The San Francisco Bay Area Has a Values Problem [View all]
Source: East Bay Express
... The ugly sustained attacks on middle-class BART workers in the mainstream press over the last year, combined with a blind eye toward Silicon Valley arrogance and large-scale financial criminality, have exposed a growing and worrisome trend in the Bay Area. The heroes of the current age are not the hardest working or most caring or most helpful members of our society. Instead, they are the most arrogant, and in some ways, the most compromised.
Take the tech industry. For all of its coolness and shiny products, values espoused by the leaders of this industry are contributing to a hollowing out of Bay Area progressivism and humanism. This month, Farhad Manjoo, author of the "High Definition" column for The Wall Street Journal, wrote a piece titled "Silicon Valley Has an Arrogance Problem." In it, he argued that many tech entrepreneurs believe that due to "their cultural and economic power," only they have the ability to "shape the future." Non-techies are dismissed as "unimportant to the nation's future."
... Think about that for a minute. Silicon Valley knows it is building and promoting technologies that will cause major job losses. Yet instead of being concerned with the well-being of those who will be unable to find work, the techsters are worried about whether they will be able to escape with their skin — and of course with their money.
Tech is not alone in corrupting local values. Consider the powerful companies that inhabit the gleaming buildings of San Francisco's financial district. It is not an exaggeration to say that the greatest organized criminality that has taken place in our lifetime is thriving there today.
Read more: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-bay-area-has-a-values-problem/Content?oid=3762141
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