
Techies Are the New Puritans - mathattack
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115896/tech-and-homelessness-essential-conservatism-silicon-valley
======
mratzloff
Techies like to think of themselves as different from the very wealthy, but
many of our attitudes are very similar and most techies aspire to join their
ranks.

There's a persistent belief in common with the wealthy that we have earned,
solely through our hard work and perseverance, our position in society. Never
mind the advantages we had along the way.

~~~
lbrandy
Your comment is good and worth reading, but your opening line is unfortunate
especially in light of what happened in the 15 minutes following. Just remove
that line. I won't tell anyone.

~~~
mratzloff
Thanks. The thread got a lot more up votes after my comment. ;-)

~~~
larrys
"larrys" law states that a comment that "larrys" replies to and all the parent
comments get automatic up votes.

------
Crito
I suppose the elephant in the room is whether or not 'techies' are repulsed by
the homeless because accusations like _"...[they] spit, urinate, taunt you,
sell drugs, get rowdy..."_ have a basis in reality.

I don't live in SF, so I can only go off what I hear (from the accused
'techies', so I'm only getting one side of the propaganda here..), but what I
have heard is that 1) the homeless really seem to love SF, preferring it to
perhaps any other city, and 2) there is at least a segment of the homeless
population that engages in extremely anti-social behavior _(specifically I
have heard stories of BART escalators regularly being shut down because the
homeless shit on them)_.

 _(For background: most of my experience with the homeless comes from my
interactions with them while working at a soup kitchen in a small city in
Pennsylvania (those interactions were universally pleasant), and my
interactions with them in Philadelphia (where an aversion to the homeless and
an aversion to being mugged have a very close relationship...))_

~~~
jarrett
First, we need to distinguish between homelessness and poverty on the one
hand, and crime on the other. The two may overlap for some individuals (just
as wealth and crime overlap for some), but they're by no means synonymous.

The legitimate complaints about the homeless in SF seem to always revolve
around criminal acts: Assault and vandalism, mostly. (The less legitimate
complaints are usually a variant on "I shouldn't have to look at poor
people.")

Not all homeless people commit these sorts of crimes. Those who do are just
disproportionately visible. This provides fodder for the false narrative that
the homeless are criminals who are undeserving of compassion and responsible
for their own criminality.

So how can we discuss this issue without wrongly demonizing a whole
demographic? Here's how. If you live in SF and you're bothered by street
crime, complain about street crime. Advocate for community policing that a)
keeps a lid on assault, vandalism, and other such crimes, and b) treats the
public (including the homeless) as valued customers.

It's fine to say that street crime in downtown SF bothers you. That's a
completely understandable sentiment. I think most everyone feels the same way
about the neighborhoods they inhabit. What's not fine is heaping overbroad
blame on an already marginalized group.

~~~
cynicalkane
I guarantee you that San Francisco does not adequately prosecute people who
poop on the street or shout dirty comments at passers-by. And I guarantee you
that complaining about the homeless problem does not mean a lack of compassion
for an "already marginalized group". And SF is so politically correct that
prosecuting members of this "already marginalized group" is a political
challenge (although California has no problem throwing large numbers of black
guys in jail without adequate due process). Nor do SF police consider street
pooping a high priority. You do not get a homeless problem with effective
policing and effective social services.

I really don't know what you're trying to get at with your comment. It seems
to consist mostly of straw-man arguments and a lack of interest in confronting
a real problem.

~~~
yapcguy
Yes, let's all come together and help the city tackle the problem of drug
abuse, an often cited precursor to becoming homeless.

Together we can put petition Ed Lee and SFPD for effective non-political
policing. Let's start by upholding the law in Dolores Park on the week-ends.

Er, hello, anybody there? Nobody interested anymore? Hmmm.

~~~
moocowduckquack
_Yes, let 's all come together and help the city tackle the problem of drug
abuse, an often cited precursor to becoming homeless._

I think cost and availablility of housing might have something more to do with
it, seeing as rich folks doing drugs doesn't lead to homelessness nearly as
much.

------
k_kelly
Cities that don't care for their homeless tend not to have a homeless problem.

SF actually has relatively great care for homeless people compared to the
majority of the US. Therefore a lot more homeless end up there.

The homeless problem is striking because it's almost entirely artificial. If
SF didn't care for it's homeless, and didn't rent control areas to allow
affordable housing it would probably be like midtown manhattan. That's boring
to a lot of residents and unfortunate for the homeless, but where's the tax
money coming from to allow the status quo to continue?

No one seems to be debating the value of social programs, but what's the
advantage of the tenderloin? It's been a decaying mess for generations when it
could be a profitable, vibrant part of the city which would be beneficial for
wealthy and poor alike.

