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user-inactivated  ·  2972 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What happens to a tiny town when Walmart disappears?

There's an argument going around, originating with Michael O. Church I think, that the problem isn't too much money, it's that the amounts of money floating around attract graduates from elite business schools who couldn't make it on Wall Street and use VC firms as their safety net, so the people running the show don't really want to be there, don't have much understanding or appreciation of technology, and see no reason to learn because startups are expected to fail. In that view, the whole circus is run by people treating it as a power suit McJob. I don't know how much truth is there, I have avoided that world my whole career, but from stories I hear and looking from the outside it sure sounds plausible.

What I do know is that even among programmers, outside of Silicon Valley there's much more healthy skepticism of the stupid memes (the sharing economy...) than in it, and there would be fewer very smart people wasting their talent on nonsense, trivialities, and horrors with smiley faces painted on if they could get some distance.

Talking to a Palantir recruiter was one of the scariest conversations I've ever had, because he was more than happy to admit the tinfoil hats don't know the half of it, but it was for the best because someone is going to do everything they do, and they're all "deviants" too. He said "deviant" a lot. They like deviants at Palantir, and that's why they're Making the World a Better Place. Because while they're deciding whether or not you're a terrorist based on your taste in porn, at least they're not going to judge you. And I could see how that pitch might work, he sounded like he really bought what he was selling himself.