What circumstances made Silicon Valley to be created in No. California?

[schmitt trigger]

I've heard and read three principal circumstances which helped create the Silicon Valley we know. In that particular northern California location, wedged between San Francisco and San Jose.
Love it or Hate it, the valley has become one of the world's most important innovation hubs for close to 50 years.

But.....why there? At the time the US North Atlantic seaboard was not only wealthy and industrialized, and had established high-tech companies.
There are three main reasons, as common wisdom dictates:

1) Stanford University.
True, Stanford is one of the World's foremost colleges, and in the early part of the XX century it was gifted with Frederick Terman. But equal or perhaps superior Ivy League Colleges are all located in the northern East Coast, from Pennsylvania to Massachussets. Most have had one or more Nobel-Prize winners.
So, as much as I would like to give Stanford the credit, I don't think it is enough.

2) Hewlett Packard.
What can I say about HP, that members of this forum do not know already.  An extraordinary company. But on the east coast there were many other extraordinary electronics companies. General Radio in Boston. IBM in New York, which at the time made more computers than the remaining manufacturers combined. RCA in New Jersey, at the time the largest electronics company in the world. Also in New Jersey, AT&T and its Bell Labs, the world's premiere industrial lab, and where the transistor and hundreds of other game changing technologies were invented. There were literally dozens more smaller but very high tech companies.
So again, even though I admire HP a lot, I don't think it created Silicon Valley.

3) William Schockley.
A bright genius, Nobel-prize winner and transistor co-inventor. He did bring lot of young and bright talent to work at his company, Shockley Semiconductor, which later defected and created Fairchild Semi.
But again, even though he was a luminary, there were plenty more luminaries back east, many working for Bell labs, who could have attracted such talent.

So these are my thoughts....which are yours?

[helius]

The circumstances were the secret signals intelligence directives of the U.S. military during WW2 and the cold war.

[steverino]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairchild_Semiconductor#1950s

[MattSR]

NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield. Back in the days when technology was so expensive that only the government was at the cutting edge, and before HP and Bill Shockley were doing their thing, NACA/NASA Ames Research centre was already attracting some of the brightest minds to the region.

[schmitt trigger]

Thanks Helius, very interesting video. That answers it.

Spoiler alert: it was Frank Terman

[cdev]

Also, the 1960s and the freedom of expression it represented drew a lot of creative people to the Bay Area, many of whom became interested in personal computing as it became available. Many of them became involved in early technology companies.

The Bay Area and California were unique in offering a milieu where - as long as they respected the rights of others, within limits, people could live however they wanted to live, even if some people thought it unconventional.  California became a magnet for a great many people, a great many of them turned out to be extremely creative. Ironically, even while eschewing materialism, a great deal of productive economic activity emerged when people were allowed to be and become creative. Also for many decades the University of California was free for state residents.  Both UCB and Stanford became centers of creative activity in computer science.  Berkeley became associated with freedom of expression, especially speech.

The counterculture connection was visible in publications like Steward Brand's "Whole Earth Catalog" which spotlighted early personal computers (and was produced on them) and the cyber culture, A cyber counterculture of media also emerged, characterized by online fora like The Well. Also, from a house high in the Berkeley hills there was High Frontiers and Mondo 2000 which were quirky publications that were sort of cultural icons in the cyberpunk scene.. Paradoxically, many of the cyberpunks became successful businesspeople. Perhaps the most illustrative of that was the transition of Wired Magazine, in the 1990s, Louis Rosetto and Jane Metcaffe started Wired and then Hot Wired, its online presence. Also, a plethora of other online businesses were begin in San Francisco's South of Market District in the 1990s, most failed but some of them became wildly successful. They became the prototypes of the online world of today. At one point, a single building in SOMA was hosting more businesses who together used more bandwidth than a good chunk of the rest of the world.

[cdev]

A great many cutting edge developments in computer science came out of ARC.

There were also a lot of really amazing talks at Stanford which were open to the general public.

Other colleges that have similar creative synergy exist. 

Berkeley has a lot of that same vibe, also Princeton does too. But for computer stuff, the talks at Stanford are really the best I know of. And its been that way for a long time.

Also, before there was Google, there was SGI, who built the campus now owned (or maybe still leased?) by Google..  Just a few hundred yards away from NASA. (their #1 customer)

Quote from: MattSR on Today at 15:59:52

NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Federal Airfield. Back in the days when technology was so expensive that only the government was at the cutting edge, and before HP and Bill Shockley were doing their thing, NACA/NASA Ames Research centre was already attracting some of the brightest minds to the region.

[cdev]

The Bay Area's climate is comfortable year round and good for people who like to spend a lot of time outdoors,

Its also immune to the insane heat and humidity that most of the rest of the country gets. If you look at the weather around the country, you'll see that the Bay Area particularly SF, is usually one of the coolest places in the country in the summer. The Bay Area has a lot of micro-climates but generally in a lot of places in the Bay Area air conditioning is virtually unnecessary because of summer fog that rolls in off the ocean when it starts to heat up inland.

[ivaylo]

The Steve Blank video is nice. There is also this - https://archive.org/details/XD1620_1_97MakingSiliconVlly_100yrRen
Then there was a 110 year followup or something. Watched them long time ago on a library DVD...