~~~
moocowduckquack
_Cities that don 't care for their homeless tend not to have a homeless
problem._

The same is not true of countries.

------
borgopants
As a software engineer, this problem has been prevalent in my mind lately. My
main question is this: how can we, as members of the technology industry, use
our skills to help solve the homelessness problem?

I've seen a lot of people suggesting that learning to code is a solution,
which feels like a very disconnected kind of response. If you're trying to
stay warm and survive from day to day, buying a computer is surely the lowest
priority. Another solution is raising awareness via the web. In the social
media era though, this has the negative of making people feel like they've
done something by sharing a link or upvoting a story without actually making
an actual difference, so I don't feel like this, by itself, is a great
solution.

The disparity between people in the technology industry and the homeless is so
huge, and noticeable, in areas like San Francisco that I feel it is our
responsibility to give back and try and make a difference somehow. What are
some ways that this could be achieved?

~~~
SDGT
If a homeless individual can approach me in an honest, respectful manner, I'd
be more inclined to help.

This has not yet been the case. I prefer to reward civility with civility.

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
How, exactly, would you want them to approach you?

~~~
ars_technician
Without their genitalia exposed would be a start and preferably without
spitting.

~~~
moocowduckquack
No, that was some members of the Oxford Union on an international fact-finding
mission.

------
Spooky23
Funny.

The Puritans are closer to the do-gooders than the general population.
Puritans left Europe to form the perfect society, which they defined around
their religious practice. They had all the answers and were building the city
on the hill. The system worked, as long as you were an adherent.

The way you solve these problems is by acting at a higher level to address
root causes. Advocating for someone's "right" to shit their pants and disrupt
public spaces is ridiculous, but it's also easy to do -- offering pity is
always easy to do. It's not as easy to get treatment for mental health issues
or to fund drug programs or to address the more systemic issues that result in
a screaming maniac running around in the street.

Techie or not, I have a right to use public spaces that should be preserved.
My son should be able to work in a public library. My family should be able to
walk down the street without fear.

~~~
fiter
> My family should be able to walk down the street without fear.

I think we need to be extremely cautious when we think things like this. I'm
not sure everyone's fear is well-founded. It seems like we can't eliminate
risk, so we need to have this reasonable debate about what we'll tolerate.

I don't believe in removing these people, but let's have anyone in the area
behaving some fair rules. No physical assault sounds good. Sounds like maybe
we agree? I just haven't had that physical assault problem, so to me it seems
like I can walk down the street without fear.

~~~
Spooky23
I agree -- I don't mean we need a complete police state. Homeless people have
just as much right to be in a public space as anyone. But as an example, in my
city a bunch of aggressive panhandlers will taunt and intimidate you between
the entrance to a hospital near me and one of the parking areas.

When my sister worked at this hospital, it was very intimidating to have to
run through a gauntlet of these people, it was really scary to be running a
gauntlet of deranged drunks.

------
67726e
Is the relation really all that surprising to people? We programmers tend to
be a fairly self-reliant bunch. Ever told someone "RTFM"? Many of us are self-
motivated, and probably self-taught to at least a certain degree. You think
"It's just so easy, anyone can do it if they put in the work" and as a result
you see unsuccessful, downtrodden people and think they just didn't want to
put in their 10.000 hours like the rest of us.

~~~
EliRivers
_We programmers tend to be a fairly self-reliant bunch._

For a very special meaning of "self-reliant". The majority of programmers I
know could not produce their own food, make their own clothes, build their own
shelter, treat their own illnesses. These are the fundamentals of life; how
"self-reliant" can someone claim to be without being able to do these (I can't
do these either, but I'm not claiming self-reliance)?

We can play into an illusion of "self-reliance" only because these foundations
and so much more have been made so pervasive and efficient.

~~~
ars_technician
That's not what self-relaince is. Nobody is self-reliant by that definition
because even people trained for wilderness survival will die from some mundane
thing without modern medicine.

Self-reliance is when you can contribute enough to society on your own to get
the things required to live in return without hand-outs.

~~~
EliRivers
Ha. Sure it is.

