[doubleunplussed]

It's not a private company's job to have empathy for the people affected by progress. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of empathy. But petitioning private companies to change their ways will get you exactly nowhere unless it comes with a corresponding profit motive.

It's the government's job to redistribute wealth and income to the needy, and provide safety nets and retraining opportunities for people whose industries have been disrupted. Not Silicon Valley businesses.

[brenschluss]

Profit motives are short-term optimization behavior (or game-theory maneuvering), pure and simple.

I don't believe in companies because they think in the short-term. The average life-expectancy for companies in the S&P is 18 years.[1] Over our lifetimes, we will see endless companies live and die, each only seeking profit for the next quarter, year, or decade.

Believing that the role of companies (and especially Silicon Valley businesses) should be profit-seeking without any thought to empathy is like shooting ourselves in the temporal foot. What should our long-term strategies be? What company is going to care about you when you retire, or be thoughtful about the next generation's well-being?

It's the most idiotic of strategies that would invest in a few long-term strategies (governments, cooperatives, (a few) non-profits) and almost all short-term strategies without thinking about how they balance.

[1] https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction-whips...

[illumin8]

Right on. Silicon Valley may have an empathy vacuum/problem, but let's place the blame for this problem where it really lies: government policy makers. They are the ones that have watched globalization gut the middle class, while sitting back and collecting their fat stock grants and salaries for sitting on the board of the companies that are the beneficiaries of these policies.

We need universal basic income to soften the impact of the rise of automation in the workforce. The problem is that the same people influencing government to write policies that are clearly against the middle class also control the media, and they seem to have just convinced a majority of US voters to vote for a government that will create more income inequality by cutting taxes for the wealthy.

In a masterful stroke, now the policy makers pulling the strings are using the media to blame silicon valley for creating these problems. As if Facebook's news feed is the sole cause of the decimation of the middle class that has been happening for about 40 years now...

[talideon]

> We need universal basic income to soften the impact of the rise of automation in the workforce.

People need to feel useful. Universal basic income doesn't give that to people by itself.

[c0nducktr]

True, but neither does a job.

[talideon]

With a job, at least you've an outside chance of feeling useful.

[talmand]

That just might be your opinion.

[Tempest1981]

Then we should work to change government. Can we band together to do that? OTOH, many want smaller government. I was raised with "let the market decide". Private enterprise is always more efficient than government.

Are we conceding that only government can solve certain problems?

[kmkemp]

caveat: not a majority

[illumin8]

A majority of the ones that matter (live in battleground states).

[ckoglmeier]

^ Example A.

An alternative way to approach this, which the author of the article could also consider, is how might we, as technologists, build companies that help solve this problem?

For example, our country will have 3.5 M truckers (the most common profession in the US and in 46 of the 50 US States) out of jobs within 10 years due to automated trucking.

Option A: We cheer at the success of the automated trucking industry and ignore the impact (the 19th century robber barron approach)

Option B: We say "government clean up our mess" (the 21st century liberal approach)

Option C: We build companies, or organizations, that educate and employ those out of work truckers. (??)

Assuming we care about time periods longer than tomorrow, we cannot ignore the societal impacts of the companies and products we build. These cultural externalities are real; similar to the environmental externalities of the industrial revolution.

Its time for the entire tech community to decide what role our industry will play in society. We have a choice about if we want to be part of the solution - or just ignore it and wait for the coming societal chaos.

[tansey]

Educate them to do... what, exactly? What could Uber do with two million mostly-uneducated truck drivers that are scattered all through out the country? Most do not want to move, do not have the patience/desire/grit to go through long retraining periods for a vastly different job, and are currently making something in the neighborhood of $55K/yr. How could any company possibly be expected to help that large a workforce not take a dip in its standard of living, when literally the only skill they have is about to become nearly worthless? And how could you do it while still upholding your fiduciary responsibilities to your shareholders?

[mercer]

Agreed. This strikes me as the kind of thing that requires a government solution. Perhaps it means we should get our hands dirty (but not in that way!) and enter politics. As nice as it would be to solve problems doing what I am already good at and what I already like to do, sometimes a hammer isn't enough...