[4CX35000]

Thanks Helius, very interesting video. That answers it.

Spoiler alert: it was Frank Terman

It is often said that the good weather made Hollywood and I suspect the same applied to Silicon Valley.

[RoGeorge]

Good question. I heard some stories about shitty bosses that pissed off some very good engineers, engineers that quit and open their own companies in the area.

[Vtile]

Well isn't there also Berkeley with its cyclotron and all the particle and nuclear physics studies "nearby".

[MattSR]

Yes - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories started out as UCRL - University of California Radiation Laboratory.

It was separated out when the university no longer wanted to be associated with weapons development.

Some very bright minds were attracted to UCRL and LASL after WW2.

[cdev]

Before the current madness, SV looked much like parts of Sonoma and southern Mendocino counties still do, with miles of  of fruit trees growing various sublimely delicious pears, apricots, cherries, kiwifruit and so on.  The climate is probably quite similar to much of coastal Australia.

If you are into gardening, the Bay Area and its immediate environs is really a paradise, because you can grow almost anything in many places there and succeed.

They really should attempt to put more of that amazing land back into production. (Organic) Farming and high tech can and should coexist alongside one another.

Pesticides aren't really as necessary for agriculture as many try to tell us..

For example, most high tech facilities in SV now use herds of goats instead of herbicides to keep the undergrowth down. They eat everything.

I think Bob Pease even did a column about them.


Quote from: 4CX35000 on Today at 01:12:28

It is often said that the good weather made Hollywood and I suspect the same applied to Silicon Valley.

[rstofer]

Berkeley became associated with freedom of expression, especially speech.

Berkeley isn't doing so well with the free speech thing these days. 

Berkeley Lab (Lawrence Livermore Lab) is run by UC Berkeley and they do a lot of unclassified energy related projects.

UC Berkeley has pretty much pulled out of Los Alamos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory

As to Site 300 (also part of Lawrence Livermore), I'm not sure how much of that is run by UC Berkeley - perhaps none:
https://wci.llnl.gov/facilities/site-300/about-site-300

I lived in Silicon Valley, worked for some of the biggest and retired from there.  There was always a lot going on.

There were a lot of things that made Silicon Valley grow but I'm going to vote for Stanford.  A lot of top notch engineering talent comes from there.

[rfeecs]

Why this location?

You had it right:  Stanford, Terman and Schockley. 

From here:
http://www.pbs.org/transistor/background1/events/shockleymove.html

Shockley was lured to the Palo Alto area by Stanford's provost, Fred Terman who thought that a solid research institution in the area would benefit Stanford. With a location picked out, Shockley just had to find the people. He wanted tostaff his company with only the best and the brightest. He first sought to employ his colleagues from Bell Labs, but they wouldn't make the jump to the west coast -- or perhaps they couldn't make the jump to working with Shockley again. So Shockley began traveling all over the country recruiting young scientists.

At a lavish luncheon in February of 1956, Shockley and Beckman announced the formation of their brand new lab. They only had four employees at the time, but Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory had officially opened for business. Shockley's was the first company of its kind to settle in the Palo Alto area, but over the years more and more semiconductor labs -- and the computer industries they initiated -- flocked to the area. It wasn't long before the region had earned a new name: Silicon Valley.

Then came the traitorous eight, Fairchild and all the Fairchildren:
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/fairchild-and-the-fairchildren/

Of course Terman was also involved in the military technology build up in previous years as well.  He was "the father of Silicon Valley".

[steverino]

The Bay Area's climate is comfortable year round and good for people who like to spend a lot of time outdoors,

Its also immune to the insane heat and humidity that most of the rest of the country gets. If you look at the weather around the country, you'll see that the Bay Area particularly SF, is usually one of the coolest places in the country in the summer. The Bay Area has a lot of micro-climates but generally in a lot of places in the Bay Area air conditioning is virtually unnecessary because of summer fog that rolls in off the ocean when it starts to heat up inland.

The Bay Area's climate "used" to be comfortable year round.  The temperature forecast is 108°F today.  Staying inside.

[CatalinaWOW]

There are many factors that enabled SV.  Terman, Stanford, LLL, the weather.  But other areas are similarly favored.  SoCal.  Boston.  These two have many of the same advantages, and in areas where they are deficient there are other compensating factors.  Boston weather for example is no prize at best, but there is rich history, access to NY capital and fall foliage.

I suspect luck also plays a part.  Just as crystals could start forming in any part of a supersaturated solution, and often do.  But random factors lead some small fraction of them to dominate the others.

[f5r5e5d]

some attribute part of the difference to the culture and state laws around NDA and post employment restricting anticompete agreements, with greater restrictions in NE

while the left coast' more fluid employee and idea flow accelerated new company formation and competitive advantage growth rate

[Beamin]

RCA HP and AT&T. Hue innovators whos inventions have changed our lives. But now when I see them I think:

RCA: TV's and stereos so cheap they can't be sold at best buy only radio shack would sell such inferior garbage. It's only guarantee was it would break on you at some point soon and deliver minimal performance.   

