One-party states don’t run well. Just look at California, a dysfunctional mess with America’s highest taxes and housing costs and an inability to fix dilapidated roads and low-performing public schools.
Solution: Silicon Valley should jump-start the moribund California Republican Party and use it to reform state government. And the state GOP ought to welcome this infusion of new ideas and, of course, money.violence
Silicon Valley this year awakened to the threat the Democratic Party posed to it. Elon Musk, since decamped to Texas but still tied into the Valley, backed Trump big time. Oracle’s Larry Ellison also backed Trump.
Investor Marc Andreesen recently explained to Joe Rogan the background on why he, a longtime supporter of Democrats including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, shifted to Trump. The ZeroHedge summary is titled, “Marc Andreessen Describes ‘Alarming’ Meeting With Biden Admin that Prompted His Trump Endorsement.”
Those “were the most alarming meetings I’ve ever been in,” Andreesen said. When discussing such developing technologies as artificial intelligence – AI – it was “full government control.” There would be a handful of large companies “that will be completely regulated and controlled by the government, they told us. They said don’t even start startups … there’s no way that we’re going to permit that to happen.”
That’s the Beijing model. The Chinese Communist Party controls everything, including competition among large companies. China is now advancing a huge AI push. China’s main advantage is its tech industry’s sheer size. Its disadvantage is that it lacks Silicon Valley’s ability to adapt the new technologies developed by the very startups the Democrats want to ban or regulate out of existence. Without the startups, Silicon Valley would become an annex to China.
Certainly, the Valley long has been plugged into the government, especially the U.S. defense and intelligence communities. After Hewlett and Packard formed their company in a garage in Palo Alto in 1938 with $538, they soon were producing tech products to help win World War II. The difference from China, though, is we let tech development largely remain free of government control.
Then there’s censorship. In September Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2655, passed by the Democratic supermajority Legislature, which outlawed AI “deep fakes” during elections. The bill sought to police satirical content, and so currently is held up in court because it clearly violates the First Amendment.
As to the California GOP, it should welcome an alliance with Silicon Valley because its issues are close to what the Valley needs:
A California-DOGE. This would be a state counterpart to Musk’s private Department of Government Efficiency, and run by the smartest Valley brains to find solutions to streamline and downsize our clunky state government.
Nuclear power. AI devours electricity like Godzilla. The New York Times headlined Oct. 16, “Hungry for Energy, Amazon, Google and Microsoft Turn to Nuclear Power.” This isn’t the 1950s. Today’s nuke technology is totally safe and California needs deregulation to build it.
Arizona-style universal school choice, which allows parents to withdraw their kids from the traditional education system and provides them state funding to use at the school of their choice. The tech industry is severely hampered when the rising workforce is poorly schooled. In California, Latino and Black kids, stuck in the worst-performing schools, especially suffer from an “achievement gap” with white and Asian students.
Taming abusive union power. I worked on state Sen. John Moorlach’s 2020 re-election campaign. Although he wanted to help Silicon Valley with cuts in taxes and regulations, he was frustrated when Valley billionaires joined with the unions to lavishly fund his victorious opponent, Dave Min. Min this year voted for the AB 2655 censorship. Then he was elected to the U.S. House, where he will be advancing his anti-freedom policies. Only the Valley can crack the unions’ stultifying power.
Silicon Valley and California Republicans need each other. Competition is good. Let’s make this a two-party state again for the betterment of California.
John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board and blogs at johnseiler.substack.com
