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I find it comforting to know that the group I belong to will be blamed for something, regardless of what the group actually does. We are free. http://rationalc

I find it comforting to know that the group I belong to will be blamed for something, regardless of what the group actually does. We are free. http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/01/28/san-franciscos-tech-problems/ http://rationalconspiracy.com/2014/01/28/san-franciscos-tech...

danharaj 11y ago
Misses the point completely: Tech companies are a huge part of Silicon Valley, have enormous wealth, and that wealth isn't used to develop the social and economic infrastructure they rely on. Tech companies are quite willing to throw money at their own problems while ignoring how those problems affect everyone else around them. I don't blame the "tech companies" per se, but their owners, their investors, and the subset of their employees who are upset that the streets around their office are crawling with "riff raff" they despise. Nothing is more disgusting than a human being that profits off of society and insists they have no responsibility to anyone else. Let the sham that is the social contract collapse and reveal the exploitative nature of capitalism for what it is.
- convexfunction 11y ago
  What actions would which people need to take to satisfy you?
  - ac29 11y ago
    There is currently a $400+ million funding shortfall in electrifying and otherwise modernizing the Caltrain corridor [1]. Companies large and small everywhere between SF and SJ stand to benefit, and a lot of public goodwill would come to Google, Apple, Facebook, etc, if they put some of their money towards getting that project done instead of just running private bus fleets. [1] http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/Modernization/PeninsulaCorridorElectrificationProject/Cost_and_Schedule.html http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- lhnz 11y ago
  > Let the sham that is the social contract collapse and reveal the exploitative nature of capitalism for what it is. So basically you just want to watch the world burn? Peculiar to hear this moral stance from a position of high self regard.
  - danharaj 11y ago
    No, i don't believe the world would burn if the social contract were to break down. It would signal the failure of the current system, which i believe is fundamentally unstable, and would force people to reexamine the question of how to build a society. the social contract is a foundational concept of Liberalism. without it, the current relations of property, state, government, and people are unintelligible. a breakdown of the system is a breakdown means a breakdown of its premises.
    - lhnz 11y ago
      Don't you worry that a lot of people would die if the social contract was to break down or is this an acceptable loss to you? I understand that you might expect something better to rise from its ashes, but it seems like in the short term it could be horrifically bad for many people.
    - Turing_Machine 11y ago
      "No, i don't believe the world would burn if the social contract were to break down." History disagrees. Strongly.
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      The social contract is a bankrupt concept. The proof is very simple. Show one instance of assent to this contract. Or, maybe, just show us the text of this "contract".
- umanwizard 11y ago
  Typically cities levy taxes to pay for infrastructure. If a lot of rich people live somewhere, that should be a windfall. Why are tech companies supposed to donate more than their share to "develop infrastructure"? No one has ever been expected to do something like this in the past, AFAIK. Just raise taxes in SV and publicly fund more of what you want.
  - tdaltonc 11y ago
    > No one has ever been expected to do something like this in the past, AFAIK. They're not legally required to, but there certainly is historical precedent. I live in LA, and many of the parks, museums, university buildings, and charitable institutions bare the names of the cities oil/property barons. Even those that don't were still financed by that money. There's also the "company town," where the dominate industry in town shoulders even more of the infrastructure.
    - chillaxtian 11y ago
      > They're not legally required to then there shouldn't be any expectation
      - tdaltonc 11y ago
        You must be a fun roommate.
    - EGreg 11y ago
      Back then those barons didn't pay as many taxes, and the towns relied on their charity. The Federal government, for example, took 3% in taxes at the beginning of the 20th century. And I'm pretty sure the robber barons are criticized more than the current Googles of the world. What you are saying when you say these companies should be doing social projects and planning, is that the cities are failing the citizens to do those projects and planning. I agree that they can do it from a perception point of view, but I've found that Social Justice is usually 80% distraction and opportunism, and real solutions should be properly architected by the right entities, and usually have the character of benefiting everyone, not just the oppressed group. Just as a couple examples: body cameras and inverting the clasroom, are not particularly "Black lives matter" solutions, more like improving "all lives" and yet they'd help more than Al Sharpton's opportunistic appearances and all that type of activism. All these movements that make an enemy of those who they should instead try to enlist in the solution, just wind up doing more harm than good. Take for example the BDS movement. And before that, the other "social justice for Palestinians" movements. It's been decades and Palestinians are still stateless. Is BDS gonna topple Israel? No, it's just an outrage-fueled meme to protest Zionism. It doesn't actually help. The way things move forward is not by activists yelling against an enemy, but rather when people constructively get the stakeholders all together and do something that benefits everyone.
- rybosome 11y ago
  That this is being down voted suggests that we (people in tech) find it difficult to imagine ourselves as contributors to dischord and stratification. My initial reaction is to disagree, but that is defensiveness. What if there is some truth to it? The influx of tech workers really has raised the cost of living in SF substantially (although zoning laws and insufficient development are implicated as well). danharaj, in what ways are tech companies relying on social and economic infrastructure to the detriment of others? I'm well aware of the tragedy of the commons, so what is the finite resource in this case?
  - danharaj 11y ago
    I don't live in SV, I live in NYC, so I'm more familiar with the interactions of the tech community here with the rest of the city. Tech in NYC is rather small compared to the behemoth that is the financial industry, so our impact on our fellow New Yorkers is more subtle. The issue ultimately is that the people that constitute a city, work in it, construct it, maintain it, live in it, are completely subject to the whims of capital and private property. Whole districts can be destroyed or forced out by market forces and replaced with a more profitable set of human beings. We are supposed to accept this as not only natural and inevitable, but good! It is fundamentally undemocratic and inhuman. that's why people are angry, because there is no room for their interests in such a system. living in such a system is dehumanizing. The compromise of Liberalism is that the people control the government, which acts as a counterbalance against the market. When government fails to mediate the conflicts between the workers and the capitalists and property owners, class conflict gets worse. i would just like tech workers to realize that we're workers who sell their labor for a wage and that means we're exploited. Economic security, even petty wealth is always a temporary illusion for the worker. Events out of our hands can and often do plunge us into economically precarious situations. We have more in common with people who work for less than us than we do with the people who pay our salaries. furthermore, in a society that is increasingly based on technological structures, we have a civic duty to make sure that technology serves to create a more equal, democratic society. one thing that i personally do towards that end is offer my clients reduced rates if they open source the code i write for them. i'd like to do more activist programming when i'm in between contracts. I'm probably going to get rate-limited on my replies so i'll stop responding to comments. i sure kicked up a hornets' nest here.
- jordanb 11y ago
  Sure tech companies have a lot to answer for, also the NIMBYs who are restricting the housing supply. But these trustafarian activists focus most of their energy on tech employees---who are just trying to find a place to live just like everyone else.
pslam 11y ago
Nerd bashing, at scale.
DannoHung 11y ago
The two biggest issues that San Francisco faces are housing and transportation. You say that they would be accused of influencing local politics, but I am reasonably sure that busting the building height cap and using money to get better mass transit options would be viewed very favorably by all but a few of the NIMBYest citizens. In any case, the fundamental underlying problem is that tech has created a monotonous economy in the Bay. No locality that has one has good economics for citizens.
- convexfunction 11y ago
  (I'm not the author of that article, just a friend of mine) I expect that if the tech companies were deeply involved in encouraging development and mass transit, then a sizeable percentage of people in SF and elsewhere would decide that this is bad. Most of the press would focus on individual personalities with bad optics and on sub-issues that involve sacred victims, since those are the kinds of things that the readers want to hear about, and "tech companies are villains who do bad things" is an established narrative that it's easy to understand new events by; public opinion follows naturally. And if that's not the case, one of my takeaways is that there would be something else that people decide is intolerable about the tech companies. The issue is not the issues; the issue is the narrative, into which a limitless number of stories can fit.