HP: And Ok line of printers and PC's second only to dell and compac as far as reliability and quality.

ATT: Cell phone service with the most horrible customer service in the industry and salesmen that would harass people walking down the aisle in the mall.

That's what corporate America does: squeeze every last dollar out of something great until it turns into absolute shit.

[schmitt trigger]

Today's RCA is only a trademark, it is not the corporation that David Sarnoff created.

For a history of its demise, read towards the bottom of the Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA

[raptor1956]

Today's RCA is only a trademark, it is not the corporation that David Sarnoff created.

For a history of its demise, read towards the bottom of the Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA

RCA, in addition and along with other major consumer electronics companies, began to heavily outsource production of TV's etc to Japan and before long new Japanese companies were undercutting and outselling RCA and the other US electronic companies that went there to save money.  They did save money but in the end they lost everything.  Rinse and repeat in China.  Interestingly, I once worked for a Japanese automation company and it was hard to stifle a laugh when they'd complain about the Chinese stealing there IP and undercutting them.


Brian

[cdev]

Its my understanding that many multinational corporations frequently made/make conscious choices to dump profitable lines of work (examples, consumer electronics, computer hardware manufacturing, and many other businesses) due to what they claimed/claim are low profit margins, or anticipated low margins in the future. (due to deindustrialization)

The argument often given is that "highly mobile global capital" demands high returns on investment and if they can't get it, they want to liquidate the assets and put that money into something else.

Often the most valuable asset is the brand name.

We are seeing the rise of huge increasingly automated factories that "manufacture" goods for hundreds or thousands of "companies" often run by a single person or a few people, over the Internet. Similarly services like fulfillment are taking advantage of economies of scale. Soon, deliveries will be automated too.

When before you might have hundreds of factories employing millions of people, each with dozens of departments including sales, shipping and customer service, now using global value chains you can accomplish the same level of output with a few large facilities, each one located where that function can be satisfied in the most efficient manner.

This shift potentially frees up billions of people to pursue other things.

By all accounts the next decade will see the biggest changes the world has ever seen in terms of shifts in employment.

[cdev]

This isn't the fault of the high tech industry in the US, its the fault of the financial services industry and the so called global economic governance institutions and their so called "economic hit men".

And your term is right, thats what the business of business is about, extracting the excess profits from gradients of all kinds. Buy low, sell high.

Wealth worships supply and demand, and competition. This may be seen as a race to the bottom but its really a race to the top in that a few juridicial people are making unbelievable amounts of money, amounts that are growing at an exponential rate as they get better at cutting costs by pitting people against one another.

The more people need work, the less money they will work for. And computers will work for electrons. So they are certain that means really huge profits in the future.  (But theres one catch, where will the customers come from!)

Quote from: Beamin on Today at 16:30:10

That's what corporate America does: squeeze every last dollar out of something great until it turns into absolute shit.

[WA1ICI]

My father spent his whole career at Perkin-Elmer Corp. in Norwalk, Connecticut, so I got a good feel of what an east coast high-tech company was like. When I interviewed at Intel and HP in 1977, I really liked the more informal dress and behavior code I saw at the west coast companies.  I was also a big fan of the Whole Earth Catalog.  The thing that got me really excited about moving to Silicon Valley was the weather.  In early 1977 I was a grad student at Cornell.  When I flew to California for the job interviews, I remember flying out of the Ithaca, NY airport in a heavy blizzard.  When I was coming in to land at SFO (San Francisco airport), I looked out the window, and all the land was GREEN!

I think the weather had a big impact on the success of Silicon Valley.

One other factor in the location of Silicon Valley in the south bay was that it was cheap land, yet close to San Francisco, Stanford, etc. 

- John Atwood

[raptor1956]

Its my understanding that many multinational corporations frequently made/make conscious choices to dump profitable lines of work (examples, consumer electronics, computer hardware manufacturing, and many other businesses) due to what they claimed/claim are low profit margins, or anticipated low margins in the future. (due to deindustrialization)

The argument often given is that "highly mobile global capital" demands high returns on investment and if they can't get it, they want to liquidate the assets and put that money into something else.

Often the most valuable asset is the brand name.

We are seeing the rise of huge increasingly automated factories that "manufacture" goods for hundreds or thousands of "companies" often run by a single person or a few people, over the Internet. Similarly services like fulfillment are taking advantage of economies of scale. Soon, deliveries will be automated too.

When before you might have hundreds of factories employing millions of people, each with dozens of departments including sales, shipping and customer service, now using global value chains you can accomplish the same level of output with a few large facilities, each one located where that function can be satisfied in the most efficient manner.

This shift potentially frees up billions of people to pursue other things.

By all accounts the next decade will see the biggest changes the world has ever seen in terms of shifts in employment.

Indeed, and it's not just that companies sell off operations that are or are going to see increased competition -- in many cases they sell off all operations that make things.  Can anyone point to a single AMD FAB anywhere in the world?  The first company I worked for after the USAF was IBM and at the time they were the worlds leader in the tech industry and one of the most profitable companies in the world.  By the end of the eighties upstarts like Microsoft had ... well in the words of Bill Gates, "IBM is irrelevant."  That comment really hurt as an IBMer, not because he was wrong but because he was right.  What does IBM make today?

