“Some of his health care picks could be *really interesting*.”

[supergee]

Scott Alexander suggests the possibility of a few good Trump appointees.

Comments

[arlie]

I don't know these people. I don't want to pay enough attention to politics to know these people.

But I've come to mistrust what I'm going to call the clique of Silicon Valley innovators, such as the guy who founded Tesla.

Why? Because some of them are routinely commiting abusive business practices involving privacy and/or externalities. And some are known for their companies forming secret cartels at the expense of their employees. And I suspect I'm only seeing the tip of an iceberg in either context.

What's good for successful Silicon Valley innovators - even those with big dreams and/or pet projects intended to benefit humanity as a whole - does not seem likely to be good for customers, employees, neighbours, or folks with potential to be any of those.

As an example from the article, the idea of making drugs available in the US with less development bureaucracy sounds great. But we can perfect the FDA (for any definition of perfect) to no net effect, a long as the medical insurance bureaucracy continues its current policies unchecked. (I'm currently looking at $500 a month in US prices for drugs my better-than-average medical insurance refuses to cover. And no, it's not something infamously expensive like anti-retrovirals :-)) And then there's big pharma itself, charging whatever it can get away with. (The same drugs would cost 1/3 of that in Canada, and probably 1/6 of the US price in Australia, FWIW.) Simply making the drugs available in the US will only benefit those who can comfortably afford not to rely on insurance to pay for them.

Nothing I've seen from the big name innovators in Silicon Valley suggests they have any idea what life looks like for anyone below their level (well, maybe they grok less successful executives, and other folk taking home more than $500 K per year :-() I feel certain their policies would reflect their blind spots, as well as, most likely, being tailored to benefit their own businesses.

[supergee]

I'm wary of these people too. I used to think geeks could run things better than anyone else, but that was before Newt Gingrich.