[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.