All the business community and pretty much all the national politicians have fully bought into the idea that lowering the value of work by pitting middle class workers in developed countries against folks in other counties that don't know what the middle class is and when they discover it the production moves elsewhere.  This isn't 'like' a race to the bottom it 'is' a race to the bottom but during the interval the folks with money make more of it.  This will end eventually and not by the folks with money finally gaining a heart but when the working class, almost all now poor, rise up as the French did two hundred some years ago. 

I've worked in the Silicon Valley some over the last 35 years and have seen many changes over that time.  When I first visited in the eighties there were still actual production FAB's but today about all that remains are much smaller development FABs.

But, the idea that there are large sectors of the manufacturing world the are completely automated with but a single worker is utter nonsense and even if you look down the road a few decades the idea that there will be no actual human workers is, again, nonsense.  Much of the trajectory in manufacturing there last number of decades is in outsourcing to low cost locations like Mexico and China and they movement there is not because the Mexicans and Chinese have better robots -- it's because they have cheaper people!  Indeed, investment in productivity enhancing technology, the better term than automation, has slowed in the last couple decades as companies exploit cheap people.  Why spend billions UPFRONT for automation when you can just throw a million more cheap people at it as the need develops.


Brian

[cdev]

Yes indeed, global value chains.

>But, the idea that there are large sectors of the manufacturing world the are completely automated with but a single worker is utter nonsense and even if you look down the road a few decades the idea that there will be no actual human workers is, again, nonsense. 

It is, I hope I didn't imply that there would be no workers, if I did I apologize. I just see very large numbers of people noy being prepared for the competition. Just the law of averages.

>>Also many people will still work for family business.

>>Even automated ones.

So few jobs will be generated that many will be kept in family.Others will be subject to trade agreements dictates- i.e. new globalized procurement rules designed to channel precious work experience to those able to pay for it in allied nations.. by working essentially for free for five or six years..

They will be working under Mode Four type schemes- Those workers will be employed by foreign firms and by definition temporary- their skills will likely be lost..

Certainly, growing numbers of IT jobs will no longer be even remotely stable- Unless they can be successfully connected to national security! This will be done by creating a huge surveillance infrastructure embedded in everyday devices at a scale which even George Orwell would be amazed at.

These jobs will likely be encumbered by various requirements- but will be protected from the ravages of globalized value chainism by a requirement for security clearances.

New smart features will eventually require that even all plumbers and electricians.. will need security clearances.

think Terry Gilliams "Brazil"..

The real purpose behind this will be

-a welfare program for the in group in a job market where there will be few if any winners..

-voter disenfranchisement  - controlling the nation while maintaining a phony illusion of democracy, when the real government is the global economic governance institutions like WTO, World Bank, IMF, and the various trade bodies, none of which are even remotely "democratic". .


Read up on North Korea's "songbun" caste system. New means may be required to justify the exclusions of so many.


Workers who are working have to be paid and eat,


so when the race to the bottom on wages is responded to by a second wave of regulation in the few areas left to governments, my expectation is they will automate, greatly reducing their utilization of commercial services as well. (market access, the ability to sell services in the territoiry of another (WTO) Member is whats driving the trade in services agreements for countries in the developing world blessed with large numbers of degreed young people and no jobs for them due to what seems to be encouragement by teh developed countries to never move beyond corruption- because of the fact that corruption makes it easier to strip them of their natural resources at lower prices..
So, developing countries are trapped in a sort of dependency or patronage system.. If they try to move beyond that they have to have a middle class.. which they seem unwilling to do because it means increasing wages and decreasing the ruling cliques power over the people..easier to control by means of foreign job system than it would be if the jobs were healthy and part of domestic industries (which would compete with teh offerings of the developed country corporations)

This is most exemplified by India.. where there is a huge gap between rich and poor which seems never to be reduced by government policy.. not intentionally at least...Its not just a lack of willingness to create a middle class. Instead it must be intentional.. Social control..In that environment they look to other countries -especially the US- for work.
Countries seem to have differentiated themselves into low wage countries with few if any social safety nets, and high wage countries with generous social programs and you cannot really straddle the fence without coming up against the US and other developed countries that demand safety nets dismantlement in order to participate in their global trade game.

See for example, how Egypt was sued by a French MNC when they raised their minimum wage after signing a trade agreement, in response to the Arab Spring.

So, frankly, trade agreements greatly limit the power of governments to make changes of any kind, even greatly needed ones, after signing them.
What I am saying is that other factors- external ones- may drive a push to automate more work, faster.

>>Too expensive. Workers have to get paid and eat.
Security....

Security is another one.. security and the risks inherent in countries with extremely high levels of inequality, result in very high costs to the ultra wealthy. (Who must always be on the alert.. they are often targets of kidnapping attempts and the norms of behavior in countries where there is a low level of corruption and the government and institutions of state are seen as legitimate pay much lower costs. because crime is rare and citizens generally report it.

As the perception of legitimacy declines, intangibles are lost and often it takes generations after changes for the trust to return..

[raptor1956]

Yes indeed, global value chains.

