

In A Divided San Francisco, Private Tech Buses Drive Tension - nicolethenerd
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/12/17/251960183/in-a-divided-san-francisco-private-tech-buses-drive-tension

======
capkutay
Thank God for private tech buses. Imagine how many more cars would flood the
already congested bay area highways if they didn't exist. I don't understand
the argument against the tech busses, seems pretty irrational to me.

~~~
auctiontheory
Maybe. Or maybe Google (Facebook etc.) employees would be forced to live
closer to the Peninsula. Or maybe Google (Facebook etc.) would be forced to
invest in the public transportation infrastructure with all the taxes they're
not paying. [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-
sho...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-
how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html)

I don't have the silver bullet answer, but if you live anywhere near San
Francisco and are not on the road to tech millions, you can see that we have a
big livability problem. Every day SF looks more like Santana Row, or the Plaza
in Kansas City, plus homeless people.

~~~
rsync
I have a silver bullet answer:

Don't build terrible, dehumanizing, sprawl-encouraging, traffic-encouraging
headquarters out in suburbia.

This isn't my idea - it's what every progressive minded thinker that spends
even two minutes thinking about urban/traffic/sprawl ideas arrives at.

If google, facebook, et. al, were in the city, the network and wealth effects
would be staggering. How many boats would be lifted by that rising tide ?

~~~
milesskorpen
It isn't that simple — SF actively rejects attempts to increase density.

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raldi
Yet another article about high housing prices in SF that makes no mention
whatsoever of the region's massively antidensity policies.

How many updates in this multi-part series is it going to take before NPR
reports on that aspect of the story?

~~~
w1ntermute
Yeah, until SF looks like this, newcomers crowding out the existing residents
shouldn't be considered a real issue:
[http://photomichaelwolf.com/#architecture-of-
densitiy/](http://photomichaelwolf.com/#architecture-of-densitiy/)

~~~
WildUtah
Or we could double the density of San Francisco by making it look like these
hideous dystopias:

[http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2011/021311.html](http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2011/021311.html)

That would be ten times the density of the peninsula cities today. Pretty nice
isn't it?

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cmiles74
Google, Cisco, etc. can spend their money any way they want, the shuttle
busses for their employees apparently make good economic sense. Still, people
are upset to the point that they are starting to interfere with traffic. In my
experience, this sort of anger doesn't go away if you ignore it.

I suppose once everyone who dislikes the busses have been priced out of the
neighborhood and have moved away, the issue will be resolved. Although, at
that point, it may make sense for Google, Cisco, etc. to demand better city
busses that everyone can use. Which won't be a problem once everyone is in the
same class.

~~~
deathhand
_I suppose once everyone who dislikes the busses have been priced out of the
neighborhood and have moved away, the issue will be resolved. Although, at
that point, it may make sense for Google, Cisco, etc. to demand better city
busses that everyone can use. Which won 't be a problem once everyone is in
the same class._

Classism at its finest folks! City buses are there for the people, not just
those belonging to the same social-economic group. Tech firms should encourage
better public transportation regardless of who takes it because it is there
for the citizens of SF which they are directly a part of.

~~~
hack_edu
Let's not forget how much mobile devices by Apple, Google, and company assist
in navigating public transportation.

They are most _certainly_ encouraging better public transportation. This
doesn't excuse blocking the bus. I wouldn't argue that they're doing it out of
pure goodwill, but its crazy to ignore how much efficiency and value their
apps have added to the system. Not to mention the drastically increased
accessibility to people new or too confused to ride prior to this.

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chadwickthebold
"You can blame me if you want, but I don't think I'm really the cause of the
problem."

You can draw a lot of comparisons between the economic/class struggle in SF
and the NSA scandal. Techies and engineers 'just doing their job', insulated
from and making excuses for the larger system. Not really a direct comparison,
but an interesting one to think about.

~~~
justin
Except, people who work at tech companies like Cisco, Facebook and Google are
largely spending their time making things that are good for the world, or at
least give people what they want. This is validated by the market for their
products. Pretty much no one outside the US government thinks that the NSA's
infrastructure is good for the world.

~~~
deathhand
From Good Will Hunting:

 _" Why shouldn't I work for the N.S.A.? That's a tough one, but I'll take a
shot. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something
nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm
real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the
location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have
that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen
hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the
politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause
they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just
like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a
tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in
the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got
exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the
shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day
and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over
there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell
us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish
over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit
for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they're
takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took
the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and
fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one,
spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my
buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the
fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin'
him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he
tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is
North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out
for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my
buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a
village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I
could be elected president."_

The point is everyone just 'does their job' regardless of any outside
stimuli/judgement. Everyone is a hero in their own world.

------
bluekeybox
Amazing. So when the rich try to segregate, the papers start screaming about
how gated communities are bad for everyone. On the other hand, when the rich
try to live where everybody else does, then the popular reaction is, "Oh my
god, gentrification!" Why don't we just come together and realize that what
the public/press really wish is that everyone else better off than them had
died (or actually, perhaps the press doesn't want to take it _that far_ ,
otherwise there would be no more "revolutionary" feelings to stir anymore, and
the papers would go out of business).

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badman_ting
The disappointing thing for me is that the actual rich, the people who don't
need to go to work every day keep themselves out of sight. So we all act like
crabs in a barrel, attacking the people who make 2-3x what we make, and the
people who have 1000x what we do keep on keeping on.

~~~
auctiontheory
From what my accountant tells me, there's a good chance the people inside the
Google bus (driver excepted) are making 10-20X what the folks protesting them
are making.

~~~
ahomescu1
Based on numbers I hear from friends and Glassdoor, Google programmers make
$100k-150k/year. To make 10x less than that, you'd have to make $10-15k/year;
that's less than minimum wage.

