
San Francisco Techie Says "Lower Part of Society" Should Be Segregated - blatherard
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/11/greg_gopman_facebook_post_homeless_ruining_san_francisco_should_be_segregated.html
======
headShrinker
And this perfectly highlights the problem with having the two tiered economy
we have now. Just because you are rich doesn't mean you get to get rid of
people you don't like from public spaces. If you don't like how they smell or
act, give them a place to live and bathe, and educate them. Give them the
ability to work toward an income. This guy makes me sick. He is exactly what
is wrong with this current situation. He thinks he is better than other
people. He thinks he is entitled to more.

~~~
ahomescu1
> He thinks he is better than other people.

He has a job, an education, isn't addicted to drugs, isn't violent and is
generally a well-adjusted and contributing (more or less) member of society.
All of that takes a lot of work, and merits some appreciation. How is that not
"being better" than drug addicts, drug dealers, muggers or single moms on
welfare, or even people who just watch reality TV all day? Many normal people
put in a lot of work into being self-sufficient and productive, instead of
relying on free money from others.

~~~
earbitscom
That you would put single mothers on welfare in a group with drug dealers and
muggers, and claim that what this guy does is a lot of work, merits
appreciation, and makes him better, is disgusting. I'm going to stop there
because I don't want to regret what I'd say if I didn't.

~~~
ahomescu1
> That you would put single mothers on welfare in a group with drug dealers
> and muggers

Single mothers are, in many cases, that way because of making bad life
choices. When you're poor and in a bad relationship (or in some cases not even
in a relationship), kids aren't such a good idea (or at least that's how it
seems to me). No one forces them to have kids (unless they've been raped, in
which case I'm more sympathetic to them; how often is that the case?)

~~~
mrbrowning
> Single mothers are, in many cases, that way because of making bad life
> choices.

I'd be very interested to see a citation for this. You seem to be very
knowledgeable on the topic, could you provide one?

~~~
ahomescu1
A citation for what, exactly? That they shouldn't have kids when poor, or that
they aren't physically forced to have kids? The former seems like common
sense, but I could try and find a citation for the latter (that very few
pregnancies are caused by rapes).

Could you give some good examples of why a woman would have kids then wind up
on welfare? IMHO the only 2 reasonable examples are raped women and widows.

~~~
mrbrowning
Human reproduction doesn't occur asexually, but you wouldn't know that from
reading your comment. Why does the responsibility for this decision rest
entirely upon the mother in your conception?

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001sky
Total linkbait. Just google: SF homeless problem. And see how many articles
come up, from so many people. Singling this guy out is completely arbitrary.
It's also unoriginal, in the general sense.[1] [edit: also, this problem is
40-50 years old, so its not fundamentally _new_.]

 _The homeless problem? Spot on, again. Perhaps - just maybe - the city of San
Francisco should dedicate some of that time it spends trying to pass inane
legislation (circumcision ban, I 'm looking at you!) to trying to
REALISTICALLY address the homeless problem. This might blow most of your
minds, I know - but I've lived in Chicago, DC, NYC, and LA - and there are
more homeless people here than those cities combined._

===

 _And about why there are so many homeless… first of all, who cares, because
having such destitution in the streets only serves to bring down the mood of
the place… but if you must, have you ever considered that the explosion of
homeless in SF resulted to the city’s expansion of homeless programs and
shelters? In other words, your getting the cause and effect confused. The city
attracted, and created by way of its hippy drug happy culture, a slew of
schizo drugged out homeless people… and all the soup kitchens are just a
responsive measure to all that._

===

 _San Francisco. If there were an official city scent, it would be hobo piss.
That 's because hobos are everywhere, and piss is what they do for a living.
Well, not just piss, obviously. They also drop so much excrement on the
escalators in the city's train stations that they're sometimes rendered
inoperable from the sheer volume of poo gumming up the works. How bad can it
be, you ask? Well, the city had to call in a hazmat team to clean up one
recent mess. There was just that much poop. On the escalator. The public
escalator._

===

[1] EG, _" Tech Founder Complains About the Shithole City He's Forced to Make
His Millions In"_. I won't link to it out of principle, but google will send
you there. That was a different person, though. Surprise surprise.

~~~
bonemachine
Totally missing the point, of course.

The comments in the original FB post that trigged this whole thread were of a
rather different sort than you are quoting above:

 _The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society
keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and
generally stay out of your way. They realize it 's a privilege to be in the
civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that's okay. …_

 _You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world,
but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the
working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to
us. It 's a burden and a liability having them so close to us. Believe me, if
they added the smallest iota of value I'd consider thinking different …_

