to do real business in that environment, apart from the baseline operational and living cost issues?
Ping!
Nothing special enough about Detroit to have a tech startup go there.
The land is cheap for a reason.
The Silicone Valley of the go -go 1980s was an incredible placer to be.
There was an amazing array of superbly talented consultants and sub contractors for every facet of the electronics industry from design, layout, fabrication, software, venture capitol, management and IP sector s as well as prototyping and production engineering to scale up manufacturing capabilities.
It was this critical mass of talented and nimble talent that formed the complex engine that powered the growth of the electronics industry and the Silicone Valley as a whole
As our manufacturing base as been sent off shore, all the talented technical specialists have migrated to follow the manufacturing or they have retired. These specialists have also taught their hard won skills and experience (either actively or by assistants watching) equally talented tech specialists in China, Asia and Mexico/South America to build up their technology base
This has caused a steady, across the board, erosion of the depth and breadth of the technical talent pool supporting the complex engine that drove the Silicone Valley. This trend has been happening all over the country and in all sectors of US economy and it is really killing our technology and manufacturing base.
Thank the Lord Donald Trump understands this and he is putting in place the necessary policies to stop the drain and begin the rebuilding of our steadily declining technical and industrial base. The world is at the brink of another wave of technical revolution. The countries that invest in this new technology will control the economic future of the 21 st Century. Much of the revolution is based on American technical innovation and manufacturing skills and expertise.
It would be a tragedy of epic proportion if we do not execute the investment needed to implement and exploit this technology in our own country.
Until Donald Trump came on the scene, our political leadership under President Obama was doing everything possible to incentive and actually force American companies to invest in these new technologies with the same foreign manufacturing that has been draining our industrial base
Thank the Lord Donald Trump understands this and he is putting in place the necessary policies to stop the drain and begin the rebuilding of our steadily declining technical and industrial base.
Yep.
UT, ID, AZ
“Because startups can’t compete with Facebook and Google paying developers $100K+ just so they can live like sharecroppers in insanely overpriced housing.”
As one who has lived in the Bay Area for 78 years, and seen, and sally in some respects, been a part of the SV, I’d love to see it ALL go away! This was a place above all others in which to grow up, live, get married, and raise a family. All of this is gone. Our son (46) is in the “medical device” industry here, who with his working wife brings in $300k per year, wants to move to Montana. We were all in Fallon, Nevada this past weekend, and while it’s kinda a hard scrabble place in some respects, the people there still retain the values we all used to have in California! You can buy farm-fresh fruits and vegetables and ammo for your guns without a “state license” to do so.
Tech workers can live anywhere, just give them VPN access.
Yep, I’ve seen what’s happening in Arizona. It seems to be a draw for high tech stuff.
Silicon Valley is moving to China and the far East.
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