Silicon Valley Stays Quiet As Washington Implodes

dcblogs writes "In a better time, circa 1998, Cypress Semiconductor founder and CEO T.J. Rodgers gave a provocative speech, titled 'Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations with Washington D.C.' This speech is still important to understanding the conflict that tech leaders have with Congress, and their relative silence during the shutdown. 'The metric that differentiates Silicon Valley from Washington does not fall along conventional political lines: Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal, right versus left,' Rogers said. 'It falls between freedom and control. It is a metric that separates individual freedom to speak from tap-ready telephones; local reinvestment of profit from taxes that go to Washington; encryption to protect privacy from government eavesdropping; success in the marketplace from government subsidies; and a free, untaxed Internet from a regulated, overtaxed Internet.'"

Comments

Re:Stay strong President Obama

[interkin3tic]

Stay strong apathetic non-voters. Don't bother. It's cool. Or whatever.

Bullshit

[TheRaven64]

You know why the NSA was able to search social graphs and emails so easily? Because all of those pro-freedom Silicon Valley companies (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, and so on) had already built infrastructure for doing so for the purpose of selling adverts. The NSA just piggybacked on existing system to look for other information. If Silicon Valley had really cared about individual freedom, Google would have been pushing federated, decentralised services with no single point where you can insert a tap. Instead, what has happened since we've learned about the NSA's involvement? Google has replaced federated XMPP in GTalk with non-federated XMPP in Google Hangouts.

Re:Bullshit

[plopez]

Let look at the rest of the statement in the write up:
1) Freedom vs. control. How do we reconcile this with patent trolls, DRM, and de facto unlimited copy rights?
2) Local reinvestment of profit from taxes that go to Washington. Yeah right, reinvestment. If reinvestment means CEOs line their pockets. What I see is a bunch of freeloaders not paying taxes to support the educational system that benefits them. And also such basic research institutes such as DARPA, NASA, and a host of others.
3) A free untaxed unregulated internet. It is regulation which prevents the internet from becoming a captured, by business interests, internet.
4) Success in the marketplace from government subsidies. LMAO, see point 2 above as well as how many tech companies have their snouts in the government trough.

That's probably just a start.

Re:Nerds Should Shut Up About Politics

[interkin3tic]

The marketplace of ideas is enriched by every additional voice no matter the background, as long as that additional voice doesn't silence another voice. If they're saying "let them eat cake" type nonsense, then everyone will ignore them and the effect will be the same. If people take their dumb ideas to heart, they're probably not making good moves in the absence of nerds talking. If what the nerds are saying is better than what the alternatives are saying, like religious organizations, organizations dedicated to ignorance, or corporations interested in nothing more than money, then it will be a good thing that they talked.

Alternatively, everyone else should shut up too and give all power to a benevolent saintly king who will rule fairly. Oh, we don't have one of those? Well then, how about everyone gives their opinion and we don't resort to ad-homenim attacks.

Silence until NSA spying hurts sales

[ScottCooperDotNet]

They'll stay silent until America's reputation, and the NSA spying specifically, starts to impact sales. Until then, Silicon Valley's lobbying policy seems to be "pray they don't affect us".

Since TFS doesn't list it, here's Why Silicon Valley Should Not Normalize Relations With Washington, D.C. from the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.

Re:Don't pay your taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah I like jail too

Who elected this guy to speak for Silicon Valley?

[clarkkent09]

There is no such thing as what "silicon valley wants". It's not even a valley and it is definitely not made of silicon. But, that's beside the point. He basically makes it sound as if everybody there is libertarian without mentioning the word, but it is far from the truth. People who matter are involved with the government up to their necks, including all the things he says silicon valley is against: eavesdropping, subsidies, protectionism, non-free internet. All major tech companies maintain nice and expensive lobbyists in Washington. Not that I blame them, they have to live in real world and deal with the biggest and most powerful gorilla in the jungle and that is the government. And it's getting bigger.

WASHINGTON NOT IMPLODING

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Stage management. Drama. Theatrics.

In the end? The powerful will be more so - you will pay more, and get less.

Mission accomplished, and your expectations diminished, as planned.

Re:WASHINGTON NOT IMPLODING

[interkin3tic]

Eh, why so cynical? Look at history: there's good things to come out of every bad thing and bad things that come out of every good thing. Perhaps this will shock people into realizing that gerrymandering isn't something they can ignore. Perhaps tea party voters will start to question whether forcing people to buy healthcare is actually at all similar to fascism. Perhaps actual small government conservatives will take back control of their party, and we can actually cut wasteful spending rather than just cutting taxes and pretending that makes sense.

Don't say the sky is falling simply because you could see one way in which it COULD fall. For one thing, it's not going to cancel it's plans to fall simply because you discovered them. If the shutdown causes the worst to happen, you'll be able to say "Told ya so!' and everyone else in your shantytown will roll their eyes. If it doesn't, you just stressed yourself out, made everyone more cynical about politics, and less likely to take steps to prevent your prophecy from coming true.

Granted, the chances of anyone reading your post doing anything about it are really low anyway... Fuck, I think I just talked myself into looking up my house of reps number and considering calling them.... goddamn desire not to be a hypocrite...

Re:WASHINGTON NOT IMPLODING

[thomst]

Jeremiah Cornelius snorted:

Stage management. Drama. Theatrics.

In the end? The powerful will be more so - you will pay more, and get less.

Mission accomplished, and your expectations diminished, as planned.

Oh, horseshit.

The "drama and theatrics" of which you so dismissively speak is ALL on the Tea Party side. The House clowns behind this public tantrum ARE the agents of plutocrats - but they are unwitting ones, blinded to the control of their puppetmasters by their ideology and prideful ignorance. That's an argyle horse, because all their non-TP peers understand EXACTLY who has purchased them.