>But, the idea that there are large sectors of the manufacturing world the are completely automated with but a single worker is utter nonsense and even if you look down the road a few decades the idea that there will be no actual human workers is, again, nonsense. 

It is, I hope I didn't imply that there would be no workers, if I did I apologize. I just see very large numbers of people noy being prepared for the competition. Just the law of averages.

Also many people will still work for family business.

Even automated ones.


>Much of the trajectory in manufacturing there last number of decades is in outsourcing to low cost locations like Mexico and China and they movement there is not because the Mexicans and Chinese have better robots -- it's because they have cheaper people!  Indeed, investment in productivity enhancing technology, the better term than automation, has slowed in the last couple decades as companies exploit cheap people.  Why spend billions UPFRONT for automation when you can just throw a million more cheap people at it as the need develops.

Too expensive. Workers have to get paid and eat.
Security....

If it were just about automation why then move the plant to China or Mexico?  No, it's total cost and that figures into: labor cost, workplace safety controls, and environmental controls.  Labor is the main on but not having to spend much for workplace safety or pollution controls are also important. 

As a side note, production that was once done in the west and had to abide the rules produced goods with a certain environmental impact and now that the production has moved elsewhere there has been a significant INCREASE in pollution because they can get away with it. 

Oh, and if you think robots eat only electrons you never worked in that industry -- I have and they are not free.  In addition to the huge UPFRONT costs of buying and installing them they also have to be maintained and eventually replaced.  The reason companies move to places like China is not because there robots are better or cheaper but because they do not have to shell out billions UPFRONT for them before the plant makes dollar/yuan one.  As a matter of fact the average robot costs more to own and operate than many of the lower cost labor pools around the world.

There are of course a good many things that do use robots even in China and Mexico and many of them are fully justified.  In the semiconductor industry where I've worked for 35 years the wafers are stored and transported by a system called AMHS (Automated Material Handling System) and they do indeed replace a good many workers but they also require a good many workers.  As it turns out the main reasons why a new FAB has such a system has less to do with cutting labor costs, it does little to do that, but because they permit greater utilization of very expensive capital equipment -- equipment like immersion litho tools that often exceed $80M each and a typical new FAB has many  of them.  In addition, within the process tools are micro environments so clean that humans must be kept out -- including humans wearing head to toe cleanroom suits.


Brian

[Electro Detective]

Maybe the rent was so cheap it was a no brainer and no shortage of gunja dealers   

[cdev]

I think the rate of adoption of automation - whether its well planned - orderly, logical automation or a knee jerk response to changes- even panic- is an open question.

The worst kind of change would likely be due to panic- How might that happen? - The following many will think of as a worst case scenario, but I think its more likely than we think..

 
There are a great many examples of bad things that are being done which will inevitably lead to a total loss of trust if not exposed -

The ceding away of democracy's ability to regulate in economic matters is an attempt to scale back whats called by some "mob rule", just when its most needed, as jobs are going away..

The corporate world wont limit its own behavior..  Its trying to limit government's ability to do so too.

Thats what it clearly is attempting to do.

We're going down a path of no return where trust in government held by society will eventually just disintegrate.

This is why its going to happen.. this deal..



This is because everybody has expectations which are no longer supported by norms of government behavior (a situation known as "state capture"- sort of the apex of corruption) but people (and companies, to to a large extent) don't realize it yet.

This will cause a huge mess soon. You can bet on that. The reaction to that will likely be a backlash of both companies and people doing everything they possibly can to protect their own interests. But much of it will be for naught because the unforeseen consequences of back-room trade deals, particularly those on "services" which nobody realizes even exist, will be happening on such a large scale that anybody getting a good outcome will be well night impossible.

This will lead to massive increases in automation, even if its not ready yet.

But not in a manner which would be economically profitable for vendors of such services at the level to which they are accustomed. Instead the system by then will likely be falling apart.

Look at automation under that unfortunate future as an act of rebellion to the state capture situation.

It may happen, though due to the path were being coerced into via secretive, slimy trade agreements- They capture the future and enact a second enclosure of all that has any value, for corporations. When many people have very serious and well founded reservations as to their legitimacy.. and the legitimacy of any system that would sign away democracy.

This is done by the creation of new rules against "indirect expropriation" which deliberately undemine the power of the vote, taking away the ability of politicians to fix anything and guaranteeing that only liars become politicians.

Locking in an extremist ideology that almost nobody would support-  - in every area of economic relevance have already been traded away to others. Its a situation reminiscent of feudalism and serfdom. As Franz Zappa put it "the rights to you have already been sold".

Instead of rights to be treated well, all Americans are left with is rights to be treated equally. (unless they are guilty of any crime and "duly convicted" which could lead to real, literal slavery.)

