nostrademons, love your name and comments but disagree with a few points.<p>&gt;&gt;&gt; That&#x27;s not the Silicon Valley mindset<p>Having grown up in the heart of the valley, Palo Alto, traveled the country and the world in the military, and now back working in tech, my observation is that this mindset is more SV than people give it credit for.  It’s better packaged as meritocracy and innovation but the results are fairly apparent in the disparity of economic outcomes.  I like a lot of aspects of the SV mindset (engineer focused, innovation focused, risk and failure tolerant) and know a lot of good people in SV, but I wouldn’t imbue it a purity above Wall Street, or Hollywood, or D.C. or any other power center.  All are fairly dismissive of flyover country and self-assured in their wealth, power, and status.<p>&gt;&gt;&gt; skeptical of any politician… They’re using you;<p>I got used by the military for a decade and assume everyone is using me.  Haven’t seen much change in SV.  But I’m also a sucker for trusting people.  Life ain’t easy.<p>&gt;&gt;&gt; Economically frustrated masses are a very good way to gain power.<p>Yes, but they are also the primary internal way to change power structures.  And democracy allows us to do this in a controlled fashion through law.<p>&gt;&gt;&gt; thinking locally… opting out of the national conversation<p>While I agree with the ethos of thinking locally, to the extreme it can also be taken as, &quot;Don’t worry about the big things, leave that too other people.  Don’t worry about what the hirer-ups are doing, just do your job.  Don’t worry about the country, you can’t change anything”  As a Veteran, I disagree with the attitude of total disengagement. I got sent to war by politicians.  Only two presidential candidates are saying the Iraq war was stupid. That gets my vote.  These decisions are life and death for people.