☆ Starchild: overbearing government could speed up Silicon Valley’s brain drain
Local governments’ aggressive tax, spend, and regulate agenda is already pushing tech innovators to greener pastures, says San Francisco Libertarian Party Chair Starchild. But what if policies to restrict AI and immigration intensify the exodus? An Opportunity Now exclusive 2026 prediction.
My “safe” prediction for 2026 is that absent significant new headway in reducing the burden of government in the Bay Area by cutting taxes, regulations, and spending, Silicon Valley (like Hollywood to the south) will continue to experience a slow, gradual exodus of companies and a related “brain drain” of industry workers to other locales (either elsewhere in the U.S. or overseas) more friendly to voluntary sector business endeavors. If something dramatically negative happens, like onerous new controls on the development of artificial intelligence in California, or a sharp reduction in the availability of H1B visas for foreign workers in the United States, this could speed up.
My somewhat “riskier” prediction for 2026 is that Bitcoin will go up again, surging to well over $100,000 as it becomes easier to spend for everyday transactions, and that the market cap of the crypto sector as a whole will also receive a boost from this, along with the price of gold rising further amid growing awareness about the weakness of the dollar, U.S. government debt, and increased perceptions of U.S. “country risk” fueled by the Trump administration’s aggressive posture toward the rest of the world by engaging in trade wars and militarism, and general disregard of the rule of law.
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