Under state capture, because they have been in Arendt's words, "atomised".. the population has been quietly dis-empowered of the abilities they once had to demand accountability- his is to support new "rights" which have been given to multinational corporations to sell them any service which has been charged for anywhere in a country, without interference.  This is basically a green light to any kind of usury or exploitation which is allowed if foreign corporations get equal or in many cases superior rights to domestic corporations to continue it. (For example, they will get to pay their own employees whatever wages they agreed upon elsewhere, this will give them a huge price advantage in services because they may be able to pay their workforce less than US legal minimum wage, rotating them in and out every few years in order so they remain "temporary". They have for some time had a legal right to visas for them, however these were limited in the US by quotas which are now being challenged before the WTO in a case many overseas are watching closely. )

This, along with many other facts- the same 1994 agreement - as well as a new one, the GPA- also limits what the US can do in health-care, another fact which has been kept from the public, also government procurement - for example, infrastructure projects, have to be open to globalized bidding and this means that stimulus packages are not going to stimulate local hiring unless no foreign firms successfully bid the work..  All of this has been brewing for 20 years but kept out of the media.. So the changes all will come as a shock to many Americans. If tehy are even told about them. But judging by the past, they wont be.

The governments and the well connected multinational corporations that now own them - especially the US, concocted an entire new moral values agnostic global governance system, and quietly substituted it for the one most people still think is there, over the last 20 years.  this system basically is based on the divine right of kings.. and its meant to provide a "stable" environment for an expected global pillage as jobs vanish, wages fall and peoples lives collapse. Think of the deals as deals to share the wealth among thieves..

This is a disaster waiting to happen.

It includes an across the board freeing of both governments and companies from any responsibility to or for people's welfare.  This is happening because the economic power workers once had under scarce labor conditions has eroded away as technology made it more and more possible to replace more and more of them.   To preserve rights to things thought gained, power has to be maintained. It hasnt been, instead people have been deceived into thinking it has when its been quietly eliminated.

These changes have been sold by buying off the various groups that were in a position to help with special perks.. like access to what they think will be rapidly growing markets (but that again is highly unlikely) cheap labor, and the ability to resell the services of that cheap labor at a tremendous profit.

Even under bad business conditions, that likely looks awfully good to many multinational corporations and large business executives, until they dig a bit deeper and see that the cost of that cheap labor will be a societal collapse. A collapse f trust- the glue that holds society together.

That collapse will mean that none of these various groups that have been bought off will get what they were bargaining for, all will get an unparalleled disaster.

We already see how newer stores are built in a sort of fortress like manner, planners are planning for a future where the bulk of the population will be disenfranchised and dispossessed. In that future, business is only too happy to do whatever it takes to automate in order to reduce their attack surfaces vulnerable to banditry on all levels. In the second phase of the collapse having employees will signify a business seen ripe for taxation. Employees will be seen as a hook for taxation by governments only too eager to shift the costs of taking care of the people who they can to them as much as possible, based on the numbers of employees they have.

Lets not forget that taxes of all kinds will be falling, including property taxes because one of the main drivers of a homes value is its proximity to places of employment.

This next wave of redundancies as Brits would put it will be like no previous ones in that the hopes for re-employment for most losing jobs will be nil because of services liberalization (to cut costs for businesses they will use trade agreements to legally import very low wage skilled workforces) and automation. So when people in developed countries with high costs of living and high expectations for future earnings suddenly lose their jobs as well as their plans for the future they will likely drop off the economic maps for good, and they will know it and they wont be happy campers.

So as the number of people employed drops, state and local governments main sources of income will also dry up. At the same time, they will have large numbers of people, suddenly depending on them for healthcare and social services. They will panic, seeing their tax base suddenly drying up, and they will attempt to drive their unemployed residents away and replace them with rich people coming here from elsewhere.  But its clear that the "supply" of rich people is swollen by people who work for a living who will also be losing jobs (middle managers made redundant by automation in management) And since many of them will have been replaced by temporary workers whose permission to live in a country is directly tied to their being employed by a foreign company there, (thats how Mode Four, what I am talking about, works, in that way its a little like slavery) this will cause mass confusion.

People's homes values will be crashing and their investments will all be losing value rapidly because of panic selling and millions "taking early retirement" at the same time.


Countries will be doing everything they can to shed their responsibilities to anybody.

This will be a global phenomenon. Will prices for everything fall? They will have to, because people simply wont have any money to spend except on the barest essentials, but what happens and when is still too complex a situation to model.

Uncertainty which always existed but which an accelerated rate of drove all these bad decisions in backroom FTAs which lock in, will have led to a total collapse of trust that acts as the glue that keeps society together. Suddenly everything will cost more and deliver less. By abandoning the people's legitimate "expectations" for corporations, writing legally binding new internationally "agreed" "rights" for them that "Trump" the people's - (this- and the desire to move capital investments to higher and higher profit markets- but not take any risks- is whats driving all the changes (trade deals) and the business community's fixes to lock "their" profits and properties in forever.)

This greed and back room dealing to screw the people everywhere by the ultra wealthy of the world, will have created a real monster.

Then, OF COURSE, the surviving businesses will see even more automation as "their only way" to keep their heads above water, causing still more job losses. It will be much much cheaper then than it is now, as there will be a lot of used equipment on the market selling for just a few millions of worthless post collapse dollars, in other words, almost nothing.

Wages will also be almost nothing, as the few professionals who still can find work will likely be desperate and working just for food. They will likely demand payment in food, as each employed person will probably have an extended family of dozens or even hundreds of hungry mouths to feed.

Pray!

