Nightmare on Main Street: If Silicon Valley ran the country

Maybe it was the warm spring air and the double Jack Daniels, or maybe I was just bored. I dozed as I listened to former tech execs Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner spar in a televised debate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in California. And I had a dream …

SACRAMENTO, May 6, 2011 — California Gov. Meg Whitman and U.S. Senator Carly Fiorna today announced their plan to bring the state “into line with Silicon Valley as it moves into the second decade of the 21st century.”

The two ex-CEOs turned successful politicians said in a joint statement “that merging California and Nevada will not only allow us to build on the synergies between these two great states, but will allow us to realize a savings in governmental costs of at least $25 billion a year.”

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Sen. Fiorina, who led the 2002 merger of Compaq into Hewlett-Packard, said she will apply those lessons as she helps govern the new state of Calivada. “When you dial 911, you’ll no longer have to wait for some government bureaucrat to come to your aid. The calls will be routed to a private outsourcer based in Mumbai, who will respond to your request with all the blazing speed computer users have come to expect from India-based help desks.”

The proposed Calivada would join MassaHampshire and New Texazona as the first U.S. states to issue their own visas; approximately 50,000 workers a year will be admitted under the new H1000B-1 program, designed says Secretary of State Larry Ellison, “to alleviate the critical shortage of coders, developers, and file clerks that has crippled our high tech-industries.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General Steve Jobs defended the use of waterboarding to extract confessions from two Web journalists who allegedly found a prototype of the iPhone 5G at the Cupertino city dump. “Their possession of that information was a ticking time bomb. There was no time for Miranda rights and other wimpy excuses,” he said.

And in Washington, D.C., California’s other senator, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, hailed the passage of the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealing all laws related to electronic privacy. “Privacy? You don’t have any. So you might as well get over it,” he told the reporter for the Times-Post-Journal-Today, America’s last major daily newspaper.

Why tech leaders can’t lead Enough fantasy or nightmare, as the case may be. There’s a serious point here, and I want to be clear that it has nothing to do with partisan politics: Whether they’re Republicans, Democrats, or Tea Partiers, Silicon Valley execs should stay out of politics. Sure, most of them are plenty smart, but the skill sets, temperament, and — yes — empathy needed to govern are beyond them.

First and foremost, running a big company is almost always about making money for shareholders. I have nothing against that (this blog is Tech’s Bottom Line, after all), but churning out quarterly profits has little to do with leading a state or, heaven help us, the country.

Although no executive will ever admit to a diagnosis of what amounts to fiscal attention deficit disorder, they almost all have it. Wall Street demands a fixation on short-term results, and those who don’t deliver consistently are soon “exploring other options.” You could argue there’s a reason for that sort of thinking in the private sector, but when it comes to serious government, it makes no sense at all. You have to think of the long run. Indeed, too many politicians of both major parties have trouble thinking beyond the next election. But the next quarter?

Then there’s the Sun Tzu complex — you know, business as the art of war, and so on. Sure, being aggressive is part of winning market share and earning profits. And wimps don’t get elected to anything. But the kill-or-be-killed ethos we see every day on Fox News and MSNBC is killing rational public discourse. Voting in the swaggering bully boys and girls of Silicon Valley will make that much, much worse.

Mr. Ellison shouldn’t go to Washington “Empathy” is the word that got President Obama in trouble when he said it was a necessary quality for a Supreme Court justice. He was right, though, and empathy is a very desirable trait in a public leader.

I’ve met lots of tech execs over the years, and many are quite personable. But empathy? No. These days, most execs come from very comfortable backgrounds and have spent years at top-flight universities and business schools. They live in ultra-expensive homes, send their kids to private schools, have the best medical care in the world, and make huge amounts of money, sometimes hundreds of times more than the average employee in their company. They’re not bad people, of course, but in general, they just don’t get it when it comes to the day-to-day struggles of most Americans.

I suppose you could say much the same about our current crop of politicians — and that proves my point.

Stay in the Valley, tech leaders. We need you there. If you feel a burning desire “to give something back,” emulate Bill Gates, whose charitable work is altogether admirable and appropriate for a man of his wealth and talent. But please, please stay off the ballot.

I welcome your comments, tips, and suggestions. Post them here so that all our readers can share them, or reach me at bill.snyder@sbcglobal.net.

This article, “Nightmare on Main Street: If Silicon Valley ran the country,” was originally published by InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bill Snyder’s Tech’s Bottom Line blog and follow the latest technology business developments at InfoWorld.com.