For example, would Silicon Valley be the tech epicenter it is without Northrup Grumman parking there or DARPA funding an internet? Government contracts continue to fund the private technical advancements in California, Maryland, NoVa and Texas...
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We’re talking about 1985-2020, not 1945-70. At least I am. If you think red and blue are economically equal partners today there is no real conversation here.
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I must agree with your premise or there is no real conversation here?
Sounds reasonable. Sounds like the kind of reasonableness that would focus on one subsidy while opportunistically ignoring the other (ongoing, from 1945 to present), doesn't it?
theguardian.com/cities/2018/ju
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The defense economy bootstrapped Silicon Valley — in the 50s-70s. It is a fraction of that economy today. The Googles and Amazons have emerged from that state bootstrapping to create a thriving private sector. No similar vitalism took root in what us now Red America.
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I think part of that is that we produce product whose cost for distribution is pretty much sunk in AT&T's past; write once, run anywhere, right?
WAY different in commodities markets, which you acknowledge; a harder market, but equally if not more important to everyday living.
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Competitive regions innovate and stay ahead of commoditization pressures. Memory chips give way to CPUs etc. Software gets commodified into open-source. Low-margin commodity economies and globalization pressures are not unique to red regions.
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That hasn't been my experience; memory chip manufacture gets sent over seas, software does not become open-source but becomes SAAS/PAAS while at Apple, Amazon, and Google, internal repos demand disassociation from open-source initiative.
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Those things don’t just happen. People come up with ideas to make them happen. SaaS as a response to open source wasn’t just nature. The point is, there is a certain willingness to play the game on a global field on the strength of your open market competitive ability.
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The auto industry is borderline blue/red. It came under threat with the 70s oil shocks. It slowly retreated and fell behind. The return to innovation and competitiveness today is being led by Tesla in CA. Not any of the rust belt regions. Why?
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I think Tesla is a particularly poor example for you, as he seems to be moving out of state due to the sclerosis success delivered to CA; certainly put most of his personal property in CA on the market and my cybertruck will come from TX.
I think he just liked the sunsets...
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Tesla will move but it’s a true California company. Tech dna inside auto dna. Wherever it goes it will take some CA tech culture with it. Austin is as much a beachhead for CA and NY to blue-up Texas as it is a places where CA and NY expats might go Texas.