Quote from: raptor1956 on Today at 00:22:19>Quote from: cdev on Yesterday at 23:36:17

Yes indeed, global value chains.

[rstofer]

Its my understanding that many multinational corporations frequently made/make conscious choices to dump profitable lines of work (examples, consumer electronics, computer hardware manufacturing, and many other businesses) due to what they claimed/claim are low profit margins, or anticipated low margins in the future. (due to deindustrialization)

The argument often given is that "highly mobile global capital" demands high returns on investment and if they can't get it, they want to liquidate the assets and put that money into something else.

When Jack Welch ran GE, he had a strategy whereby if they weren't number 1 in a market or number 2 with a possibility of becoming number 1, he sold the business unit.  By being number 1, he could control pricing and profitability.  A lot of people lost their GE jobs although they might have stayed with the business unit.  Neutron Jack they used to call him.

All for profit!

As a stockholder, that's exactly what I expect.  I'm not in the social welfare business, I want increasing profitability and increasing share price.  The taxes I pay (capital gains) will go to the social welfare business by another route.

[retrolefty]

Its my understanding that many multinational corporations frequently made/make conscious choices to dump profitable lines of work (examples, consumer electronics, computer hardware manufacturing, and many other businesses) due to what they claimed/claim are low profit margins, or anticipated low margins in the future. (due to deindustrialization)

The argument often given is that "highly mobile global capital" demands high returns on investment and if they can't get it, they want to liquidate the assets and put that money into something else.

When Jack Welch ran GE, he had a strategy whereby if they weren't number 1 in a market or number 2 with a possibility of becoming number 1, he sold the business unit.  By being number 1, he could control pricing and profitability.  A lot of people lost their GE jobs although they might have stayed with the business unit.  Neutron Jack they used to call him.

All for profit!

As a stockholder, that's exactly what I expect.  I'm not in the social welfare business, I want increasing profitability and increasing share price.  The taxes I pay (capital gains) will go to the social welfare business by another route.

 While I agree with you, the current regurgitated mantra seems to be that Capitalism is evil at it's very basis (Marxism taught that first) and that only the 'rich' benefit from it's fruits. The thing is that I personally haven't seen a better system work in the real world. I don't believe that a world wide revolution will rise to crush the evil capitalist, nor do I feel that governments will ever be able to improve let alone replace the freedom and innovation that capitalism encourages.   

[cdev]

Retrolefty,

I think that the multilateral system is very adept at taking credit for things which happened not because of it but despite of it

Gains in social welfare over the last century came about because of things like public sewage systems and water systems, and rules against things like child labor and slavery, oftentimes requiring working conditions and wages meet some minimum standards (as opposed to simply being determined by market factors, which is what they want us to return to) They know no shame, as shown by opposition to generic drugs, extending dates for expiration of drug patents and scaling back or eliminating public higher and even basic public education, (they feel it creates unrealistic expectations in the poor)

And especially they want the public to have to compensate corporations when any regulatory act has any adverse effect on the corporations expected future profits- even if its greatly needed change.. They will come demanding that the law change be scrapped and win if it causes them any diminution of "
their" profits..

No-matter how needed, no-matter how much various industries might have been to blame for the situation. when the rules are changed in such a manner they automatically win.

This is an utterly wrong situation which would elicit laughter if it was suggested by its advocates in a social gathering. Why do we give them a free pass? Because we dont know about it, and the people pushing this agenda are lying to the whole country, all of them are.

These schemes dispense of the normal system of checks and balances and give all the chips to the multinational corporations. Especially foreign ones, no doubt because of US corporations delusions of limitless wealth and success in the developing world, unrealistic expectations which should be tempered by the knowledge that those countries are poor for a reason and its because they have been cursed with an elite that is just as adept at stealing from everybody else as they are if not more so.

And even more corrupt. What I am saying is that secret deals serve no one and that con artists are certain to both be disappointed. So none of them should get to trade our country's future jobs away.

They are trading away our country's future for pie in the sky. Without regard to the facts of the situation.

The powers that be are waging war on public everything. Especially things which are needed- essentials like water and health care systems, and education, globally.

These so called advocates of capitalism will likely kill the capitalism they want by their excess demands on society, none of which are even remotely justified.  Their agenda is not capitalism so much as maximum exploitation-ism.

Quote from: retrolefty on Today at 12:01:21>Quote from: rstofer on Today at 09:59:02>Quote from: cdev on Yesterday at 20:58:09>>Its my understanding that many multinational corporations frequently made/make conscious choices to dump profitable lines of work (examples, consumer electronics, computer hardware manufacturing, and many other businesses) due to what they claimed/claim are low profit margins, or anticipated low margins in the future. (due to deindustrialization)

>The argument often given is that "highly mobile global capital" demands high returns on investment and if they can't get it, they want to liquidate the assets and put that money into something else.


When Jack Welch ran GE, he had a strategy whereby if they weren't number 1 in a market or number 2 with a possibility of becoming number 1, he sold the business unit.  By being number 1, he could control pricing and profitability.  A lot of people lost their GE jobs although they might have stayed with the business unit.  Neutron Jack they used to call him.

All for profit!

