Silicon Valley's Power: Right Question, Wrong Answer

The Economist wrings its hands over the vast wealth and power being created in Silicon Valley [bold added]:

The area’s tech companies are worth over $3 trillion. Last year one in five American business-school graduates piled into tech. [snip]

The danger is insularity. The geeks live in a bubble that seals off their empire from the world they are doing so much to change...a charmed circle with great wealth becomes cut off from everyone else. For a group rewriting the rules for industry after industry, that is a special danger.

The opinion writer says that critics (implying the Economist editorial staff) are concerned that Silicon Valley

dominates markets, sucks out the value contained in personal data, and erects business models that make money partly by avoiding taxes.

He warns darkly:

They should remember that the law can change. If they want a seat at the table when it does, they need to be part of the markets they sell into, not isolated from them.

In other words, if they know what's good for them, tech companies should work cooperatively with and pay tribute to government.

In tech it was even more of a blowout (NY Times)

Your humble observer is worried about just the opposite, that Silicon Valley will become too close to politics. A team of SV engineers and programmers volunteered to rescue the Obamacare website after its disastrous introduction in late 2013. They were happy to volunteer--and their companies gave them months off to work on it---because the political views of Silicon Valley lean heavily Democratic.

Now just imagine if the projects to clean up the government's computer systems (which includes unifying the tax, healthcare, and other databases) are worked on by techies who have a strong preference for one political party. Will they have the ethical codes and moral fiber not to use the immense knowledge at their fingertips to influence the outcome of elections?

To ask the question is to answer it.