The Tea Party currently controls the Republican Party - and, because of gerrymandering and the fact that most Democrats only vote once every four years, that is unlikely to change any time soon. It is unlikely to change, because mainstream Republican voters don't turn out in significant numbers for primary elections. Instead, they're happy to cast their vote for a Republican slate in the general election, and go away satisfied that they've done their duty to party and (only incidentally) country. So it's the "base" - the evangelicals that Ronald Reagan's campaign strategy so empowered - the NRA lifers, and the slack-jawed Fox News addicts that turn out for the primaries. Those are the identical constituencies of the Tea Party, and they'll uncritically accept and vote in accordance with any propaganda effort that gets them sufficiently riled up over abortion, gun rights, taxes, and "socialism" (all while happily depositing their Social Security checks, and leaning as heavily on their Medicare coverage as they do on their walkers and canes).

Cue the Koch brothers - the oil billionaires who have (thanks to the Roberts Court's decisions that money and speech are somehow equivalent, that "corporations are people" for purposes of political speech, and that unlimited secret spending on political campaigns - as long as it pretends to be "educational" and "issue-based" - is a bastion of fr-r-ee-dom!) essentially bankrolled the entire Tea Party monster from its inception, as a proxy for their personal business interests.

Only now the monster has escaped their control - as Victor Frankenstein could have told them it inevitably would. And it's far too late to chain it back up in the basement, because the Tea Party is now a self-sustaining reaction.

THAT's the difference. Washington's establishment pols are self-aware. The Tea Party is not. It's all id - and the Republican superego has left the building, so its ego, the career Republican establishment, has been left to fend for itself. The result is that the career Republican pols are falling all over themselves to embrace all things Tea, in perfectly-justified panic over being "primaried" (a nonce verb that owes its very existence to the Tea Party) out of their comfy jobs as shills for whoever pays them to be.

It's the triumph of arrogant ignorance over calculated self-interest - and that is Not A Good Thing for the country. Or you and me, for that matter, because the Tea Party is the very definition of a faith-based movement. And I'm not talking about their Christian evangelism, here. I'm talking about their blind hatred of "socialism" - despite their personal dependence on it - of taxes - even though our tax rates are still near historic lows (and FAR lower than during the Eisenhower administration, which is a Golden Era in the Tea Party credo) - and of all things Obama - regardless of the fact that our 44th president is an enthusiastic centrist, and ardent supporter of the status quo.

Your sneering dismissal of all pols as corrupt representatives of corporate plutocracy represents a faux-sophisticate's rhetorical overreach: they're NOT all the same. The Tea Partiers are DANGEROUS, precisely because they're NOT subject to the "business-as-usual" corruption of Washington politics. They're True Believers - and not in the good, Marvel-comics way, but in the terrible Spanish-Inquisition-and-Crusades way.

Re:Bah ...

[Austrian Anarchy]

The only difference is which rich assholes get richer.

The tech companies want to be given the ability to do anything to make a profit. The government wants to be given the ability to do anything to spy on us.

It's douchebags on both sides fighting for their piece of the pie -- we all get fucked over in the end.

Without a government that is forcing you to give your money to someone, those "assholes" have to compete with others for the privilege of serving you.

real dichotomy

[globaljustin]

The only difference is which rich assholes get richer....It's douchebags on both sides fighting for their piece of the pie -- we all get fucked over in the end.

I sympathize with your frustration but, no you're wrong.

Look at *policy*...Dem's and Repub's are very, very different. One party has a coordinated effort to end all abortion (including fertitlity tests in Louisiana) and teach young-earth creationism.

That's Repbublicans, that's "libertarians"...don't kid yourself....you want to criticize money in politics? welcome to the fucking club...the rich get richer **in any situation** fact is, even the best case scenario, with two functional, representative parties, money in politics will still be just as much of a problem...

no....the fact that humans can be corrupt does not validate your argument

In the end, the defeatist "Bah...it's all bullshit...meh" is immature and reductive. It's not an intellectual conclusion....it's the opposite...the refusal to engage a complex situation...something that requires mental effort to dig below the rhetoric.

Your position reminds me of Dr. Zeus in Planet of the Apes...covering his ears and screaming so he doesn't hear the human speak.

Democrats are the only people trying to do anything resembling professional governance right now. **accept and deal with that fact** if you think about it, the Chinese idea of 'crisis/opportunity' applies...

I'm surprised at Republicans...for 'free market' people their party is remarkable bereft of any new ideas.

trolls: if you want to express your hate for what I've said, please use blockquote to specify which part of my post you are criticizing

Re:real dichotomy

[Quila]

I'm surprised at Republicans...for 'free market' people their party is remarkable bereft of any new ideas.

The point of a free market is that the politicians don't have the ideas. They keep government from interfering with others who do have the good ideas. Of course the Republicans aren't very good at that either. They're just as meddling as the Democrats.

Re:Bah ...

[TWiTfan]

What "competition"? Maybe in your libertarian fantasy world. But here in the real-world, powerful corporations collude, buy monopolies, crush any smaller competitors--and generally do everything to ensure that there is no real competition, and never will be. The "free market" is a bunch of horseshit shoveled to gullible suckers.

Re:Bah ...

[smoot123]

No competition? Tell that to the old AT&T, which got crushed by it's children. Or Yahoo as it watches Goggle zoom ahead. Or Google, as it watches Facebook grow its mobile ad revenue like there's no tomorrow. Or Microsoft as even microsofties use iPads. Or PanAm as Southwest ate their lunch. In my company, I get a win/loss email every week about how we won a customer from our rivals and they beat us at another.

It's a mixed bag. Some markets are more open to competition than others. But competition is alive and well in many, many places.