Abolish Silicon Valley

How To Liberate Technology from Capitalism

Wendy Liu

A memoir by Wendy Liu about her experience in the silicon valley side of the tech bubble, and her failed startup, followed by general critiques of capitalism both in the tech industry and the world at large

“No matter how good our automation technology, there was no viable business model in which we would actually achieve our goal of giving workers back their time”

“When everything’s a commodity, even human suffering can be an economic boom”

“Here’s another way to understand profit: as an indicator of inefficiency, a sign that something has gone wrong in the factors that shape a given market. Some level of profit may be acceptable in the early stages or when necessary for expansion, but if a corporation has swelled to billion-dollar heights and is still turning to new frontiers to maintain profit margins, that’s a problem”

Core Ideas

• Startup culture is unsustainable
• The lack of ethics in tech education leads to worse products and a worse world
• A healthy work-life balance is seen as a weakness by startup people
• Humanities provides an important greater context to the work done by other sectors, and it’s lack of perceived value in the current economic climate is a problem
• The core flaws of the tech industry are symptomatic of the larger failed system of capitalism
• Profit should be redirected to workers or greater society, rather than being the goal of a corporation

Proposed Solutions

Reclaiming entrepreneurship

• publicly owned fund for entrepreneurs (both for new products and for businesses to transition to worker coops or alternative management models)
• judgement based on practicality rather than market dominance
• fair split between workers and founders
• eliminate private investment funds

A company that’s able to mint billions is too large to be run for the benefit of a small number of shareholders

Reclaiming work:

• raise minimum wage and integrate minimum raises to account for inflation
• universal healthcare and better unemployment to allow workers more autonomy
• unionization in all industries to allow for workers a way to organize against toxic environments
• migrant worker benefits that allow them to switch jobs without being dependent on their employer
• worker representatives on corporate boards (if not a removal of boards entirely)
• institute a maximum wage based on the lowest wage (including contractors)

Reclaiming Public Services:

• universal healthcare, publicly funded primary and secondary education, public banking
• nationalize mobility (scooter companies, public transportation, etc)
• combine the concepts from private shared office spaces with public libraries

Reclaiming Intellectual Property:

• reduce copyright and trademark expiration dates
• patents should only be granted under specific circumstances, and not traceable
• work funded through public grants should have open licenses
• source code should be opened after a certain amount of time (or alternatively, at minimum, a public and open API that contains a large amount of the featureset)
• data should be in control of the people, and not seen or used as an asset for the company

Public interest should triumph over concerns of private investment

we should see data as belonging to the people who created it, and to the public at large

Reclaiming Culture:

• remove the ability to advertise a product that doesn’t meet an ethical standard
• remove advertising from spaces that accept public funding
• greatly reduce abilities to target advertisement, and mandate opt-in
• political advertising should be public record
• ad-based services that would struggle under new regulations should receive public funding (3)

Final Thoughts

equal parts memoir, analysis, and proposal. This book should be an essential read for anyone in or around the tech industry, and even people who aren’t. I loved this book and it really opened my eyes to a lot of potentials I haven’t considered.