As a stockholder, that's exactly what I expect.  I'm not in the social welfare business, I want increasing profitability and increasing share price.  The taxes I pay (capital gains) will go to the social welfare business by another route.

 While I agree with you, the current regurgitated mantra seems to be that Capitalism is evil at it's very basis (Marxism taught that first) and that only the 'rich' benefit from it's fruits. The thing is that I personally haven't seen a better system work in the real world. I don't believe that a world wide revolution will rise to crush the evil capitalist, nor do I feel that governments will ever be able to improve let alone replace the freedom and innovation that capitalism encourages.

[MattSR]

While this is all good and well, aren't we a bit off topic?

[bson]

Depends on what period you're looking at.  I moved here in 94 to work at Sun Microsystems, as a kernel TCP/IP developer, and spent 10 years with the company. I had a friends at HP, Intel, Cisco, Tymnet, SGI, and elsewhere.   The valley was very different then; it was more of a community of technically minded nerds who just wanted to build and work with cool stuff.  Most were extremely good at what they did despite sometimes lacking a college education (mainly due to not fitting well into formalized "step by step training" teaching programs, not due to lack of intelligence).  I had one friend who passed away almost exactly ten years ago who didn't have a college degree, but wrote and published well-regarded and frequently quoted papers in physics and mathematics.  I kind of miss that today: very individualistic people who approach the world as something to discover, and if you don't know how or what it's a cue to find out.  Too many engineers today just sit around waiting to be told what to do, or wait to be spoon fed.  There are still as many excellent, smart people it's just they're 1000 out of 10M rather than 1000/2000.  A school can teach and train, but it can't create technical brilliance any more than an art program can teach you to paint.  Either you can or you can't already on day one.  The ones who could moved out here to be among others like them.

I post this to clarify something: that places like the Valley aren't created by governments or dollars (though money helps), but largely by itself.  Its very existence contradicts corporatist ideologies - the belief that society is some kind of machine or organism (social body), with different roles that as long as someone has the right diploma you just slot them in.  That's not how the world in general works, people are autonomous unlike the parts of a machine: they have their own ambitions, ideas, visions, dreams, interests, likes, dislikes, and an entire emotional life unlike and different from any other individual.  Machine parts don't think for themselves, and degrading humans to machine parts results in nothing of use to anyone.  Brilliant people in particular tend to be more internally motivated and driven than others, and this is what really needs to be understood to understand the valley - because it will defy "machine" type models that assume a highly fungible individual that's merely a piece of some "system".  Another important factor is that academical studies tend to overrate the importance of academia; knowledge is of course critical, but without someone to "run with the ball" so speak it's of no use in itself.  It's a resource to go to for hows and whys, but it's not the goal envisioned.

[cdev]

It seems that TPTB feel threatened by anything they don't utterly control, and they cant control actual knowledge, which makes everything more and more unpredictable (because technology is increasing exponentially) But they, being on top now, see every change as a potential threat, and so are trying to covertly undermine progress, and limit the spread of new knowledge, or at least its ability to fix things that they don't want to see fixed, which is the totally worst way of meeting the challenges of our world today, (the biggest one being related to the huge and potentially divisive economic changes being brought by new technology) So, they're not fulfilling the responsibilities they have been given.

The old Silicon Valley was a uniquely successful and creative place where things worked, unlike Washington.

[calexanian]

Before it was Silicon Valley it was Microwave Valley. The real genuine reason it was that way is because of a few specific special people. The Varian brothers, Charles Litton, and Eitel-McCullough who went on to become Eimac.

Charles Litton in particular was instrumental in the magnetron production early on. As was told to me from old timers there he was the only guy who understood what was needed to make them in the early days. Let me see if Hack A Day will let me write an in depth article on it. 

[schmitt trigger]

Charles Litton in particular was instrumental in the magnetron production early on. As was told to me from old timers there he was the only guy who understood what was needed to make them in the early days. Let me see if Hack A Day will let me write an in depth article on it.

Yes, please do! This type of industrial oral history is beyond fascinating and should not be lost.

back on topic;
What I'm getting from this long discussion is that Silicon Valley came into being by a perfect storm of events. Listed on the many posts above.

What coalesced all those events into an unstoppable chain reaction was the Laissez-Faire  attitude prevalent in California in general, and in particular in San Francisco and its surrounding areas.

I distinctly remember a 1960s saying: whatever trend is going to happen in the US, it will happen in California first.

[Beamin]

Many companies are being sold for not "having enough growth potential". That to me is the definition of getting greedy. Look where it gets you: radioshack wasn't happy with taking a $0.04 cable and selling it for 49.99. All the radio stations on the west coast are being sold off for not having enough growth potential. This means that Chinese investors are going to come in and buy them. Next thing you know all the companies in your country are owned by foreign companies. Its really the beginning of the end. It will make it impossible for small business to open because they can't compete with these giants. Remember those towns where Walmart opened put all the local stores out of business drained the town dry when everyone lost their jobs then left leaving an empty building but never selling the building so that a local company can come in. That little town is called America. I have lived in towns where supermarkets do this. Leaving the empty building so their competitors can't move in. All the other stores that were connected to the super market then went out of business.