[wslh]

At the end of the day I don't think Silicon Valley represents anything fundamentally different from the world at large. The world is unfair, and it may become even less fair.

What is disturbing is how the hype-machine around "startups" and the unicorn myth encourages people to believe they can be the next big thing. But basic arithmetic makes that impossible: you can't have an abundance of unicorns when the attention economy, capital, and market share are structurally limited.

[JKCalhoun]

Silicon Valley is different in my mind because, well, back in the 1970's, it was arguably not evil.

Woz and the nerds were making machines at home, later hooking them up to one another with the janky telephone service as the interconnect. And this kid, just getting a taste of BBSs in Kansas in the mid 1980's, was so envious of the outrageous number of BBSs in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Cupertino, San Jose…—all strange names to me. But I saw that they were all in California.

When a job offer got me to move out to the Bay Area in the early 90's there was still a kind of soft echo of those times. Plenty of electronics recycling warehouses you could wander through (and recognizing some of the same faces, often older men, as you moved through your morning circuit to the next warehouse). Disk Drive Depot, Computer Literacy Bookstore, etc.

I had a career there, raised a family there. I watched the dot-com boom/bust, the rise of the internet, Google, and the slow decline of the hardware focus of "The Valley".

When the last of my daughters left the nest, the wife and I sold the house and I retired back to the Midwaste where the two of us grew up. Weird Stuff Warehouse had recently closed up shop and that seems now as fitting a time as any to have said goodbye to The Valley.

[wslh]

I conjecture that what you're describing was deeply tied to the size, quality, and spirit of that original community (and consumers). A relatively small cluster of tinkerers, shared physical spaces, and a sense of discovery created a moral atmosphere very different from today's massive global tech hub shaped by billions in capital.

To put the scale shift in perspective: Apple sold only a couple of million Apple IIs in that entire era. Today, the iPhone sits in the multi-billion range since 2007. Once a technology ecosystem expands by three orders of magnitude, its culture cannot remain the same.

The early Valley wasn’t "good" in an absolute sense, it was simply relatively small, intimate, and guided by shared values. As growth, global competition, and finances took over, the culture changed in ways that were probably inevitable.

[cmrdporcupine]

All that is different is that you and I have had bargaining power and scarcity far far beyond the average skilled worker.

That bargaining power came from our ability to surf the crest of the wave that was over and over crashing through existing industries, turning them on their head with the promise and practice of automating via computation. In many cases deskilling the jobs of other workers.

We could play the part of magicians who knew these arcane arts and get paid accordingly.

There is precisely zero guarantee that any of this will continue. In the latest wave it seems like it is we ourselves who are being submerged beneath the wave.

[fooqux]

People have a tendency to think they're special, that they won't (or will) be the outlier. Gambling, unprotected sex, etc. We're not great at risk evaluation/comparison.

But hey, without this, our public schools wouldn't get funding from lottery tickets! So I'm forced to conclude it's a good thing.

[garg]

The lottery paying for schooling is a clever self-defeating policy because it moves the tax-burden to the same people who would most benefit from a good public school system.

[wslh]

True, people consistently overestimate their chances of being the exception. But in parallel, I think we also lack hype around the opposite direction: learning to live with less, intentionally and intelligently.

I'm not talking about UBI or forced austerity, but about developing smarter ways to live frugally without feeling deprived. That mindset would relieve a lot of the pressure that the "you must win the startup lottery" narrative creates.

[fooqux]

That's antithetical to capitalism and consumerism. Not to mention human nature. While I agree with you in principle, I don't know how one would even start to effect any change here at a societal level. Especially when it's impossible to not be bombarded with marketing from people who are extremely good at using your emotions against you here.

Well, I suppose I do know of one. Mindfulness training I think has been shown to help with this, but that's still at a very personal level.

[wslh]

Capitalism or consumerism don't define human nature. Human behaviour existed long before those systems, and it will exist long after them.

What has changed, and this is where I agree with your point about difficulty, is the scale and precision of behavioural manipulation. We've never had a period where advertising, content, and emotional triggers were personalized with such speed and accuracy. Tobacco harmed the body, today's hyper-personalized content ecosystems can easily harm attention, mood regulation, and overall mental health.

So yes, it's hard to shift things at a societal level when the environment is engineered to keep people reactive.

On mindfulness: in its modern form it's often packaged as another consumer product, but its roots, like those of yoga, Zen, and other contemplative traditions, come from outside capitalist logic. The original practices were tools for resisting impulse and cultivating awareness, not selling calmness subscriptions.

[JKCalhoun]

"Christ's teachings" (well, many religions in general) should also have that effect? (I'm an atheist though, so what do I know. Some of my best takeaways from the Second Testament though are that we should be kind, content…)

[morcus]

It is not your main point, I know - but for everyone I know who buys lottery tickets, they're more thought of as an entertainment purchase than a financial purchase.

[fooqux]

I've heard this argument before about casinos, but never lottery tickets. I'm not sure I personally buy that, but let's go with it.

If they're entertaining, then presumably it's from the thrill of maybe winning. Why would winning be thrilling? Why, because you get money- potentially a life-changing amount of it. If they made a lotto game with a maximum payout of a dollar I'm reasonably certain nobody would play it. Or hell, anyone could write down a series of heads/tails on a paper and then flip a coin to see if they're a winner! Yet, we don't see that, even though it's free and (I would argue) has the same entertainment value.

So yeah, I'm sure entertainment is the facade, but underneath it all, it's financially motivated for the vast majority.

[JKCalhoun]

Might tell us more about the people you know than the typical lottery ticket purchaser?

(Or perhaps they're when they tell you it is "for entertainment" they're entertaining fantasies of winning—which is probably what you can say for a lot of people buying lottery tickets.)