People in Silicon Valley yawned at the shutdown. They shouldn’t have.

"If companies shut down, the stock market would collapse," venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya said in a recent podcast with Jason Calacanis. "If the government shuts down, nothing happens and we all move on, because it just doesn't matter. Stasis in the government is actually good for all of us."

This view is surprisingly common, especially in Silicon Valley. But it's wrong: Washington's growing dysfunction is a big problem for everyone, even high-flying technology companies. It's true, of course, that Washington isn't a major source of new innovations the way the San Francisco Bay Area is. It never has been and probably never will be. But what governments provide are stable, predictable platforms on which innovative companies can build. But we've now gone way beyond the point when gridlock in Congress can be beneficial in fostering democratic deliberation. Now it’s not just preventing the government from making disruptive changes, it's actually becoming a source of disruption in its own right. Shutdowns, poorly-targeted spending cuts, and filibusters are preventing the government from performing basic services that they've performed without difficulty for decades.