Silicon Valley has a single major drawback, cost of living, which is downstream of land use and transportation policy that’s virtually identical throughout the country. Basically every large and growing metropolitan area in the nation sees the same relative price trends. Famous low cost alt-SV Austin has seen its Case-Schiller index move within 15% of San Jose. To argue that its governance is especially backwards or selfish and, thus, deserving of failure is to indict the entire nation.