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.'"

Re:Who elected this guy to speak for Silicon Valle

[unixisc]

Given how overwhelmingly the entire counties of San Mateo, Alameda, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara - not just San Francisco - vote Democrat in every election, thereby making the entire state of CA a 'blue' state, it's ridiculous to claim that Silicon Valley wants the sort of things that Libertarians or even Conservatives champion. TJ, Scott McNealy, John Chambers are really exceptions in an industry that leans overwhelmingly LEFT.

Re:It isn't any different elsewhere

[the eric conspiracy]

The reasons I want to eliminate the electoral college are:

1. Past history of Presidents elected despite not having a plurality of votes.
2. Proposal by Rance Priebus describing a method to corrupt the election process by tying electoral college votes to gerrymandered congressional districts.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/172191/rncs-priebus-proposes-rig-electoral-college-so-losing-republicans-can-win# [thenation.com]

There are huge problems with the current gerrymandering system. For example, we have a Republican majority in Congress despite the fact that 55% of the votes for Congressmen in the last election were for Democrats. In large part the current shutdown and threats on not raising the debt limit devolve to one thing - the current system of gerrymandering.

It makes a complete mockery of the idea of one man, one vote.

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.