from Hacker News

Marc Andreessen: Turn Detroit Into Drone Valley

by kloncks on 6/17/14, 12:38 AM with 27 comments

• by msujaws on 6/17/14, 2:20 AM

  Why drone valley and not autonomous vehicle valley? Seems more prime for the motor city.

  Not to mention, Detroit already has some large neighborhoods that are mostly vacant and the roads could be shifted over to test grounds for the autonomous vehicles. Michigan endures extremes in all four seasons, as compared to Santa Clara County which has pretty moderate weather year round.

  But I don't think Marc was specifically saying that Detroit is for drones. I think that was merely an alliteration. I do think Marc is right in that specialization is the key.

• by pistle on 6/17/14, 2:52 AM

  Definitely. If there is a municipality which, for a myriad of reasons, isn't winning the current cycle of competition for industry, definitely deregulate the crap out of it and use it as a test bed for the products designed and built by Silicon Valley. It's the closest thing to the third world, am I right?

  The more he tweetstorms and drops half-baked opinion pieces, the more I see him as having been smoking crack while watching TED talks on repeat.

  Detroit is not some one-dimensional shit hole ripe (it's multidimensional and not ripe) for taking on the burden of someone's experiments. It's like municipal eugenics or something?

• by jqm on 6/17/14, 3:16 AM

  "if we think of airspace as the next Internet-like platform.."

  What? Did I read the correctly? No offense but this piece seems a bit off kilter. It's one thing to make money investing in things like social network websites, yet another to demand some kind of government sanctioned libertarian utopia and expect all kinds of foolish (and sometimes outright anti-social) schemes will bear fruit or even ever be permitted to grow beyond a certain socially tolerable size... Galt's Gulch was a fictional place and likely always will be. As long as the current system (on which the "innovators" rely) is in place anyway.

• by briantakita on 6/17/14, 2:08 AM

  I would request that Mr. Andreessen ensure that the companies that he invests in are transparent & ethical with their interactions, particularly with the US Government.

  Drones can be a wonderful tool to empower us. They can also be a powerful tool to enslave us. Skynet anyone?

  Some sort of effective regulation is probably necessary. Not the kind of regulation involving a former/future Drone Manufacturing executive/lobbist being the chair of the regulatory body.

• by rmason on 6/17/14, 6:15 AM

  There are already a group of drone companies in Detroit. I've met several of them. They want to be able to fly over the city but so far have been blocked.

  http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20140330/NEWS/303309969...

  Giving them a large area to test would give the city a huge advantage over the rest of the US and I believe drive more drone companies to relocate in Detroit where they would find cheap real estate and an abundance of engineering talent.

  I think Mark Andreesen undoubtedly knows this and that is why he picked Detroit for his example.

• by adc82 on 6/17/14, 3:12 AM

  Detroit has a myriad of problems, but I think this could be great for the city. A big problem with Detroit is that it's a huge city, but a lot of people have left, so there are whole neighborhoods with only a few residents. This makes it hard common government services such as garbage pick up and police force to cover the whole city. The government could provide incentives for any entrepreneurs willing to come to Detroit and help solve these problems using drones and/or autonomous cars. The pay off would be huge on both sides. Autonomous cars would especially click with the culture in Detroit too, being that it is the motor city.

• by kajarya on 6/17/14, 4:50 AM

  The author forgot that one of the impetus for Silicon Valley becoming what it is in an influx of government money.

• by h1karu on 6/17/14, 2:37 AM

  >Provide incentives to attract scientists, firms and users;

  > Establish a favorable business environment and regulations.

  > Except … this approach to innovation clusters hasn’t really worked. Some have even dismissed these government-driven efforts as “modern-day snake oil.”

  I would argue that such an approach has never actually been attempted only lip service has been paid. The types of solutions you describe above are politically untenable because they involve significantly lowering taxes.

  I would say that Nevada is an example of a place where this kind of approach has worked. Look at Las Vegas it's a metropolis that sprung up out of nowhere in the middle of a vast desert wasteland. Maybe Michigan could learn a thing or two from Nevada and begin by lowering it's state income tax to 0%.

• by IvyMike on 6/17/14, 2:00 AM

  I wonder if he picked Robocop city on purpose.

• by steele on 6/17/14, 6:10 AM

  At least he acknowledges a weakness of the Silicon Valley clone efforts.