Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

by Wendy Liu

The people on whom we counted for advice or money or connections never raised an ethical objection to our flagrant disregard for other people’s privacy. Why would they? We had seen a niche in the market, and we tried to fill it. The market was the ultimate arbiter. Questions of ethics were beside the point. Whatever doubts might have lurked in the back of my mind always paled in comparison to the solidity of the larger ecosystem. After all, we were a tiny cog in a much larger machine. Everyone we dealt with knew exactly what we were doing and still dealt with us anyway. Respectable companies and individuals wanted to invest in us, acquire us, trot us out to promote their cloud computing services; how could we not have seen that as validation? The whole system had felt so sturdy. I couldn’t have doubts about my startup without the whole thread unravelling, threatening the foundation of my entire belief system. But now the thread was starting to unravel, and the larger tech industry wasn’t doing much to settle my doubts.