
Things That Happen in Silicon Valley and Also the Soviet Union - lavrov
https://twitter.com/atroyn/status/1014974099930714115?s=21
======
zug_zug
"\- being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around
you"

This is the one that resonated with me.

Obviously "the system" as a whole isn't objectively crumbling by traditional
measures like GDP, but there were things that could give that feeling:
Homeless sleeping in the subway and on the main streets, the smells, crime so
rampant it's basically ignored (my car was broken into > 5 times), working
relationships are brief and cold and high-pressure

~~~
woah
As a contractor for startups in SF for 6 years and now a founder for 1, I have
found the opposite of what you have about business relationships.

The homeless problem is not caused by the tech industry, it is caused by the
homeowners who have been blocking apartment building construction in 90% of
the city for 50 years.

~~~
brighteyes
The homeowners have much of the blame, you're right, but tech has made things
worse by rapid job growth that contributed to rising rent costs.

~~~
Kalium
You're absolutely right! Tech _has_ made things worse!

With that said, it might be worth discussing where the blame for the problem
that has been made worse might lie. To aggravate an underlying problem, one
has to already exist. So let's talk about that problem, and its causes, rather
than casting aspersions on every group who contributed marginally after the
fact - that's a very long list, and it's not even a useful list.

Then maybe, having identified the problem and the causes, we can see about
solving it. So let's talk about zoning, prop 13, and the way construction
permitting processes work and the political systems that support them!

~~~
joejerryronnie
Or we could talk about the real underlying cause of the one issue you are
referencing (cost of housing) - vastly more people moving to the Bay Area than
there are houses available. Since it doesn't matter how fast we can actually
build homes as we will never catch up to the current demand, we should
implement a new resident tax. Let's say everyone who has not been a Bay Area
resident for at least 10 years contributes a little to alleviate the problems
they are helping to exacerbate.

~~~
Kalium
I understand why you feel that way. People are moving here _so fast_! They're
changing everything, and there's no way we could ever keep up with how large
the hordes of new migrants are.

However, I think it might actually be possible to build homes rapidly enough
to meet demand. We should at least try, and if we fail we'll have a lot of new
housing. That's a nice prize no matter the outcome. What's convenient about
this approach is that if we get rid of the political obstacles to
construction, we almost certainly _can_ build enough housing!

Failing that, how about we tax people who have helped perpetuate this state of
affairs and benefit the most to help address the problem? How about a "created
this mess" tax on everyone who has been in the Bay for ten years or more?
Maybe they can contribute a little to solving the problem they created, rather
than inflicting pain on other people and shouting "STOP HITTING YOURSELF!".

No, that's not a serious proposal. It makes more sense than slapping people
with taxes for the privilege of moving to one of the most expensive places in
the world, but that is not a high bar.

~~~
joejerryronnie
My original post was sensationalist and a 'new resident tax' is ridiculous -
and no, I'm not scared of the migrant hordes ;) But I do get a bit frustrated
with the morally superior stance that many housing advocates take (not saying
this is you). Many folks seem to believe that by repealing prop 13 and
removing all barriers to development, we will magically be able to build the
millions of housing units necessary to meet the current demand. There is a
small but vocal minority who also feel if you have a difference of opinion on
how to address housing in the Bay Area then you are a morally reprehensible
"rent-seeker" who doesn't care about homelessness or diversity.

This is a multi-faceted problem and must be addressed hand in hand with
transportation. What if we could house everyone but nobody could get anywhere?
Higher density housing along transit lines, better public transportation, etc.
are all things we should be working to improve. But we also need to consider
the demand side of the equation. Is there a way to even out the demand. What
if we build a ton of new high-density housing and the economy takes a major
downturn or the tech industry gets distributed to other locales? Will we be
left with a bunch of empty buildings that will be a drag on our regional
economy and downtown areas for decades?

