Antonio García Martínez argues Silicon Valley's sudden wealth has failed to spark a cultural renaissance

This is a good rumination on sudden wealth (as someone who's also seen its impacts firsthand), and the cast of characters rings very true.

You have the relentless striver who stays in the game out of competitive FOMO.

Money is what those without talent use to keep score. They'll keep futilely striving, and then disappear one day. Whatever.

The bigger pity is those (and there are a few) who go off to become artists or writers or some other thing, untethered to financial constraints.

Well, where are they?

Because we're not exactly seeing a cultural Renaissance from this massive wealth creation, as we saw in 16th-century Florence, or even the early 20-century US.

The only guy from the FB pre-IPO crop who did anything interesting with his life (far as I can tell) is someone who was hellbent on making it to the Olympics as an athlete (starting off as very much not an athlete), and he actually made it! I followed his arc, and it was incredible.

(Elon, on this of all days, is the exception that proves the rule here.)

But how about the rest?

SF is mostly an unchanged one-industry town, the same misgoverned mess that greeted me in '99, and that almost everyone in this cohort bails on. There are no great monuments or works of art or institutions dating from this period...other than venture funds producing more startups. SF will not reflect this time of glory like Amsterdam and Paris still embody their golden ages.

To invert the Churchillian phrase: never has so much been given to so few, who seemingly did so little with it.

This is a good rumination on sudden wealth (as someone who's also seen its impacts firsthand), and the cast of characters rings very true.

You have the relentless striver who stays in the game out of competitive FOMO.

Money is what those without talent use to keep score. They'll keep futilely striving, and then disappear one day. Whatever.

The bigger pity is those (and there are a few) who go off to become artists or writers or some other thing, untethered to financial constraints.

Well, where are they?

Because we're not exactly seeing a cultural Renaissance from this massive wealth creation, as we saw in 16th-century Florence, or even the early 20-century US.

The only guy from the FB pre-IPO crop who did anything interesting with his life (far as I can tell) is someone who was hellbent on making it to the Olympics as an athlete (starting off as very much not an athlete), and he actually made it! I followed his arc, and it was incredible.

(Elon, on this of all days, is the exception that proves the rule here.)

But how about the rest?

SF is mostly an unchanged one-industry town, the same misgoverned mess that greeted me in '99, and that almost everyone in this cohort bails on. There are no great monuments or works of art or institutions dating from this period...other than venture funds producing more startups. SF will not reflect this time of glory like Amsterdam and Paris still embody their golden ages.

To invert the Churchillian phrase: never has so much been given to so few, who seemingly did so little with it.

This is a good rumination on sudden wealth (as someone who's also seen its impacts firsthand), and the cast of characters rings very true.

You have the relentless striver who stays in the game out of competitive FOMO.

Money is what those without talent use to keep score. They'll keep futilely striving, and then disappear one day. Whatever.

The bigger pity is those (and there are a few) who go off to become artists or writers or some other thing, untethered to financial constraints.

Well, where are they?

Because we're not exactly seeing a cultural Renaissance from this massive wealth creation, as we saw in 16th-century Florence, or even the early 20-century US.

The only guy from the FB pre-IPO crop who did anything interesting with his life (far as I can tell) is someone who was hellbent on making it to the Olympics as an athlete (starting off as very much not an athlete), and he actually made it! I followed his arc, and it was incredible.

(Elon, on this of all days, is the exception that proves the rule here.)

But how about the rest?

SF is mostly an unchanged one-industry town, the same misgoverned mess that greeted me in '99, and that almost everyone in this cohort bails on. There are no great monuments or works of art or institutions dating from this period...other than venture funds producing more startups. SF will not reflect this time of glory like Amsterdam and Paris still embody their golden ages.

To invert the Churchillian phrase: never has so much been given to so few, who seemingly did so little with it.