I think you've mistaken "not in debt" for "self-reliant".

~~~
busterarm
This. There are other forms of altruism than charity. Being born to privilege
is a pretty large subsidy towards sufficiency. Caring for your own children is
a form of altruism.

The poster seems to express an affinity towards Objectivist thinking based on
some other comments (I wouldn't assume an ideology they haven't overtly
claimed.), but has a very narrow definition of what altruism is. I would argue
that this is a problem, because objectivism and its usefulness to society
depends almost entirely on how you think of altruism.

Proponents of the viewpoint in general are very dismissive of things like
paying for the care of the diseased, even when there's a strong and perfectly
reasonable objectivist argument that you should do so purely out of self-
interest because of how diseases live and are spread.

------
aaronem
> In the Puritan model of charity, the rich have an obligation to do good for
> the poor—but the poor also have an obligation to the rich, to try to be a
> useful part of the same society.

The article's author not only disagrees, but considers this model so obviously
erroneous that she doesn't see any need to explain what's wrong with it. I
find this unhelpful, because it fails to explain why subsidizing people who
contribute nothing to society, in such fashion as to provide an incentive to
_continue_ contributing nothing to society, is in any way a good idea.

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
There's the problem of lock-out: how do you contribute usefully to society
without some baseline to work from, and where your day-to-day activities are
forced to be about the most basic level of survival?

~~~
aaronem
Well, just off the top of my head, something like a new WPA seems like it'd be
a decent start, considering the infrastructure maintenance problems I keep
hearing about. Is that "workfare"? I've heard "workfare" is bad, although
again I'm not really sure why.

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
I have no objections to WPA-style programs, and think that likely would be a
good solution. Heck, it worked once before.

The problem is that in addition to having let our infrastructure decay, we've
let our social infrastructure decay.

~~~
aaronem
That's no more an obstacle today than it was in 1935; the original WPA was an
emergency measure, just as our notional revival would be.

------
masterleep
Having to dodge shit and vomit in the alleys of San Francisco is disgusting.
It is as simple as that.

One would think that with the enormous resources devoted to the poor, we could
at least expect not to have to step on shit. But one would be wrong, due to
the incredible inefficiency and corruption of our one party state.

------
pg
This all based on a tiny amount of anecdotal evidence: one post and a reply by
his friend. It's like a pyramid balanced on its apex.

The interesting thing about this article, to me, is what it shows about how
much demand there is for this idea.

~~~
Segmentation
> _This all based on a tiny amount of anecdotal evidence: one post and a reply
> by his friend._

Maybe, but the reaction on Twitter and in this thread is proof that a lot of
techies have this puritan attitude toward homeless. The blog was being
sensational to expose this.

------
danso
Am I not seeing the "next page" link? The subhead for this article is:

> _Silicon Valley 's ugly treatment of homeless people has a long history._

And the only "history" I see is:

> _Greg Gopman, who is the CEO of a startup that organizes hackathons, wrote
> this on his Facebook page_

Let's pretend there were a dozen such ugly comments in the past year from
people who happen to live in Silicon Valley. What does that say about tech
being the new Puritans? Nothing, as far as I can tell.

Don't get me wrong, I think the quoted techie sounds quite disagreeable. And
yes, I'm sure there are many more techies who think like him. But I don't see
this as a "techie" problem. I see it as a above-average-income mindset that is
more impacted by the amount of money and privilege you have rather than what
industry you acquired such things in.

------
tehwalrus
Comments like this are a bit snobbish[1], but they're hardly puritanical.

America doesn't need "new puritans", it is already full of religious
extremists who think that their personal moral code must be implemented in law
for everyone to follow. The Puritans founded pre-USA America, and they haven't
gone anywhere.

[1] I'm not saying what they said wasn't wrong; it was. I'm just saying it
isn't "puritanism".

------
roin
This article paints SV with too broad a brush, but this is a big problem.
There is a tendency here to oversimplify really complex problems. That's a
good thing when you need to take a leap of faith and start a company to tackle
those problems, but a bad thing when you lack empathy for less fortunate
people around you.

Guess what, most of these people have struggles that we can't begin to
understand. A lot are dealing with mental health issues that are more
debilitating than anything you or I will ever have to deal with. I live on
Market St., and I'm as guilty as anyone of becoming numb to the homeless
living there. But let's not delude ourselves into thinking that anyone can
grab a Rails tutorial and become a six-figure engineer within a few years just
because we've seen it done.

------
memracom
How on earth do these people know that the ones spitting, urinating and
taunting are homeless? In some cultures spitting in public is acceptable so
possibly some of these people are immigrants who haven't yet learned to fit
in. Most will eventually get the message and stop spitting.