I feel the biggest immediate relief to the demand issue is legislating tax
breaks for companies who allow some large percentage of their workforce to
work full-time remote. This would immediately allow people to live in lower
cost areas but still take advantage of the dynamic Bay Area tech economy. This
is the quickest way to release a little pressure on both housing and
transportation while working on the longer term solutions.

~~~
lobotryas
Many good points. Also whenever I talk to "just build more" advocates, few
demonstrate they thought about scaling infrastructure. Traffic is steadily
getting worse, grocery lines are getting longer and classroom sizes keep
growing.

I really wish these two things were bound together.

~~~
Kalium
Repealing prop 13 would do a lot to bind together building housing and funding
for transit and schools.

~~~
joejerryronnie
Repealing prop 13 is never going to happen for a variety of reasons, so it
would probably be better to focus on areas where progress can be made. Also SF
does not equal the Bay Area. I almost never consider policies from the
standpoint of SF alone as it is a relatively small yet intense part of the
overall region. Many issues experienced by SF residents are very different
from those experienced by the rest of the Bay Area. Granted, there is
certainly overlap and some things we see in SF now will be coming to other
cities in the future but you have to be careful not to fall into the 'SF as
the center of the universe' trap (especially on HN).

~~~
Kalium
True! You're absolutely right on all counts.

With that said, prop 13 has wreaked havoc on budgets all across California.
School funding is a state-wide problem. And I would go so far as to say that
the whole of the Bay Area experiences a housing shortage for what is mostly
the same set of reasons.

So while you're right, there may be some commonalities to be found.

------
projectramo
"I am unprepared for people who don't understand jokes" \-- Anton Troynikov

I don't know who he is but I really like this quote. That's consistently my
biggest surprise on the internet. The #1 question I get for my posts is "Is
that sarcasm?"

I never answer.

~~~
Semirhage
Ironic that this is getting so much traction on HN, where humor is actively
crushed with downvotes and flags most of the time. I’m not even disagreeing
with the rationale of keeping the site for intellectual inquiry rather than
endlessly nested references and jokes. A lot of what people think of as
humorous is inherently off topic or frankly not very funny or relevant. Sadly
though, I’ve seen some genuinely funny and original comments die hard because
of an institutional stance against humor.

It probably doesn’t help that there are some inveterate literalists about...

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
> It probably doesn’t help that there are some inveterate literalists about...

about what?

------
atroyn
OP here. It's tongue-in cheek, in the same way that Mike Judge's "Silicon
Valley" is tongue-in-cheek. Please don't hurt me.

~~~
projectramo
Silicon Valley is tongue-in-cheek?

I thought it was a documentary!

------
petermcneeley
HyperNormalization looms large.

"everyone knew the system was failing, but as no one could imagine any
alternative to the status quo, politicians and citizens were resigned to
maintaining a pretense of a functioning society... Over time, this delusion
became a self-fulfilling prophecy and the "fakeness" was accepted by everyone
as real"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation)

~~~
mrnobody_67
Most of society is built on shared fictions.

Corporations, The UN, Governments, borders, the value of the $20 bill in your
wallet, only exist because everybody accepts it's real.

~~~
atulatul
That's from Sapiens, right?

------
21
> the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default

So true. The USA is viewed worse than China, Russia or Saudi Arabia.

I also see a lot of it on HN.

~~~
jpzisme
I'll go ahead and say the United States is the greatest country the world has
ever seen. It's not perfect, but once you live in other countries for a bit,
even if you enjoy the experience, you appreciate the U.S. a lot more.

~~~
coldtea
> _I 'll go ahead and say the United States is the greatest country the world
> has ever seen. It's not perfect, but once you live in other countries for a
> bit, even if you enjoy the experience, you appreciate the U.S. a lot more._

Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country.

It also depends of your tolerance of rednecks, prudes, puritans, and ignorant
people (which exist everywhere in the world, but have particularly large
concentrations there).

