Fix San Francisco and Then Maybe I'll Listen to Your Tech Utopia Bullshit

Y’all are too arrogant. Sure, you have the richest organizations the world has ever seen (maybe), the richest people the world has ever seen (maybe), and the most rapid change the world has ever seen (maybe…and also outside of things like meteoric impact, rapid temperature change, mass extinction etc.)

And all this money means a lot is at stake: pride, personal accomplishment, escape from poverty, geopolitical dominance, luxury, vanity, power; All regular parts of the human condition that must be negotiated.

So, lots of people with horses in the tech race are spouting ducktales about how their thing is going to be the best invention since the Gutenberg press, or double entry book keeping, or the Wisdom of Thoth. And you know what, a lot of you are quite brilliant…or at least decorated and talked about as if you are brilliant…or at least rich, or at least work for a rich person, …or have a high valuation. Maybe one these ideas will do something nice for the world.

But save me the Messianic, Utopianist, Philosopher King, Trust Fund Hippy Bullshit. I don’t believe you. There are so many reasons not to. We can talk about the deleterious effects of social media, we can talk about the racism in AI, we can talk about proof of work boiling the ocean, and proof-of-stake as a gesture toward feudalism, we can talk about most of your “genius” startup ideas and “genius” teams failing or never actually making any money, we can talk about decrease in productivity concurrent with the rise in automation, we can talk about national scale wealth inequality, we can talk about the Red Queens Race, we can talk about the enantiodromia of the Karamazov Problem. All of this has already been covered at length. But I just want to talk about San Francisco.

Every tree is known by it’s own fruit. If this is the world you tech bros make in your image, with all of your extravagant wealth, and power, and cleverness, and foresight, count me out. In visiting SF on Oprah’s 2020 vision tour just before covid, I walked one block from my fabulous, luxury hotel and find myself in the middle of Mad Max. Apparently all of the money and geniuses in the world (or at least a highly non-trivial percentage), is inadequate to deal with a neighborhoods worth of human suffering. And this is your Utopia. Human feces in the street, kids with nothing to eat, mental health crises, random acts of violence.

But here’s the thing. I’d like to believe you. I would like to believe the promises of the laser eyed clubhouse priests of DeFi and Blockchain, about elimination of corruption,  meaningful wealth building for all, decline of nation states and the establishment of a human family, through trustless finance. I would love to believe that AI and UBI would offer us struggle free lives of  pure merriment and creativity. I would love to believe that your app, or your yoga class, or your business coaching over zoom is going to change my life. But I can’t because that’s ALL you want to talk about. All you want to do is sell me on a world that you are incapable of building, and unwilling to sacrifice for, with all of your infinite money, and unparalleled cleverness, and your vision boards, and your enlightened cadence. You want my money and my faith, but you haven’t earned my trust or respect. You’re air hustling. Don’t tell me how you’re going to save the world, because I’ve seen what happens where you tried that out.

Don’t confuse this with an anti-technology rant. Our ability to mediate the electron through first order logic has brought wonders unto the world. Market systems based on trust and rule of law distribute resources better than the selfish whims of a potentate or a ruling party. I am grateful to have experienced the benefits of both. And I appreciate the hard work, creativity, personal growth, and discovery that goes into solving technical problems, building software and machines, and running complex teams. But as scale increases, it seems to me that we should cultivate greater wisdom and development of the soul commensurate with the advances in toy and tool making.  Your “city on the hills” evidences no such qualities. Just be honest and say you want the money and you’ll do whatever to get it. Otherwise, fix San Francisco, and then maybe I’ll listen to your tech utopia bullshit.