Mannerisms

Potholes are high on the priority-list for Silicon Valley executives now that the revenues are beginning to flow again, jobs are less insecure and bonuses are creeping up.

Being driven through Silicon Valley in a Porsche last month, I was surprised to hear the driver, a senior executive at one of the Valley’s most profitable companies, continually complaining about the potholes.

Pot holes? A bit third worldy? Hardly appropriate to an area (once) held up as "the greatest agglomeration of wealth in the history of the planet” (Kleiner Perkins). Well, apparently, it’s all too horribly true, and it’s going to get worse.

According to the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission it is going to cost $20bn over the next 25 years to fix the Valley’s potholes, but less than half that amount is going to be made available to fund it.

A case of ‘private affluence and public squalor’, as JK Galbraith once said.

So spare a tear for the Valley’s execs as they ride the current upswing and the new sets of fancy wheels its allows them to acquire. So many Porsches; so many expensively trashed suspensions.