> "Are they too delicate to take public transportation? I take public transportation all the time. I've lived here 50 years. I've taken public transit for maybe 45 of those 50 years. I've turned out just fine."
This is just as applicable to people with cars. Like, you know, almost everyone, including the poor. What in the world is wrong with not taking public transportation? It somehow makes you arrogant, conceited and evil? Seems like a futile attack on people at tech companies, all for the wrong reasons.
It's always disappointing when politics becomes about demonizing the other side. But not unexpected.
It goes on:
> Robles said the protests that he and his group are involved with aren't about the buses but about unaffordable rents and the wave of evictions of seniors and the disabled.
Well, that doesn't match his earlier quote! Evictions and unaffordable rents are one thing. Attacking people just because they're better-off and—the horror!—going to work without talking to their neighbors ("They don't want to talk, just to get on their bus and head to work.") is quite another. This attitude blows through the understandable and into the viciously anti-individualistic.
Seriously: evictions are one thing. But everybody deserves to be able to live and work in peace, without having to bow to the "community"! You should be under no obligation, social or otherwise, to enjoy the same things as your neighbors or even talk to them. And yet this is one of the main complaints I hear about techies. It's an absurd position and, doubtless, a double standard: it's not like many of the people they're trying to protect—ones who actually deserve some protection, at that—are all that much more social themselves.
I'm sympathetic to both "sides," although it's unclear to me that there are really sides. No one is actually happy about the rising costs in San Francisco (aside from current owners of real estate), and I've not met anyone who likes that there's effectively a purge going on of lower-income people in the city. Similarly, I think very few people want to ban tech commuters from living in San Francisco and eject the start-ups that already exist here.
It's a perfectly broken system, because it's working exactly as it's supposed to: more economically productive people get more access to scarce resources. No one is individually at fault, but there's an emergent order that is grotesque.
The issue is what should someone upset at this do? The people being priced out obviously can't be reskilled to make their labor worth the amount a Googler gets, and the city is, as far as I can tell, incapable of addressing the problem--someone is doubtlessly going to chime in something about rezoning, but it's simply wishful thinking to think that constructing a couple thousand extra housing units per year would do anything besides maybe slightly slow the increase of housing costs, which are already too high for most people.
Lashing out at the buses is a strategy I'm not particularly impressed with. At best it might incentivize tech companies to figure out how to solve the problem themselves, but that's difficult to see happening, both because it's simultaneously a very hard problem to solve and a problem that will resolve itself--in a way neither I nor the protesters will like much--in less than a decade (at least in San Francisco--Oakland and Berkeley probably have a bit more than a decade).
I've intellectually played around with some fairly radical strategies and solutions--for instance, a high land value tax that's used to fund a basic income for residents--but none of them seem like a slam dunk answer, and all of them can be described, at best, as "maybe not impossible." But I'm incredibly eager for any ideas.
One thing that could happen tomorrow: Google and other tech companies could put a lot of muscle behind getting city and regional government to solve some of the planning issues. Especially the planning issues in the cities where they actually have their offices.
Part of the reason people are commuting from SF is that vacancy rates in the valley are even worse than here. If Google wants to hire more people, the first step should be making housing available near Google. That may also require going beyond mere bulk construction to make the place more appealing to their workers. The same goes for the other companies that are flush with cash and hiring rapidly.
From my perspective, the buses are an ugly hack to temporarily ameliorate a deeper problem. A hack that shifted the impact of the problem to SF.
Your premise is incorrect. People choose to live in SF because they prefer city life. Building more boxes around the bay will not get these people to move. The buses ARE a temporary solution, but the real solution is to move the work closer to the workers.
I also think that it is an entirely over-optimistic point of view that these few tech companies are going to shake a few hands and rents will decrease even when talking about a multi-year time scale.
Some people choose to live in SF because they prefer city life. But that's another thing that tech-company muscle can help solve: the peninsula doesn't have to be sterile.
