Showmanship/Entertainment. The whole point of being in Vegas or on a cruise ship (prior installation), is to have a spectacular experience. An efficient, mundane, McD's dispenser isn't quite the same.
Just thought I'd add a bit of "color" to this submission since it seems to be dropping:
Honestly, for most of my career, I can say that it was far more than 10k a year. In the last few years, as more people have posted salary information, did I realize my salary was way below market and below most of my peers. I was just happy to be in tech... Only now, with over 10 years of experience, am I drawing a median salary and that took going through a recruiter.
Maybe you wouldn't, but this is why financial reporting is important and often a requirement. These people bet on someone else's gambit and lost, but according to all the signs they could see, things were sparkling.
As someone with a formal design education and a uhh "technologist", I think this argument is pure crap. You're looking at "designers" in tech and making a very valid critique of the industry at large, but these designers have very little to do with it. Yes, they're pumping out derivative cloying work like every start up does because that's what they get paid to do. I think you might need to step out of the tech bubble before throwing stones at others for sitting in it.
Most of the designers I know aren't in tech (mostly so they can have autonomy and greater impact, slightly less to do with finding it wholly un-interesting and trivial) and your whole critique just doesn't seem to hold water for them.
These guys made an electric bike/scooter hybrid a few years back that had some buzz here in NYC before release, but just seems to have fizzled. I'd be curious to know what happened.
_why is both an attempt at a symbol and a person. Most of the interest around the persona was generated by the eccentricity in hiding as much as (if not more than) around the other theatrics and unique works created. That's not how you create a symbol, that's how you create curiosity and interest. I know its a dirty word, but its marketing (and marketing that the ruby community needed, it certainly helped to popularize things in the early days). In going into hiding and ripping away his works, he actively destroyed the symbol and very concretely attached it to the actions and whims of one man.
Its nice to think that it could be a symbol, and maybe it is... but it would only be due to the actions and desires of the ruby community.
I'm glad this happened in such a public way. I once heard him speak at a VC event about his firing practices with the same sort of attitude. I won't get into the details, but I was shocked that such an individual could be so championed, but he's quite business savvy and very personable... I guess as long as you're on his good side.
I think most of you are missing the point of the title (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal). His suggestions are not meant to be taken seriously, and as others have pointed out, it is quite likely that TPB's suggestion may not be entirely serious either.
It might be worth considering that the whole reason they put forth the idea of drones or LOSS or however you want to define them was to a) inspire technologists to consider creative ways of dealing with draconian policy/enforcement, b) draw parallels between the projection of power manifested by drones operating in US interests overseas under questionable/controversial legal circumstances and their own situation.
All things aside, there seems to be more talk about Arrington than the possibility of racism in start-up culture. I see this as a very big win for his hype machine.
Perhaps I'm spoiled by living in NYC, but I don't see a way that this could actually work here.
San Francisco is a notoriously awful place to catch a cab, but I hardly see how taking advantage of a local policy/market failure represents something that might be disruptive to a whole industry... particularly at a 40% mark-up.