Urinating in public is a classic sign of people being drunk in public. Most of
those people have the money to spend on drinks in bars so I doubt they are
homeless.

As for taunting, that sounds like mental illness to me. And the same goes if
someone is spitting at other people.

Now I will admit that it is a common side effect of mental illness to be
homeless, but unless you actually know that someone is homeless for a fact,
you are likely lumping multiple groups of people together and basically saying
"This city needs to do something about all the people on the streets who are
not like me".

Seems to me like better support for the mentally ill would go a long way to
solve the problem, and for those who just want to sweep the problem away by
moving the mentally ill somewhere else, that might be a good idea. Bringing
people closer to nature in a country setting and giving them responsibility to
care for farm animals, and gardens, are all known ways to heal mental illness.
Sounds like these people need to put their money where there mouth is. Start
an Indiegogo project to help mentally ill people in a country setting and
donate your money to that rather than complaining.

------
spikels
Ideology can make you blind to problems obvious to those with an open mind. We
clearly have a serious problems with homelessness in SF - just ask anyone from
out of town. And despite the best intentions of many (and the self-interest of
some) and the dedication of tons of resources the problem has only gotten
worse. Blaming techies or conservatives is frankly ridiculous. Everyone should
be ashamed.

------
digitalzombie
I'm sure they wouldn't feel the same way if the tech industry go to shit and
they end up homeless.

Having a degree and/or a job in demand doesn't give them the right to look
down upon the unfortunates. I believe there are a huge population of veteran
homeless too. It's not like all them chose to be homeless.

They're just assholes that are sitting around bitching. They're not the ones
that are going to try to solve the homeless problem they're the ones that try
to hide the problem. They're worst, they have no solution to this problem and
not willing to do anything.

I find it weird that they used religious allegory but their religious figures
such as Jesus would have help those in need not whine about it.

~~~
aaronem
Christ fed the hungry. He did not petition the Pharisaical council to
establish a steering committee to look toward the establishment of a working
group to consider the possibility of soliciting public input from all
interested stakeholders with the eventual goal of producing a synergistic plan
for improving the condition of the urban disadvantaged.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Supposedly having magical powers, he was also not limited by inadequate opt-in
contributions from a minority of society.

For all of history this has been a problem too big for charity to solve.

~~~
aaronem
"The poor will always be with you." It is no accident that 'utopia'
transliterates to "no-where", or that even Christ never promised "pie in the
sky" but that he made sure to add "when you die". No post-scarcity without
Singularity, if you will.

------
rgrieselhuber
This is a difficult conversation because any statement you make about the real
problems facing workers in downtown can easily get you lumped into a category
of people who hate the poor.

There is no question that disrespectful attitudes toward the poor and homeless
in any city betrays a shocking lack of empathy about the struggles that they
encounter.

The flip side is that there are real problems facing workers (tech and
otherwise) in these neighborhoods and just labeling anyone who complains about
them as some kind of bigot neither cures that person of any perceived bigotry,
it also does not solve the core problems that people who live in those
neighborhoods are facing: extreme poverty, mental illnesses, rising rent costs
and more.

One of my co-workers is a woman and she is harassed daily as she walks into
our office, to the point that we are moving offices as a result. The comments
she endures are sickening and I've witnessed it myself. Interestingly, it
happens much less when I walk down Market Street with her. But what I've
noticed is that it's not the homeless who make those comments.

There are multiple groups all clustered together and it combines to create an
unsettling experience for people who walk through the neighborhood. There are
the homeless, who generally seem to keep to themselves and are preoccupied
with staying warm, begging for food / money, etc.

Then there are the apparently mentally ill, who are likely also homeless, who
can be found screaming in the street, disrobing and more. There are also
obvious drug addicts - I watched a man lick a needle and inject it into an
open sore on his leg in broad daylight. Then there are the loiterers, dealers
and gamblers on the street. These dudes actually are the most abusive toward
women. They are the ones who make inappropriate comments toward my co-worker
and other women I see walking down the street. They yell at people, threaten
them, and attack one another.

Combine all this with the smell of feces, urine and trash littered all over
the street and you do genuinely wonder why it's so bad. I can't think of a
single other city in America that I've visited that has this many problems.