~~~
001sky
If this was a random you-tube comment it would not be "news":

 _Random guy posts unoriginal comment on intractable problem_

Just reads like a article from _The Onion_.

~~~
bonemachine
'cept that it _wasn 't_ a random comment, it was a well thought-out tirade.
And it wasn't posted on YT, but rather on his FB page (equivalent to tweet or
a blogpost, more or less).

Which is to say: who the speaker is, who he works for and what his position is
_matters_ , as does the venue in which his original rant was posted.

------
HNJohnC
Whatever happened to “to whom much is given, much will be required”?

I've seen it written that a great many successful business leaders have
sociopathic tendencies; I find it very hard to relate to the kind of person
who would say such a thing from their position.

I can imagine the thinking behind someone who has nothing or very little and
wants someone to blame, but this coming from someone who has so much? What
could possibly be the motive?

It is sickening.

------
jnord
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do
nothing for him. \- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

------
buckbova
"Why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers,
dropouts, and trash I have no clue."

It's a valid question. If there were crazy homeless drug dealing drop-out
trash hanging out in front of my office building, begging for money every time
I passed by on they way to my car, it'd be unsettling.

~~~
gopher1
No, the valid question is, "What can we do as a society to reduce the amount
of homeless in the city?"

Asking about why a given location is the correct place to put them is not a
valid question. Unless of course you're a sociopath who doesn't actually care
about the well being of anyone other than yourself...

~~~
deadfall
"Unless of course you're a sociopath who doesn't actually care about the well
being of anyone other than yourself" IMO is at the top of the list of what's
wrong. People don't have time to stop to think about why these people got
themselves there. They are too busy trying to make their bosses/investors
happy so they don't end up on the street, as well (I am in the same boat). I
don't think we are all that far from a situation they are in. One accident
could cause you to become disable and no longer able to work. Then when you
ask someone for help they look at you like scum because you don't have clean
clothes or a place to live. Some have the support that will help them to never
be in this situation. Support is the key.

------
gaius
What is AngelHack, what is it for, how does it make the world a better place?
When the tech bubble bursts, this schmuck will find himself in the lower part
of society...

~~~
HNJohnC
I _so_ wish karma was a real thing when I see comments like this from people
who, when it really comes down to it, contribute nothing of meaningful or
lasting value to society and blithely ignore all the blind luck that got them
where they are.

The same luck that, flipped the other way, probably accounts for a great many
of the homeless people that they bitch about.

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ultramundane828
I don't quite get how "working class" got into the mix. I see that there must
have been some cohesion to his original rant since it was linked to income
disparity, but what does that have to do with homeless beggars exactly?

To me a discussion about the homeless doesn't entail a discussion about the
"working class" or vice versa.

Just a little confused here...

~~~
rmchugh
he was comparing the working class (i.e. the people who live off the sale of
their labour) to unemployed and homeless people (what Marx would have called
the lumpenproletariat).

I guess your confusion stems from the fact that working class typically means
manual labourers rather than intellectual labourers in common parlance. In
this vein, one would see software developers as middle class, due to their
relatively high income. However, this income is more a function of a temporary
shortage of developers, rather than anything intrinsic about software
developers.

I think he is right to use the term working class, but completely wrong in
everything else he says.

~~~
true_religion
Funny enough, manual labour in my area is a fairly high paying occupation. So
much so, that everyone I know who went into construction is married with fully
paid off condos before the age of 30.

It may not be glamorous, but it puts them firmly in the middle class.

Developers are upper middle class like doctors and lawyers, and hiring shows
the same tendencies to networking: wherein its not what you know, but who you
know to get work. Look at all the people on HN who brag that they don't apply
for jobs.

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ehmish
It's interesting, if you consider the wealth disparity of SF to something like
Cape Town I imagine it's something similar. As such it's hardly surprising
that they've both got a problem with beggars and such. I can imagine it'd be
vastly more profitable to be a beggar in a relatively rich city than a poor
city. It's a similar case for drug dealing

[http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/cape-cbd-is-honey-
pot...](http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/cape-cbd-is-honey-pot-for-
beggars-1.1579192)