Or on your tolerance of a messed up party system, a messed up legal system, a
messed up prison system (and the biggest incarceration rates in the world),
cops that have an open license to shoot people, and the worse and more
widespread racism this side of South Africa. Or on your tolerance on very bad
statistics on violence (especially gun violence).

Or on your tolerance for businesses having near feudal reign on their workers.

That said, if you have the money, and the connections, the US is a pretty good
deal to spend them. Not to mention very nice landscapes, and generally good
hearted and optimistic people (besides the aforementioned negatives).

Plus, for some industries (basically IT and movies), they're tops.

~~~
cjf4
>Depends on whether you have lived in an advanced Western European country.

All of which enjoy the shadow of nuclear security provided by the United
States.

~~~
KirinDave
That was true briefly for a few years. The EU is itself a fairly well-armed
nuclear power.

 _psst_ They're also quietly better at cybersecurity than the US government.

~~~
bepotts
This isn't true at all. The EU is just now starting to think about self
defense because of Trump. Trump's insurgence is putting into question the US-
led world order and NATO alliances. Without the US, NATO is functionally
useless.

The EU is under the security blanket of the US, whether it likes to believe it
or not. Hell, most of those countries pay less than 2 percent of their budgets
towards their own defense, and they get pissy when the past three US
Presidents call them out on it.

~~~
KirinDave
It is true that the EU has worked with NATO. However, it's not clear that
America needs all the military force it has since a lot of it is quite cleary
force projecting on economic adversaries.

Suggesting the EU "needed" this is a bit misleading. And I say this as an
American exasperated at our refusal to reduce force projection on foreign
nations.

~~~
bepotts
The EU definitely "needed" it. Aside from France and the UK, EU countries are
pathetic militarily.

NATO was originally formed to be a defense alliance of democratic countries
against communism and Russia. Russia, while a threat to the United States,
poses more of a threat to Europe (for geographic reasons) than to the United
States.

------
oblio
Hilarious:

> So, soon they'll invade Afghanistan and get monthly limits for buying sugar
> and socks?

> I don't want to alarm u but they've been in afghan for 17 years

------
closeparen
> living five adults to a two room apartment

This one has become terrifyingly normalized - even within the industry, people
who don’t live this way are decadent irresponsible pigs. People who resent
living this way are entitled redneck whiners. And despite all that, don’t you
_dare_ suggest you’re not really a member of the evil elite 1%.

~~~
ryandrake
See also the “dense urban apartments are the only morally acceptable housing
solution” trope that emerges from every Bay Area Housing thread.

~~~
closeparen
They’re all interrelated. Irrigating your lawn isn’t necessarily wrong,
either, until there’s a drought. And we could probably have all maintained our
moderate water consumption through the drought if it weren’t for a few truly
excessive users. The same applies to land and the housing shortage. If a few
areas didn’t insist on being _rural_ , maybe we could all have the suburban
dream. But they did, so now even suburbia is egregiously wasteful.

------
JdeBP
One interesting thing is that this seems to be on the cusp of spawning an "In
Silicon Valley ..." joke cycle.

* [https://twitter.com/MarcLucke/status/1015211522111496193](https://twitter.com/MarcLucke/status/1015211522111496193)

* [https://twitter.com/Vietpdx/status/1015253367285673984](https://twitter.com/Vietpdx/status/1015253367285673984)

------
s3r3nity
"[T]he economy is centrally planned, using opaque algorithms not fully
understood by their users"

Loved this thread, but I think this one lost me. Does anyone know to what this
is referring and mind explaining? Is this a comment on news feeds in apps, or
is it a comment on the odd housing supply / zoning decisions? Or neither?

~~~
arethuza
Possibly because large corporation do internally have a form of central
planning - usually using Oracle Hyperion (which Google appears to use).... :-)

Edit: I based my guess about Google using Hyperion for their financial
planning based on the job adverts....

~~~
ryandrake
I’ve always found it ironic that the purest examples of communist style
central economic planning are found within capitalist corporations. Raise your
hand if your company’s budget, hiring, and other resource deployment is done
democratically, through a vote.

