
Berlin Google Campus occupied - mschuster91
https://besetzen.noblogs.org/post/2018/09/07/google-campus-occupied-fuckoffgoogle/
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TulliusCicero
> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher.
> The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must
> have been a halfway livable city.

This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to
prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand
because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high
paying jobs, did we not? If the people need more housing, the solution is,
shockingly enough, to build more housing.

~~~
titzer
> This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists

I don't think you quite grasp the effects of a massive influx of hundreds to
thousands of new individuals making $150k-250k. It increases rent across the
board, which impacts all the people in an area. Sure, it might create a few
new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses. But
ultimately it just leads to gentrification and prices people out of the
market. It negatively affects all renters and only benefits speculators and
owners in the area.

You wonder why people are angry? It's because of tonedeaf responses from big
companies pushing their agendas.

~~~
ajross
Honest question: where would you prefer to put those thousands of individuals
making $150-250k? I mean, they have to work somewhere, right? And they want to
live in big, vibrant metropolitain areas for the same reason that YOU want to
live in those areas (which is why you're upset about the rent in the first
place).

Is there really a solution in your head where high-paid geeks are going to
move to Boise or Zagreb or Perth[1] and be happy there vs. SF or Berlin or
Sydney?

[1] Pause while residents of those places tell me how great they are.

~~~
azinman2
Sometimes there aren’t good answers. Prosperity for some displaces.

You can’t be surprised that those who aren’t rich, and we’re already here, are
angry at the situation.

~~~
ajross
There are good answers. But they're ones of housing policy and urban planning,
not "#FuckOffGoogle", which serves literally no one.

~~~
Apocryphon
Telling angry people that they're irrational and not entitled to their anger
is not a good answer, either.

~~~
saalweachter
This is an incredibly condescending thing to say, and probably not helpful,
but I'm going to say it anyway.

When my two year old gets angry and starts a screaming fit, I tell her she's
not getting her way and screaming won't help, and practice taking deep breaths
with her, and talking soothingly with her until she can calm down.

Being angry doesn't make a person right. A person being angry does not mean
you should give into their demands. A mob of angry people is not more right
for being large, scary and potentially violent.

~~~
Apocryphon
See, you misunderstand my point. When faced by an angry mob, you don't simply
tell them they're wrong. That's not a smart tactic when people are emotional.
Just stating facts won't cool anyone's passions or grievances.

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kerng
>>The Google Campus is intended to be a magnet for annoying young
entrepreneurs whose IT-sweatshops (“start-ups”) promise to deliver new ideas
to Google’s company business.

Those are some pretty emotional words, but show how much in a bubble we tech
people might live. Curious if anyone knows more about the movement behind
this, I doubt it's a majority opinion of the public?

~~~
beat
It shows how much of a bubble the protesters live in, too. Calling startups
"sweatshops" is kind of absurd. To the extent that work is harder or pay is
worse in startups, it's for the ownership (or at least a sense of ownership)
and excitement. Most people working in startups could, if they wanted,
sidestep into safe, boring corporate IT work.

The protesters would be a lot more interesting if they'd start reading Marcuse
and seeing middle class job security and mortgages and the like as a
totalitarian system that works by its addictiveness. But reading the life work
of old men who were once angry young Marxists who watched their revolution
fail and then their nation turn to fascism isn't as much fun as yelling at
Google.

~~~
joshuakarjala
The amount of free "non developer" labor being exploited by early stage
startups is immense

~~~
beat
If someone is working for free on a voluntary basis, they're probably not
being "exploited". When I was trying to build a startup, I got plenty of free
help from various friends and interested parties who were excited about what I
was building - but nothing on the level of employee-level work. Hell, if
someone was remotely useful and willing to put in real hours, I'd have called
them co-founders and given them equity, happily.

This is important! If someone has enough skills/ambition to be actually
_useful_ to an early stage startup, they can make better money elsewhere. So
if they're putting in their time with the startup, they're being motivated by
something else. That doesn't mean they're being exploited. It means their
interests can't be measured entirely in dollars.

~~~
joshuakarjala
Plenty of startups have students / recent grads in marketing, pa roles working
20-40 hours a week for no pay.

~~~
beat
Are they getting equity? Experience? Networking? Fun?

As long as they feel like they're getting something useful from the
experience, then I don't think "exploited" is the right word. And if they
think they're not getting anything out of it, it begs the question just how
that early stage startup is going to make them stick around. Exploitation
involves more stick, less carrot.

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steenreem
Although I don't agree with their way of communicating, I think the
protestors' concern is valid: they will be forced to move because Google's
rich employees will price them out of their living area. This is because of
two reasons:

1) Renting: the protestors rent instead of own the homes they're living in, so
their costs go up with the housing prices. The government could have reduced
this problem by promoting home ownership in the past.