Some of the core causes appear to be an impenetrable and growing wealth gap,
lack of available services for those in need, lack of proactive police
coverage (but please, no military-wannabe cops need apply) and ongoing
gentrification. In the Tenderloin, I would almost characterize it as an active
rebellion against gentrification, where long-time residents feel the need to
intimidate the tech workers moving in to set up new offices, coffee shops,
etc. Call it the Scooby Doo strategy.

It's a difficult situation because on the one hand I completely sympathize
with those who are seeing their ability to afford living in older
neighborhoods vanish before their eyes. On the other hand, tech workers are
often portrayed as entitled tech hipster bros who just want a clean street to
walk down on their way to the new Blue Bottle cafe.

The reality is that the actual "tech workers" who are trying to make a living
also includes women, men and women with families and new immigrants to the US.
Because of the money some of these folks earn, it's easy enough to demonize
them when one jackass makes inappropriate comments on Facebook. But the same
Valleywag bloggers who demonize the tech hipster bros also can't be seen
actually doing anything to make a difference on their own and probably share
the same thoughts as they walk toward a new cafe to work on their next piece,
this one already forgotten.

~~~
mathattack
Fixing homelessness in SF is a very complicated problem. Some of it has to do
with anti-gentrification. Other issues are zoning laws. In addition, there is
a root cause of mental health and/or substance abuse.

Here's an article on it. [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-struggles-
to-help-e...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-struggles-to-help-ex-
homeless-thrive-off-4705541.php)

------
negamax
I totally see a build up to 'Occupy Silicon Valley' around the next bust.
Unlike bankers, techies would gladly join and even encourage the movement if
it has any merit.

------
etanazir
What if everyone in your world is simply your own soul from a different point
of view.

------
thenerdfiles

        Do you think technology is going to take over the world?
    

How do questions like this factor into this class warfare?

~~~
thenerdfiles
We already get the gist here. It has become imperative that we _consciously
strive_ to add "humanism" to our practices: human-centric this, human-readable
that... Many of us have _to be reminded_ to be nice — and there's a positive
trend between _circumstantial ethics_ and _hours spent in front of the
computer_.

Non-technologists fear that technologists have lost their humanity, and thus
incur an air of arrogance. That's the point here.

Most of them do not want (1) welfare from the tech hierarchy, and some of them
do not want to participate in this arbitrary hierarchy (2) because of their
aesthetic views on technology overall or (3) because of their lack of
education regarding the subject.

~~~
potatolicious
> _" Non-technologists fear that technologists have lost their humanity, and
> thus incur an air of arrogance."_

From the general views commonly espoused on this forum and elsewhere, this
seems like a legitimate fear. I do not believe it's fair to color these people
as luddites or uninformed.

~~~
thenerdfiles
I agree that it's not fair, in principle. However, we _must_ mention that the
quality of education in the U.S. implies that a non-negligible population is
at least underinformed*.

We should not ignore the historical and political context here: Democracy as
implemented by the U.S., given the motivations of market capitalism, has not
been working; and this discussion may very well be the result of that failure.

~~~
potatolicious
I'm not sure how the quality of education relates. A large portion of the
population is underinformed about technology, sure, but I don't think this is
what we're talking about?

Your original post mentioned that we must consciously add humanism to what we
do, and non-technologists fear that we have lost our humanity.

My point is that this fear is not unjustified, considering how so many of us
(evidently, based on discussions that happen around here) look down upon non-
technologists and will readily throw them to the wolves.

Regardless of one's fear of _technology_ (whether for good reason or for lack
of it), the fear of _technologists_ is IMO rational based on my own
observations of people in the industry.

tl;dr: From watching HN discussions, some of us are fucking scary. _I_ fear
them.

~~~
thenerdfiles
QFT: _some of us are fucking scary_.

 _What_ are stereotypes ?

------
hkmurakami
didn't someone on hn pose this exact analogy (to Puritans) a couple of days
ago? sometimes I wonder if editors lurk on hn/reddit for headline ideas (the
writers themselves need more turnaround time than 2 days I imagine)

------
gaius
Conservatism? Reagan? Utter nonsense. Around the time of Reagan, the Soviet
Empire was still shipping people like that to the gulags. North Korea still
does, so Pyongyang can be pristine. It's "progressives", not right-wingers,
who are the problem here.

~~~
notahacker
Do you believe the Silicon Valley professionals the article criticises for
expressing their disgust with the homeless are more likely to be big advocates
of "self reliance" and "small government", or Marxist totalitarians?

~~~
gaius
I think they would accurately be described as Champagne Socialists or if you
prefer Limousine Liberals. Almost literally with their private luxury Google
buses.

