Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

by Wendy Liu

government services tend to have a bad reputation when it comes to technology, especially in the US. But that seems to me like something of an attribution error — there’s no end of examples of private companies being inefficient or careless; we just don’t attribute their flaws to private enterprise as a whole.

Hmm

And for technical roles, public salary transparency based on posted bands would be helpful in order to minimise discrimination, ideally coordinated through industry-wide and location-specific bargaining.

The final avenue entails changing the way software development is done. As technology gains an increasingly crucial role in society, we need rigorously vetted software that can withstand audits, written by people who are qualified to write it. Software engineering could be licensed, analogous to how doctors or lawyers are licensed, starting with roles that could present the greatest downsides if done poorly.

Ultimately, the aim of reclaiming work from capital is to create a radically different vision of work. Rather than the current system that governs through excess financial incentives for a select few and coercion for everybody else, work could be reformulated as a more democratic endeavour whereby we collectively create the things we want in society.

One major factor underlying the success of many tech companies is the background phenomenon of privatisation in many parts of the world. Accordingly, a whole landscape of sectors which could have been public services are instead easy prey for tech companies: healthcare, education, banking, mobility, community, and housing, to name a few.

Plus, increasing the number of free public services is a way to tackle capital on the cultural terrain, because it challenges the core ideological tenet of capitalism: the idea that you must pay for everything you use. The end result of expanding public services is to diminish the importance of money by reducing the number of outlets for it, thus improving quality of life for those with less.

Eventually, all private corporations using proprietary technology should have to release it under an open license, though there could be a delay between deployment and releasing the source code, and the priority should be corporations with higher revenue or usage. Beyond weakening corporate power, this would also have the effect of encouraging innovation; coupled with efforts to increase computer literacy, this would give end users more control over the technology they use. A softer version of this, which could be useful as a transitional step, could be to mandate an open API for companies in crowded spaces, so that their intellectual property essentially becomes commoditised — something that is already happening with legislation targeting scooter apps in Washington, DC.14

Instead, we should see data as belonging to the people who created it and to the public at large. One example of actions taken in this direction is the city of Barcelona under CTO Francesca Bria, which has modified its procurement standards to enforce public ownership of data within private contracts.17 Data currently captured by ridesharing or scooter or housing-related startups should be anonymously aggregated for use by urban planners, and any personal data should be easily portable for export to another platform.

For products and services where meaningful competition is important, the lever of intellectual property reform offers an alternative to antitrust efforts to break up tech companies, which would have limited success in restoring competition due to intellectual property hoarding and high start-up costs in the sector. Rather than breaking up companies horizontally by undoing acquisitions — as has been proposed by US Senator Elizabeth Warren18 — their power could be challenged vertically, through removing their control over intellectual property. This would essentially tackle their power from the bottom up. Once a product gets enough traction, it should be unbundled into a series of open protocols and standards to permit alternative implementations, analogous to the way web browsers are developed today (though without the corresponding corporate dominance19). There should also be high portability of personal data, as well as publicly-released code and other data so that competitors can be built without duplication of work.

When corporations add their names to sports arenas, or embed their commercials as YouTube pre-roll, or pay for product placement in television shows, it’s an attempt to ensure that capital is inseparable from any sort of social or cultural space.20 You’re not supposed to enjoy anything without being reminded that these corporations exist and would like you to buy their products.

The ubiquity of vectors for advertising and the temptation to create products that do not address social need have combined to create a world where demand for unnecessary goods is inflated through immense advertising spend — money that could be spent on more meaningful cultural production than an ad for Diet Coke.

We should see advertising as market distortion and find ways to limit it accordingly.

Just as democratic ideals are subverted if the wealthy are able to buy votes in the political arena, so too are the purported aims of the market subverted if corporations are able to effectively buy customers.

a sense, abolishing Silicon Valley isn’t really possible — at least not anytime soon. And yet the point of making the demand is to illustrate that the systems that govern our world are constructed — the product of choices by human beings who came before us. Things weren’t always like this, and they don’t always have to be like this either.

Many, however, will choose to work for companies they won’t always agree with, and from this cluster I draw the most hope. They will go in with their eyes wide open, less inclined to take their company’s messaging at face value, more likely to treat it as just a job. The money won’t be enough to buy their loyalty

In a way, it’s not fair that the onus should be on workers to take the risks necessary to enact change — and especially not the industry’s newcomers, who may have the most to lose. It shouldn’t be their responsibility to ensure that their company behaves ethically. And yet, we can’t simply leave this crucial task to the people who currently have the power to change things, no matter how lofty their public statements about ensuring the future of humanity. Those who tolerate cruelty toward the people who are under their power now — the workers whose unceasing labour is responsible for all their power in the first place — have already shown that they do not have other people’s best interests at heart. They are certainly not worthy of more power. And so the responsibility lies on those who have little power individually but so much power together.

used to believe that the world was basically fair, and so I had no responsibility other than to maximise my individual success within it. But somewhere down the line, I started to see the entire system as flawed, unsustainable, unacceptable. I had to unlearn so much of what I had previously believed, because none of it made sense anymore. Focusing on individual achievement within the system no longer seemed reasonable when it felt like the legitimacy of that system was crumbling.

And yes, it’s true that if I had succeeded — if my startup had sold for an outrageous sum, and I had subsequently found myself in a comfortable sanctuary, able to ignore the rest of the world — I would not have written this book. I would have continued to swallow the reasoning of those who believe their success is deserved, dismissing any criticism of the terms of my success as motivated by jealousy. I can’t blame those who might dismiss my critique now. But I’m not writing this book for them. They can continue to believe whatever self-serving tales the powerful always tell themselves — and whisper to the power-hungry acolytes below them. What might make sense to them isn’t necessarily what’s best for everyone else. This book is meant for those whose belief has started to evaporate, and who are now thirsting for a narrative that speaks to their disillusionment. I write for those who are currently not in power, in the hopes that they’ll see the world differently, and from there go on to be part of something I could never have imagined on my own.

It’s impossible to transform into the perfect person overnight — the person who is the right subject for the world you want to create. After all, you don’t live in that world yet, and you’re unlikely to get there anytime soon. Instead, you can focus outward, making the structural changes needed to ensure that the people who come after you are better people than you, living in a better world than you do now.

Abolishing Silicon Valley, then, means moving beyond the flawed paradigm of capitalism. It is irresponsible to allow technology development to be driven primarily by the needs of capital. Instead, we should rewire the lines of power within the industry, as well as society at large; the goal should be democratic control over technology’s development, and an equitable distribution of its benefits.