~~~
stackcollision
Not everyone can get a full time job in this economy. A friend of mine is
struggling to pay rent with her part time job at minimum wage. She can't
afford to eat every day. Sure, you could tell her "go get a full time job",
but no one is hiring. Believe me, she's tried.

------
placeybordeaux
I thought the problem was not eco related, nor related to gentrification, nor
weath inequalities, but more that private busses are using public bus lanes.

Thats the fucked up part in my mind.

Proliferating different forms of mass transit in general seems like a shitty
solution, just take a look at how many different bus companies there are in
Buenos Aires.

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buckbova
NPR should research how much more tax money and social programs are now
available because of this social inequality.

------
boon
"inequality" == envy

~~~
sp332
Let's say these people are envious. So they get their own bus! Buy it
outright, and use it for their own travels. Well as soon as that bus pulls
into a city bus stop, they get fined $300. Google's buses don't get fined,
only poor peoples' buses get fined.

~~~
jhvh1134
Google is currently working with the city on a better solution. The city, and
everyone in it, have incentive to cooperate with Google since they attract tax
revenue, while attempting a solution to not bring extra congestion to the city
streets. I don't believe this merits the level of hostility that I have seen.

------
bobosha
Interesting they mention "young white men" tech workers, isn't the Valley tech
sector minority majority i.e. asians predominate?

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ChrisNorstrom
I wonder what their opinion is on school buses from expensive elitist private
schools? Also, I know I'm not the only one whose picking up on the subtle
racial undertones in this article. Why are they so quick to describe the
villainous tech workers as "young white men"? I keep seeing this pop up in bay
area news concerning gentrification in Oakland. In St. Louis, numerous races
(Black, White, Asian) take part in gentrification and it's seen as a good
thing. Yet, in San Francisco it's so demonized and race is immediately pointed
out.

~~~
oijaf888
Aren't the vast majority of tech workers "young white men"? Also maybe the
areas that are gentrifying are ending up less diverse than they started
whereas in St Louis its not an issue since the neighborhoods are staying
diverse?

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Makes sense. St. Louis has a lot of low cost places to escape to whereas in
the bay area everything's somewhat prime real estate.

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gametheoretic
Baudrillard was right.

~~~
kilocycling
Care to elaborate? I'd be interested in hearing what Baudrillard has to say
about this. I don't see any immediate and obvious connection here, but I'm
admittedly not well-versed in him.

~~~
gametheoretic
Sure thing. Up front: I've only read Simulacra; I wouldn't call myself well-
versed either. So if you have read that, the following "should" make sense,
reserving the possibility that I'm off-base in my interpretation of
Baudrillard - a possibility I readily admit is a real one.

Others in the thread have probably pointed out by now that the linked NPR
story leaves conspicuously absent a key point in the "private buses in SF"
narrative, i.e. that the _recent_ ire (past week or two) flared up when some
Vanguard type filmed himself pretending to be an obnoxious "let them eat cake"
Googler. The next day, the even bigger story was that that video was a fake
(not a hoax but a "true fake", to use Assange terminology). Indeed, were it
not for the true faking of the perspective of one "side" of A Divided San
Francisco, this NPR story, titled "Private Tech Buses Drive Tension" couldn't
exist. Couldn't. So what? So whether the original was a lie or not has become
definitively irrelevant - the length of its shadow is the same. The point
being _not_ that NPR is lying or something like that, but rather: that the
Symbol has progressed on through to the fourth stage, that of the fully
realized Simulacrum, now totally divorced from the "map-reality" (you remember
the Borges fable about the nation-sized map at the beginning of the book?)
which begat it in the first place. It now exists only on a plane of
interaction with other Symbols (e.g., this is part of a series on Income
Inequality, which, of course, has no non-wholly-symbolic connection to private
buses) which have also divorced themselves of their original connection to
reality and which also only interact with other Symbols. Baudrillard, you will
recall, names this plane the "Hyperreal." Real because it is.

------
peterwwillis
So... is it weird to anyone else that the protesters spent money on identical
costumes and made fake road signs and barricades? Yes it makes for a more
appealing photo for the press, but it just seems strange. Who are these
protesters? What group do they represent?

[http://sfist.com/2013/12/09/anti-
eviction_protesters_block_g...](http://sfist.com/2013/12/09/anti-
eviction_protesters_block_goog.php)

[http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2013/12/09/protesters-block-
goog...](http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2013/12/09/protesters-block-google-bus-
in-s-f-mission/)

Ah, found it:

 _" According to fliers handed out at the protest, the group staging the
protest is the San Francisco Displacement and Neighborhood Impact Agency,
which seeks to stop “the injustice in the city’s two-tier system where the
public pays and the private corporations gain,” according to its website. The
group has also made a false Google bus as a protest in the past."_

According to one article, a union organizer also staged a fight between a fake
Google employee and a protester.
[http://www.sfbg.com/googleshoutdown](http://www.sfbg.com/googleshoutdown)

[http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/09/activists/](http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/09/activists/)

[http://www.heart-of-the-city.org/](http://www.heart-of-the-city.org/)

Basically their aim is related to housing. They targeted the Google bus
because 1. it's a fineable offense that Google et al is apparently not paying
(so they claim), and 2. they claim the buses drive up rent in the
neighborhoods.

So they gathered media attention with a "political theater piece" by
"ticketing" the bus and causing havoc. The city is (reportedly) already in
talks with Google and others to get them to pay for the privilege of doing so
(which seems fair to me), so their only valid claim left is housing prices
being raised, but good luck stopping gentrification. Oh, and they want Google,
etc to pay 1 billion dollars in past-due fines (where they got that number, I
don't know).

Why the hell wasn't any of this in the NPR piece?

------
im_a_lawyer
build more housing!!!

