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Silicon Valley

Friday 16th of May 2025

By the numbers Palo Alto's minimum wage is $12 an hour, but someone would have to earn $42.69 an hour to rent a two-bedroom apartment while having enough left over for other necessities. The Guardian, June 29, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Energy But it [digital messianism] is also built on a  conceit: tech as the industry of industries; the shaper of events. It is a less tenable conceit than it was a month ago. Tech is relevant in Ukraine; see the propaganda war. But next to the existential role of energy, which keeps Russia solvent, and has the west scrambling for alternative sources, what stands out is the modesty of its bearing on events. Silicon Valley is giving history a nudge here and there, no doubt, but not setting its essential course. That is still the role of people who dig stuff out of the ground for fuel. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, March 25, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Entrepreneurs Between 2012 and 2017 the number of tech start-ups that received initial funding fell 22 per cent. As one investor put it, “90 per cent of the start-ups I see are built for sale, not for scale”. Many of those businesses end up in the tech giants’ waste bin. Susan Holmberg, Financial Times, February 15, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
The Frightful Five Nearly a year ago, I argued that we were witnessing a new era in the tech business, one that is typified … by a posse I like to call the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet … As in 2016, they are half of the world's 10 most valuable companies … Their wealth stems from their control of the inescapable digital infrastructure on which much of the rest of the economy depends – mobile phones, social networks, the web, the cloud, retail and logistics, and the data and computing power required for future breakthroughs … they have begun to set their sights on the biggest industries outside tech … on autos, health care, retail, transporation, entertainment and finance. citation Farhad Manjoo, New York Times, Jan. 5, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Government Governments deal with “wicked problems” that can't be solved (or even fully understood): social injustice, hostile powers or climate change. The “solutionism” of Silicon Valley rarely works in politics. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, March 10-11, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather. John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Growth Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. Edward Abbey, The Journey Home © 2021 Kwiple.com
Income inequality In Santa Clara County, in the heart of Silicon Valley, the median hourly wage for software developers is $64 an hour, and from $11 to $14 for groundskeepers, janitors and security guards … Eighty-eight percent of computer jobs provide paid sick days, compared to 41 percent of building and grounds- cleaning jobs. Three to 4 percent of tech employees are black or Latino, and about 75 percent of janitorial and maintenance workers are. New York Times, March 26, 2013, © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Male computer programmers make 28 per cent more than their female counterparts in the US, after adjusting for differences between jobs and workers. That gap is four times larger than the national average, according to a recent study from Glassdoor. Financial Times, April 7, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Power In today's unequal digital society, power accrues to those who already have too much of it,  fuelling popular discontent with the elites and giving rise to conspiracy theories about the omnipotence of Silicon Valley. Evgeny Morozov, Financial Times, September 1, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Resisters People with pitchforks will eventually come after them [tech bros and Silicon Valley honchos]. Even if they are using their smartphone to find out where the protest is. Jeff Hauser, quoted in The Guardian, September 3, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Silicon Valley An extroverted engineer is one who stares at your shoes rather than his own  saying © 2017 Kwiple.com
Silicon Valley Creator of job losses elsewhere © 2017 Kwiple.com
Silicon Valley Homeowners oppose shelter for ex-.coms © 2016 Kwiple.com
Silicon Valley In 2018, venture capital groups employed 18 black investing partners, representing less than 2 per cent of the industry’s total, according to data compiled by Richard Kerby at Equal Ventures. Even fewer were Latinx, or of Latin American descent. Sequoia Capital, widely viewed as Silicon Valley's marquee venture firm, does not count a single black partner among its ranks. Financial Times, June 20, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is an extractive industry. Its resource isn't oil or copper, but data. Companies harvest this data by observing as much of our online activity as they can. … Soon it'll earn even more money from watching what we do offline. Ben Tarnoff, The Guardian, August 23, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Silicon Valley Where guys chase eyeballs, not skirts © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say What's good for Silicon Valley is good for America © 2015 Kwiple.com
Snapshot The Silicon Valley billionaires and CEOs are libertarian, low-tax deregulation buddies of the Koch brothers when it comes to talking to Republicans, and dope-smoking, gay rights activist hipsters when they mix with the Democrats. Silicon Valley honchos portrayed by Robert W. McChesney © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Politics is just a transaction to these people. Silicon Valley honchos portrayed by Jonathan Taplin © 2017 Kwiple.com
Tax avoidance The asymmetry between tech profits and the public interest needs to be corrected. In 2019, only the US, China and Japan had economies larger than the combined market capitalisation of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google and Microsoft. Lost revenues from the lack of tax on Silicon Valley’s largest companies are at $100bn over the past ten years, according to Fair Tax Mark. The OECD puts the total cost of corporate tax avoidance to governments worldwide at up to $240bn. Marietje Schaake, Financial Times, May 20, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
The tech bro's I Have a Dream Speech I was the middleman. I made money off the platform. I used contract workers and their assets. I offered no benefits, no guaranteed pay. I made them liable for insurance claims. I automated  to  minimize  employees. I ignored local laws & governments. I ran ads  featuring  smiling  people. I danced the I'm-a-job-creator jig. I  raised  billions  from  investors. I ignored  user's  privacy  rights. I hired tax avoidance lawyers. I hired Washington insiders. I put money  in tax havens. I dug up dirt on my critics. I whooped, “Struck it rich, struck it rich, Thank God Almighty, I struck it rich.” © 2015 Kwiple.com
Tech bros say If a startup's app grows fast and it won't sell out to us, kill the motherfuckers by cloning its features and deterring investors --> © 2017 Kwiple.com
 
Wealth inequality With black individuals deeply underrepresented in Silicon Valley and largely absent at the highest levels of major corporations, little of the wealth created in the stock market or the technology boom has gone to black families. Today, typical black households have just one-tenth the wealth of typical white households, according to Federal Reserve data. New York Times, June 6, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com