If there is one place in America that still inspires a sense of endless optimism, it’s Silicon Valley. The valley with its constant stream of startups, cutting-edge technology, and limitless imagination offers the promise of a better world through tech and has accrued considerable cultural influence as an article of our faith in progress.

However, while I hate to spoil the beautiful image, I feel I must give voice to the doubts that have begun to haunt me about Silicon Valley over the last few years and have only mushroomed in the last few months.

The seed of my doubts has one very clear source - the dominant philosophy in Silicon Valley, libertarianism. Certainly, the valley is a big and diverse place with many different ideologies in play, but libertarianism, emphasizing social toleration with a high degree of market freedom, has emerged as the main guiding principle.

To put it bluntly, I do not believe that libertarianism, with its values of radical individualism, is compatible with democracy and its reliance on collective responsibility. Both systems have an entirely antagonistic set of virtues that citizens should try to embody, and both hold very different visions of an ideal society. If that wasn’t enough, libertarianism also has a well-documented connection to the alt-right and white supremacy, and many individuals who prescribe to the former eventually become members of the latter.

Therefore, I increasingly doubt the trustworthiness of the people who hold power and influence in Silicon Valley. Take, for example, Facebook co-founder and billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel is a noted Trump supporter and benefactor of the alt-right who uses his considerable wealth to advance both agendas.

The suspicious characters, however, are not just confined to a handful of important figures. The Google memo that circulated in August claiming that women are biologically unfit to be coders is just one recent example of the pervasive illiberal attitudes that are prevalent in Silicon Valley, even though it presents itself as a beacon of diversity and opportunity. Even figures that outwardly act benign deserve a greater share of scrutiny. Elon Musk, for example, is a media darling and a tech idol given his various enterprises and rhetoric about space colonization.

However, he is also spending considerable resources into looking at a way to stop aging and eliminate death, which is a common hobby in the valley if Peter Thiel and several startups are anything to go by. I certainly cannot be the only one who is both suspicious of wealthy people attempting to discover ways to cheat death and escape the last great equalizer of man, and fearful of the consequences should they succeed. Speculation about the future aside, there are also real questions we should be asking about the powers that already exist, such as Mark Zuckerburg and Facebook.

Through Facebook, Zuckerburg is the most powerful news publisher in human history. He controls access to the information seen by billions of people, and could conceivably shape opinions in any way he desires, ways that would be difficult to notice. That is a lot of power to leave unregulated in the hands of one company, let alone one man.

Finally, the most fundamental question about Silicon Valley is: is it good for us? Is it a benefit to all mankind? Technology has brought unprecedented amounts of information to our fingertips, enabled closer communication, and simplified many jobs, but it has also led to the rise of disinformation on a catastrophic scale, allowed increasingly militant polarization and radicalization to beset society, and begun to replace real human workers with machines.

Progress always comes at a price, but we have to ask if the price is always worth paying. Is convenience worth the instability and uncertainty of the gig economy? Is instant connection worth the isolation and superficiality of social media? Is greater efficiency worth the price of human livelihoods? I don’t know the answers to these questions, maybe no one does, but I do know that they are questions we need to start asking.

One of the few good things to come out of the Russian election meddling is that for the first time, our lawmakers and journalists are starting to pay serious attention to Silicon Valley and its companies. The veneer of benign technolibertarianism is cracking, and in its place, a more realistic and skeptical view of the valley will come to dominate. Perhaps then we can make a Silicon Valley that is truly worthy of admiration. Until then, keep asking questions.