[Apocryphon]

This is exactly the type of solution that the much-hyped "innovation" of Silicon Valley should help address.

[thekemkid]

This attitude is why silicon valley is well on its way to becoming the villain in the narrative of our progress. It is a place dedicated to redefining the world we live in. Valley companies can, and regularly do, redefine how companies work and make money. Sometimes they need to be the ones to bite the bullet and lose some of their yearly profits by spending it on making this transition buttery smooth.

Without them trying to make this effort, and the common man fearing the gaze of the innovation beast, governments will have to act - and not necessarily by transition those affected into positions where they can still be secure, but by stifiling the innovation by actively targeting the catalysts of these changes with laws and regulations and hoops upon hoops to jump through.

[talmand]

>> It is a place dedicated to redefining the world we live in.

This is the problem.

[Spooky23]

Private companies consist of people. This message board isn't populated by companies.

The difference between the army of geeks powering silicon valley and other industries is that the SV people don't realize that they are cogs in the wheel. The optimism and hope of the late 90s is gone.

The "magic" is at an inflection point and is tipping towards becoming a menace. When SV gets "disrupted" in 10 years, either by an earthquake or some group of rich plutocrats somewhere else, the popular reaction is probably going to be a big "fuck you".

[rubidium]

bull. You're a human being. A CEO is a human being. A software engineer is a human being.

The type of thinking you just espoused leads to sweatshops, environmental destruction, and corporate fraud.

We all have a responsibility to show empathy to others. Anyone who tries to hide behind the corporate shield of "it's just my job and fiduciary responsibility" should be shown the door.

[smelterdemon]

Sweatshops, environmental destruction, child labor etc. has only been effectively fought through government intervention. Personal empathy has no net effect in a free market.

[TulliusCicero]

We can expect a company to have respect for the rule of law even if we don't expect them to go beyond the call of duty in charitable acts.

[scottishfiction]

This argument then goes full circle. The government reflect the will of the people and the people currently believe that globalization and immigration are the source of all their ills - not automation. Why do believe this? Because of a failure of the free press, exacerbated by the filter bubble of social media - which is the responsibility of SV.

[jmkni]

That lack of empathy might come back to bite those companies in the ass later on though when the people affected start to vote for politicians who promise to protect their jobs by heavily taxing companies who use/focus on automation.

[eva1984]

This might be the best way...to be honest.

[stult]

I don't disagree with your analysis, but I also think the article is right that SV business in general lacks an understanding of life in the "fly over" states. I don't see that as a moral failing necessarily, because, as you point out, it's not the function of business to remedy dislocations in the job market.

However, I do see it as a business failing. Dislocations in the job market and other social and economic disruptions in middle America are business opportunities in their own right. Like the old schtick from SWOT analysis about turning threats into opportunities. For example, automation in factories will lead to laid off factory workers. They will need training for new jobs, perhaps via online courses/certifications. Providing those would be one example of such an opportunity. There are almost certainly many more such opportunities, upon which not even the slightest fraction of the intellectual might of Silicon Valley has been brought to bear.

If a general sense of duty doesn't motivate SV business to address the issue, perhaps the dim foreshadowing of pitchfork-wielding hoards streaming from the heartlands to the coasts will. Millions of unemployed truck drivers, restaurant servers, and factory workers will not idly stand by while falling into an economic ruin rendered ever more stark by the excessive accumulation of wealth in Silicon Valley. An awareness of opportunities for business growth in less prosperous regions could help prevent that.

Lack of exposure to economic realities elsewhere in the country is one of the chief dangers of a highly insulated, highly centralized tech center like SV. How we address that risk is a hard question. Empathy may not be the ideal term or tool for facilitating the flow of information between SV and other, less thriving communities across the country, but it's at least a first order approximation of the deficit.

[TulliusCicero]

I agree. Now when companies do embark on charitable acts, things that are beneficial to society (e.g. a tech giant pushing for green energy for their data centers), that's great and commendable. But we shouldn't generally expect them to be the ones pushing society forward except for the narrow sphere in which they offer products and services to consumers. The incentives just aren't there, not to mention they lack the power government has to set uniform standards via taxes and regulations.