~~~
majewsky
Big corporations are basically communist empires in this regard. I think the
reason why capitalism won over communism is that capitalism has a large number
of centrally-planned enterprises where natural selection can take place
internally and the failure of any single enterprise does not hurt (and even
benefits) the others. In communism, however, there's only one big plan that's
"too big to fail".

~~~
digi_owl
With the added irony that Marx envisioned the fall of capitalism to start with
workers taking over control of the factories they worked in, not by some
vanguard taking over government by force.

------
lainga
I might add "\- the government tries very hard to depict other places as
deprived, backward wastelands so nobody wants to leave"

and thus nobody wants to work in somewhere more affordable than SF, e.g.
Charlotte, where a roving pack of bloodthirsty rednecks will surely swarm out
of the woods and tear them to pieces.

------
coolspot
> \- living five adults to a two room apartment

> \- 'totally not illegal taxi' taxis by private citizens moonlighting to make
> ends meet

> \- the plight of the working class is discussed mainly by people who do no
> work

> \- the currency most people are talking about is fake and worthless

So true it hurts.

> \- mandatory workplace political education

Is it really a thing?

~~~
digi_owl
> \- the currency most people are talking about is fake and worthless

Not quite sure what that is a dig at. Unless you are dealing in fresh produce
or something, everything can be considered fake and worthless...

As for the political education thing: I don't think they would be overt (or
perhaps even conscious) but they do have various team building exercises, no?

~~~
coolspot
I guess fake currency most people are talking about in the Silicon Valley
could be the Bitcoin et al.

~~~
digi_owl
Yeah i guess. Just too used to seeing people riff on the dollar being fake and
so on...

------
dictum
\- Anyone who sounds like a wrecker must be reeducated. (q.e.d.
[https://twitter.com/DanielDoWrite/status/1015263695558135808](https://twitter.com/DanielDoWrite/status/1015263695558135808))

~~~
digi_owl
The fuck???

~~~
lainga
"He writes code for @google and puns for fun." The layers of comparison are
increasing!

------
coryfklein
Despite all the other meta comments in this thread it is an interesting
commentary on public discourse in the U.S. that the messages like the OP are
simultaneously interpreted as a satirical joke by some and as a straight
literal comparison by others.

A U.S. hating defeatist will point to this list as proof that the U.S. is just
as bad as Russia while giving no room for evidence to the contrary.

A loyalist can laugh all this off as hilarious while ignoring the reality of
Trump's autocratic leanings.

In polls most voters are crying for moderate representatives and they just
want people to reach across the aisle and get things done. But then come
election day the polarizing extremist candidates end up getting the votes. As
a population, the U.S. is in this self-torturous cycle where they cry for
movement and change but in action they only perpetuate the gridlock and
partisanship.

This climate really gives me respect for Sam Harris's approach: he really
tries to interview others that have just enough of a different opinion so as
to give rise to alternative viewpoints and interesting conversation while
simultaneously striving to maintain an open, honest, and dispassionate
discourse on emotional topics.

------
Nokinside
\- all important decisions are made in Kremlin.

------
myth_buster
[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1014974099930714115.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1014974099930714115.html)

------
handbanana
> \- the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default

That's my pick of the bunch

------
kimdotcom
Blatmeisters?

------
robertAngst
>bought a tesla

>thinks bitcoin is worthless

So this guy is the person that serves the programmers... right? People arent
trusting him with user data at facebook... right?

------
sidcool
Most of these are on one company. Overall the silicon valley is way better.
And remember it's not a country.

Edit: I accept that I didn't get the joke.

~~~
smt88
You make good points, but it seems to be meant as a joke rather than a serious
attempt to suggest that SV is meaningfully similar to the USSR.

For what it's worth, I agree with you and still found the thread to be very
funny.

~~~
talmand
The reason it's funny is because there's an element of truth to it. Just like
with most of the politically-based comedian routines over the years.

