>"Silicon Valley" is a spectacular, world historical squandering of brain power and it needs to stop.
Are you implying that there are less-frivolous actors offering competitive salaries and getting ignored, or that SV is inflating the price of programming labor? Because if the latter, and you're hoping for a correction of programming salaries down to lower-middle-class clerical work that humanitarians can afford, won't those with brain power just "squander" it in some other better-paying field?
What? Where are people going to get the money to pay higher/equivalent salaries if not funding?
The non-tech sector seems perfectly content to pay engineers 60k under constant threat of outsourcing. In the absence of Silicon Valley competing for talent they'll get away with less, not more.
Google/Facebook/Apple/Microsoft/etc have been and will continue competing for talent. 2005 to 2009 was hardly a time of "easy money", yet the big tech companies still had to resort to collusion to combat demand for engineers.
I can say this much -- I have exactly one friend who also works as a software engineer. The rest of my friends are activists, students, service industry workers and non-tech entrepreneurs who are getting absolutely crushed by the cost of living in the Bay Area. A massive, "catastrophic" crash in the tech industry would, on balance, be great for all of them.
> who are getting absolutely crushed by the cost of living in the Bay Area
Outside the bubble, New York has always been like this, and it's not because of the tech industry.
Like the Bay Area, New York appeals to a lot of people, and with the appeal comes competition for housing. The Bay Area is a desirable place to live -- the weather is always excellent, there's plenty of stuff to do (try finding a mountain to ride your bike up in New York City), etc. People pay it because they like it. I don't think it's because tech is there.
I've only lived in the Bay Area for 6 years and I've watched it change dramatically for the worse. My friends who have been here since the 90s talk about it in biblical, apocalyptic terms. It isn't "just like that". Something fundamental has changed.
Are you implying that there are less-frivolous actors offering competitive salaries and getting ignored, or that SV is inflating the price of programming labor? Because if the latter, and you're hoping for a correction of programming salaries down to lower-middle-class clerical work that humanitarians can afford, won't those with brain power just "squander" it in some other better-paying field?