2) Income inequality: the protestors are not techies, so they won't be
employed by Google, and will earn far less than Google's employees. The
government can reduce this problem by increasing income leveling.

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Xylakant
occupation is over, the police arrested a few of the occupiers, there are
reports that a person was injured in the process.

Source: Our office is in the same building.

~~~
mschuster91
Per twitter, one of the protestors got injured gravely, and someone mentioned
that a security guard got hit by his own pepper spray.

~~~
Xylakant
I'd hate the security guard to be injured, he's a nice person. (edit: this may
sound wrong: I also hate that any other person got injured, but I don't know
that person, so I sort of feel less personal involvement)

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ada1981
This is a great line:

“The Google Campus is intended to be a magnet for annoying young entrepreneurs
whose IT-sweatshops (“start-ups”) promise to deliver new ideas to Google’s
company business.”

~~~
ada1981
Anyway this could get incorporated into the actual Google mission statement ;)

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driverdan
> ...to fight against the skyrocketing rents and to open up the space for
> something better.

They lost me right there. If they want to fight skyrocketing rents they should
push for more housing. If they wanted the space to be used for something else
they should have bought or rented it themselves. Protesting Google does
nothing to change these.

~~~
awild
So you're saying that because my neighbor has much more money than I he can
behave however he pleases even if the whole neighborhood despises him?

~~~
yock
It isn't illegal to be hated, at least not yet. You seem awfully eager to
coerce your neighbors into behaving in a way consistent with your personal
values.

~~~
Apocryphon
Conformity is a means of social cohesion, yes.

~~~
yock
Why do you value that over your individuality?

~~~
Apocryphon
Conformity is a rational method that society uses to maintain order. It
shouldn't be surprising. That's an objective observation and my own values are
irrelevant to it.

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_dmurph
Why not build more housing. Build enough housing for all new residents - rent
doesn't go up

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jrockway
The whole protesting thing seems pretty tame these days. They list demands,
but don't follow up with any threat? Why would anyone take the demands
seriously?

~~~
pixl97
Threaten the panopticon police state and they will label you a terrorist. Good
luck getting work after that. Hopefully you'll avoid a long prison sentence
too.

~~~
jrockway
With that world view, why make demands, though? Seems like it's just
attracting unnecessary scrutiny from the "panopticon police state" without
accomplishing anything.

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hobofan
Pretty interesting that Google is protested that much, while there are no
actions of any comparable size against Zalando. Zalando also is a "big tech
firm", and it already has and continues to change Berlin in exactly the way it
is claimed of Google, on a much larger scale than Google will in the
foreseeable future (since they already have their German HQ in Hamburg).

~~~
Xylakant
Zalando, especially the new office space close to the Lido, has been heavily
protested against. The space has been squatted IIRC, but it’s harder to make
news by squatting an empty plot. The space close to the Ostbahnhof is less
contentious since it’s not right in the middle of a living area but in a newly
built commercial zone.

~~~
hobofan
But what they are protesting is not necessarliy the office building, but the
influx of well paid tech workers that the companies bring with them. There,
the building near Ostbahnhof or the Rocket Tower should be just as
controversial. In the 3 years of living in Berlin, I feel like the recent
Google protests are the only thing that got any significant attention.

~~~
Xylakant
The protest is mainly against the gentrification of the immediate
neighborhood. So buildings that are less clearly in a living area are less
contested.

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true_tuna
If you don’t want the housing pressure brought by new jobs, don’t allow new
jobs. If you want new jobs without increased housing pressure peg the number
of new housing permits to the number of new jobs. Or put another way, look at
what happened Silicon Valley for a splendid example of how NOT to do it.

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bonsai80
Insulting the people you want to join you seems line a poor way to get
support:

"...work-shy benefit scroungers, strike-hungry air traffic controllers, long-
living pensioners, unruly refugees, and all other local pests from the
neighborhood..."

~~~
jklinger410
A big whoosh for you, my friend. Or worse, an intentional bad-faith reading.

Those are clearly terms of endearment. Meant to evoke anger that OTHERS call
them that. Owning the words to take them back, as they say.

Also, this is German. Go do a little cultural research next time before the
lazy comment.

~~~
bonsai80
Ah, ok got it. Sorry for misspeaking.

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hknd
fwiw: Campus Berlin FAQ [https://sites.google.com/view/campusberlin-
faq/home](https://sites.google.com/view/campusberlin-faq/home)

~~~
Shebanator
all this fuss over 10 google employees?

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TulliusCicero
Huh, we're building a campus in Berlin? Neat! I work in the Munich office, but
Berlin seems nice too.

~~~
tarboreus
Glad you came away from this story with your broad perspective intact.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Was there something particularly convincing there that should've swayed me?