I'm not talking about a few handshakes. I'm talking about them using their substantial financial and political power to influence the city and regional governments on the peninsula. If you think billion-dollar companies can't influence the areas where they are based, you haven't been paying any attention to local US politics.
There is zero chance of making more housing available in Mountain View. No one who currently lives in Mountain View want or would benefit for an increase in density.
A lot of people in San Francisco feel the same way. It's not clear to me why Mountain View isn't expected to increase density but San Francisco is. There's certainly a lot more room on the peninsula.
Activists would flip their shit if Google started throwing their weight around in politics - "Is Google trying to buy your democracy?". And then the NIMBY crowd would swarm all over any proposed building.
From your other posts, you don't strike me as a guy who thinks that companies should be dissuaded by lefty activists flipping their shit, so this seems a little disingenuous to me.
Something you buy with your own money doesn't shout "privilege" as loudly as something you're given for free. If Google was handing out cars to their employees, the comparison would be more apt.
> Like, you know, almost everyone, including the poor.
Lots of people who live in cities don't have cars, including many of the not-poor. Many (most?) of these people use public transit. Having access to a robust public transit system is generally seen as one of the benefits of living in a dense urban area.
> What in the world is wrong with not taking public transportation? It somehow makes you arrogant, conceited and evil?
No, it makes you look like you're isolated in a cushion of comfort specifically designed to protect you from having to deal with your neighbors. That's not evil, but it's also not the best way to make friends and otherwise seem engaged and non-aloof.
> No, it makes you look like you're isolated in a cushion of comfort specifically designed to protect you from having to deal with your neighbors. That's not evil, but it's also not the best way to make friends and otherwise seem engaged and non-aloof.
Ridesharing on a bus with other people is now considered to be aloof? I must have missed the memo.
Ridesharing on a bus that is only available to the blessed employees of a rich tech company using publicly funded stops can be presented as very aloof.
Stats and logic are poor defenses against symbols, demonization, and rhetoric in politics.
Since the Google hate on HN is strong now days (since they have lots of money), shouldn't we be happy they are providing a bus service?
These employees might drive to work (worse for the environment) if this bus service was not provided since public transportation might not service where they live.
Providing the bus service is a sensible and logical idea. It has many benefits.
It on the other hand provides a tangible, accessible symbol to demonization and attack with rhetoric.
Don't like it? Then you might think a bit when a news network or a comedy show starts hammering a group.
[edit] I should add I don't agree with the protestor's plan of action or targets, I'm just trying to explain why and how effective their targeting is. Its a long tradition and very easy for the public to buy into.
> Something you buy with your own money doesn't shout "privilege" as loudly as something you're given for free. If Google was handing out cars to their employees, the comparison would be more apt.
However Google "hands out money" to it's employees which they then use to by things like cars. Also Google gives it's employees health care for "free". The buses are a benefit of the job no different than paycheck or health care.
This is just as applicable to people with cars. Like, you know, almost everyone, including the poor. What in the world is wrong with not taking public transportation? It somehow makes you arrogant, conceited and evil? Seems like a futile attack on people at tech companies, all for the wrong reasons.
It's always disappointing when politics becomes about demonizing the other side. But not unexpected.
It goes on:
> Robles said the protests that he and his group are involved with aren't about the buses but about unaffordable rents and the wave of evictions of seniors and the disabled.
Well, that doesn't match his earlier quote! Evictions and unaffordable rents are one thing. Attacking people just because they're better-off and—the horror!—going to work without talking to their neighbors ("They don't want to talk, just to get on their bus and head to work.") is quite another. This attitude blows through the understandable and into the viciously anti-individualistic.
Seriously: evictions are one thing. But everybody deserves to be able to live and work in peace, without having to bow to the "community"! You should be under no obligation, social or otherwise, to enjoy the same things as your neighbors or even talk to them. And yet this is one of the main complaints I hear about techies. It's an absurd position and, doubtless, a double standard: it's not like many of the people they're trying to protect—ones who actually deserve some protection, at that—are all that much more social themselves.