Sheesh. Balaji here. Clearly this touched a nerve, so will be writing on this at some length. But this is the bit I don't get:

  But when I asked him what harms techies faced that might   
  prompt such a drastic response, he couldn't offer much 
  evidence.

  He pointed to a few headlines in the national press warning 
  that robots might be taking over people's jobs. These, he 
  said, were evidence of the rising resentment that 
  technology will foster as it alters conditions across the 
  country and why Silicon Valley needs to keep an escape 
  hatch open.

  But I found Mr. Srinivasan's thesis to be naive. According 
  to the industry's own hype, technologies like robotics, 
  artificial intelligence, data mining and ubiquitous 
  networking are poised to usher in profound changes in how 
  we all work and live. I believe, as Mr. Srinivasan argues, 
  that many of these changes will eventually improve human 
  welfare.

  But in the short run, these technologies could cause 
  enormous economic and social hardships for lots of people. 
  And it is bizarre to expect, as Mr. Srinivasan and other 
  techies seem to, that those who are affected wouldn't 
  criticize or move to stop the industry pushing them.  

But that was actually exactly my point: as Farhad states, people may indeed "move to stop the industry", so we need to keep an escape hatch open. A huge chunk of the people here in the Valley are first or second generation emigrants who picked up stakes from their home countries and currently work from a laptop. They left their N home countries because those locales weren't favorable to technology. Is it impossible to think that backlash could make it necessary for us to leave an N+1st, as our ancestors (recent or distant) did?

I can only speak for myself, but the motivating emotion here isn't arrogance. It's one part apprehension, knowing what happened to the Chinese in Malaysia, the Indians in Uganda, and the Jews in Europe. And it's one part hope, thinking that we can build something better with a clean slate, without 230 years of legacy infrastructure and cruft.