Oof. 2,400 words and I still don't understand the majority of this article. I'm going to ignore the Randian meanderings (verging at one point to medicare?), and just address the attack of "disruption" and startups that is mostly relevant to this community.
First off, I'm not the biggest fan of the word disruption. I think it's a great description of what we as an industry do, however it seems that the word has created some sort of cargo cult, and now it appears to have become synonymous with "Killing it, bro!".
So to associate the entire startup industry with the word "Disruption" and claim that all who work within Silicon Valley adhere to a so called "pro-Disruption argument" is ridiculous. At best it's a badly worded generalization, at worst it's a blatant attempt to marginalize all of the efforts we put into making our businesses seem professional and legitimate, as he implies that if you subscribe to this argument you automatically ignore all laws in your area.
Continuing on we see that the author digresses into some rather, shall we say, pedestrian, class warfare. It's laughable to assume all startup CEO's are millionaires... much less that most can afford that $50 trip to Whole Foods (Whatever happened to the ramen fueled startup? Am I the only broke college student working on a side project in his off time?).
To finally address the claim that this community is some sort of collective hipster law breaking mob, I don't think you'll find stronger proponents of rigorous property and civil liberty law anywhere else on the internet besides reddit. Articles for stronger privacy laws are regularly ranked #1 here. Really, when you strip away all of the ad-hominems you're left with "Laws don’t exist merely to frustrate the business ambitions of coastal hipsters". Ahhhh, I see.
Not to pile on, but I'd like to add that it is disturbing to see a professional journalist use profanity so willingly in such acerbic personal attacks.
First off, I'm not the biggest fan of the word disruption. I think it's a great description of what we as an industry do, however it seems that the word has created some sort of cargo cult, and now it appears to have become synonymous with "Killing it, bro!".
So to associate the entire startup industry with the word "Disruption" and claim that all who work within Silicon Valley adhere to a so called "pro-Disruption argument" is ridiculous. At best it's a badly worded generalization, at worst it's a blatant attempt to marginalize all of the efforts we put into making our businesses seem professional and legitimate, as he implies that if you subscribe to this argument you automatically ignore all laws in your area.
Continuing on we see that the author digresses into some rather, shall we say, pedestrian, class warfare. It's laughable to assume all startup CEO's are millionaires... much less that most can afford that $50 trip to Whole Foods (Whatever happened to the ramen fueled startup? Am I the only broke college student working on a side project in his off time?).
To finally address the claim that this community is some sort of collective hipster law breaking mob, I don't think you'll find stronger proponents of rigorous property and civil liberty law anywhere else on the internet besides reddit. Articles for stronger privacy laws are regularly ranked #1 here. Really, when you strip away all of the ad-hominems you're left with "Laws don’t exist merely to frustrate the business ambitions of coastal hipsters". Ahhhh, I see.
Not to pile on, but I'd like to add that it is disturbing to see a professional journalist use profanity so willingly in such acerbic personal attacks.