This article has inspired me to read Andrew Yang's book.
As a silicon valley person, I have become part of this bubble. A lot of the things he said apply to me.
I've recently tried to understand what it looks like to leave Silicon Valley, but it is certainly not a simple thing to do. To somehow exit this so-called meritocracy and move to a place that is more focused on a holacracy (not in the Zappos way).
I'd like to go to a place where a person is not defined by the size of their paycheck, how many hours they work and how big their start-up exit is.
That said, I don't know how I can fit into that society; I don't know how I can move there. I don't even know where there is.
"In coming years it’s going to be even harder to forge a sense of common identity across different walks of life. ... They ... retain a deep familiarity with the experiences of different types of people. ... In another generation this will become less and less true. There will be an army of slender, highly cultivated products of Mountain View and the Upper East Side and Bethesda heading to elite schools that has been groomed since birth in the most competitive and rarefied environments with very limited exposure to the rest of the country."
As someone who grew up in the middle of nowhere and currently lives in a different middle of nowhere, I would like to suggest that Yang is several generations out of date. Perhaps several centuries. Or millennia.
"Today, thanks to assortative mating in a handful of cities..."
Okay.
I suspect Yang is deep within his own bubble and is like the fish that doesn't know it's wet.
I've often felt like I'm somewhere in between worlds - I'm studying at the "top" university in my country, working at a Fortune 500, etc., and on the other hand I know how to use a chainsaw, have done my fair share of home renovation, own a few guns, and hit the range on weekends.
There is pretty much any activity or community that doesn't exist within your sphere. If yours is anything like mine, the people around you play Ultimate Frisbee, rock climb, "hike", do photography, and are "foodies". Pick an activity or community that you don't see represented in your sphere, and that's probably what you're looking for.
As an aside: my girlfriend and close friends have commented that I speak differently when around, e.g., old boomers at the range. You can use whether you feel like you "fit in" as a litmus test, and if you don't fit in, rest assured you will in due time. In my experience, people outside of "meritocratic" (read: finance, tech, law, etc.) bubbles are very kind and welcoming.
> If yours is anything like mine, the people around you play Ultimate Frisbee, rock climb, "hike", do photography, and are "foodies"
Hahaha. I can spot a "tech worker" (not even just developer—manager, sales, whatever) hiker at half a kilometer (yeah there are plenty I don't spot, but there's definitely a "look" that exists in clothing and affect and is fairly common and non-tech-workers do not have it). If you tasked me with finding as many people as I could with rock climbing gym memberships but I wasn't allowed to go to such a gym to do it, I'd hit the coffee shops in our "startupy" district around lunch time on a weekday (well, not right now, but you get the idea). But I've been told I'm being ridiculous and that these activities don't have a class component to them because quite a few participants aren't involved in software companies or software development. Well yeah, but something doesn't have to be absolute to be a noticeable trend. Lacrosse, crew, skiing, squash—not technically limited to a certain social class but I bet you'd find some class-related trends among their participants, especially people who do or have done two or more of those activities with any frequency.
We like what we like in no small part they're the "right" things to like, among "our" people.
Heh. I have a lousy sense of direction. Once I was in the middle of San Francisco, utterly lost (this was in the days before ubiquitous cell phone maps), trying to make my way to a tech developer conference. I tried and failed to use a paper map. I tried asking people for directions and failed to understand or follow them.
Eventually I gave up and just looked at the people around me. Then I moved backwards along the techie gradient, which took me straight there on the shortest possible path.
(No lanyards at the time, either. Or I was new enough at the game to not know to look for them? I don't recall.)
As a silicon valley person, I have become part of this bubble. A lot of the things he said apply to me.
I've recently tried to understand what it looks like to leave Silicon Valley, but it is certainly not a simple thing to do. To somehow exit this so-called meritocracy and move to a place that is more focused on a holacracy (not in the Zappos way).
I'd like to go to a place where a person is not defined by the size of their paycheck, how many hours they work and how big their start-up exit is.
That said, I don't know how I can fit into that society; I don't know how I can move there. I don't even know where there is.