But Detroit was much more than that in its heyday: it was a symbol of American industrial might.  The birthplace of the assembly line.  The place where other industries looked for process innovations.  The biggest growth industry in America.  (If you look at which professions did well during the Depression, "gas station attendant" and "automobile mechanic" were at the top of the list.)<p>Much like how Silicon Valley is currently the symbol of American innovation.  The birthplace of the microprocessor.  The place where other industries looked for process innovations.  The biggest growth industry in America.  (If you look at which professions did well during this recession, "Web Developer" and "Software Engineer" are near the top of the list.)<p>Detroit didn't start out as 3 gigantic car companies with bad management.  Before WW2, there were literally <i>hundreds</i> of automobile startups.  Everybody had an idea for how to build a better car.  There's a nice long list of them on Wikipedia:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_United_States_automobile_manufacturers" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_United_States_a...</a><p>But eventually, most of them went bankrupt or were absorbed by the Big-3.  And that let the Big-3 get complacent, which let foreign competition kill them (undoubtedly helped along by government).  The same thing could easily happen to SV's tech industry, given a period of consolidation.<p>A lot can happen in 50 years.