SF vs DC

Economist Tyler Cowen makes an observation, then a prediction.

The observation: [bold added]

today’s America has two fundamental and really quite different cultural and intellectual centers: Washington and its environs, and the Bay Area (including Silicon Valley, San Francisco and, if I may cheat a little, Seattle).

His prediction is conflict:

To date, these two new cultural and intellectual centers have proceeded on largely separate tracks, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, ignoring each other as much as possible....

But that won’t be the case going forward. The law-making and regulatory state will expand to cover more of tech, and tech has scaled so effectively that its products -- such as autonomous cars or the possible ability to influence elections -- are running into more legal and political issues.

Professor Cowen, given the space constraints of a newspaper column, had to make his case for American bi-polarity without delving into too much detail. History has shown that there are always tensions between power centers, be it New York v. Washington, San Francisco v. Washington, or even San Francisco v. Los Angeles.

In his particular example there are also strong ideological commonalities. The Bay Area supports powerful government, as long as the latter advocates, for example, the climate-change agenda, diversity of race and sex (but not ideology), gun confiscation, and immigration non-enforcement. During the Obama years big tech freely (except possibly for Apple) turned over the tools of the surveillance state to Washington ostensibly for security reasons, with the furtherance of the progressive agenda as an ancillary benefit.

If Tyler Cowen is right, the looming battle between SF and DC will be a "rude awakening," but IMHO the American people will have more to lose if there is no conflict at all.