&gt; It is absolutely insane that there is so much wealth being generated by these companies, yet they seemingly have no political will to influence the very localities they are based in<p>Wealth != municipal revenue. Menlo Park was particularly upset that Sun Microsystems (selling hardware and generating sales tax) was replaced by Facebook (no sales tax revenues).  A pizza parlor would generate more revenue for the city, seems like, than an Internet company.<p>The only other venue is for company employees to buy up residential real estate, start paying property taxes and show up for city council meetings, as the city is likely deriving significant revenue from that. But if that is not happening, we can assume that company employees chose to deploy their residential spending elsewhere, and if so, why should the city care?