"We didn't securitize mortgages, order bailouts, [or] start wars."

In a talk titled "Silicon Valley's 'Ultimate Exit'" hosted by startup accelerator Y Combinator last week, Srinivasan outlined his idea for a self-sustaining, insulated "experiment" where we'd live under a government run by Silicon Valley. He describes this fictional society as "opt-in," as if it were the latest feature of one of the Valley's many startups. "We didn't securitize mortgages, order bailouts, [or] start wars," reads one of Srinivasan's slides. Valleywag's Nitasha Tiku points out that Uber doesn't own its own cars, and Airbnb doesn't own its own houses and apartments. "This is the Tea Party with better gadgets," she writes. What about taxes? Infrastructure? Basic services? "You can't 3-D-print a highway, or develop a cancer treatment with a Fitbit band," notes New York Magazine's Kevin Roose, a reference to public services like the CDC, fire department, and police that such an experiment would forsake.