Can this economy last? Po Bronson, the chronicler of Silicon Valley and today’s techies, offered the following warning:
“Can the (Silicon) Valley’s high-tech pickup game keep growing forever? Isn’t there some natural limit where the degree of chaos caused by the churning of start-ups and failures exceeds the degree of order established by standardized protocols and it starts to tear itself down faster than it builds up? Doesn’t the fact that the business is running on vapor – without revenues, without offices, without physical products – mean that at a certain point it will lose its ability to float? Do the principles of economics work in space, beyond the reach of gravity? Is there any oxygen up there? One fad after another has been proven to be no more than that, but amazingly, everyone still has a job, plugging sixty-hour weeks into the next fad. Surely, surely, a crash is due. Not just a brisk correction that can be patched by repricing options but a real crash.”
Bronson, Po, The Nudist on the Late Shift, NY: Random House, p. xxx.