Tech Guru Discovers Appeal of Localism in Wake of Trump Victory

The Wall Street Journal had a piece up recently entitled "New Populism and Silicon Valley on Collision Course." Basically, left-leaning globally orientated techies are in shock that the nationalist Trump won the election. When Barack Obama was holding the gun, they didn't seem to mind so much. After all, they largely agreed with him. Since it was pointed at those loathsome heartland rednecks it was perfectly understandable that there should be only one set of rules for the whole nation- and that the central government should enforce those rules on the backwards hinterland whether the inhabitants liked it or not.

But it turns out there was a whole lot more folks in those backwoods than the tech gurus thought. Now Donald J. Trump is about to hold the gun, make the court appointments, and what have you. Suddenly, centralization doesn't seem so attractive. Now it occurs to them that maybe the entire continent wide nation of 320 million people should not be forced to adhere to the same rules about everything under the sun.

Silicon Valley tech guru (and CEO of Century 21 Bitcoin) Balaji Srinivasan had this to say:

“My Stanford network connects to Harvard and Beijing more than [California’s] Central Valley,” says Mr. Srinivasan. Eventually, he argues, “there will be a recognition that if we don’t have control of the nation state, we should reduce the nation state’s power over us.”

Silicon Valley gurus are talking about how they do not want to live under rules made by people they have nothing in common with. That is exactly the point that the heartland has made about the two coasts for some time. Both are right. Localism provides a framework by which we might all get along. 

If government is necessary, then we can either have a decentralized government or a centralized one. Right now we increasingly have a centralized one. Decisions for the whole nation are increasingly being made by the residents of one city. The nation itself is divided and every four years one side of the divide must live in terror because the other side wrests control of the gun away. Rather than endure this struggle which guarantees that half of our society will always be unhappy, why not let localities make the rules as they see fit, and make it a lot less important who the President is? 

Localism is for people who can sleep well at night even though people they don't know in a city they have never been to are doing things that they don't approve of. In other words, it is for mentally healthy people who are not controlled by the unattainable fantasy that someday the government in Washington is going to force everyone to live just the way they think people ought to live. Sadly, our society has been conditioned to make snap judgments based on emotional outrage on situations from afar where we hear only one side from a news report. Its not healthy, either for the individual or for the society since it produces an environment were demagogic strongmen can thrive for a while.