danharaj 11y ago

Misses the point completely: Tech companies are a huge part of Silicon Valley, have enormous wealth, and that wealth isn't used to develop the social and economic infrastructure they rely on. Tech companies are quite willing to throw money at their own problems while ignoring how those problems affect everyone else around them. I don't blame the "tech companies" per se, but their owners, their investors, and the subset of their employees who are upset that the streets around their office are crawling with "riff raff" they despise. Nothing is more disgusting than a human being that profits off of society and insists they have no responsibility to anyone else. Let the sham that is the social contract collapse and reveal the exploitative nature of capitalism for what it is.

convexfunction 11y ago
What actions would which people need to take to satisfy you?
- ac29 11y ago
  There is currently a $400+ million funding shortfall in electrifying and otherwise modernizing the Caltrain corridor [1]. Companies large and small everywhere between SF and SJ stand to benefit, and a lot of public goodwill would come to Google, Apple, Facebook, etc, if they put some of their money towards getting that project done instead of just running private bus fleets. [1] http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/Modernization/PeninsulaCorridorElectrificationProject/Cost_and_Schedule.html http://www.caltrain.com/projectsplans/CaltrainModernization/...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
lhnz 11y ago
> Let the sham that is the social contract collapse and reveal the exploitative nature of capitalism for what it is. So basically you just want to watch the world burn? Peculiar to hear this moral stance from a position of high self regard.
- danharaj 11y ago
  No, i don't believe the world would burn if the social contract were to break down. It would signal the failure of the current system, which i believe is fundamentally unstable, and would force people to reexamine the question of how to build a society. the social contract is a foundational concept of Liberalism. without it, the current relations of property, state, government, and people are unintelligible. a breakdown of the system is a breakdown means a breakdown of its premises.
  - lhnz 11y ago
    Don't you worry that a lot of people would die if the social contract was to break down or is this an acceptable loss to you? I understand that you might expect something better to rise from its ashes, but it seems like in the short term it could be horrifically bad for many people.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    "No, i don't believe the world would burn if the social contract were to break down." History disagrees. Strongly.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    The social contract is a bankrupt concept. The proof is very simple. Show one instance of assent to this contract. Or, maybe, just show us the text of this "contract".
umanwizard 11y ago
Typically cities levy taxes to pay for infrastructure. If a lot of rich people live somewhere, that should be a windfall. Why are tech companies supposed to donate more than their share to "develop infrastructure"? No one has ever been expected to do something like this in the past, AFAIK. Just raise taxes in SV and publicly fund more of what you want.
- tdaltonc 11y ago
  > No one has ever been expected to do something like this in the past, AFAIK. They're not legally required to, but there certainly is historical precedent. I live in LA, and many of the parks, museums, university buildings, and charitable institutions bare the names of the cities oil/property barons. Even those that don't were still financed by that money. There's also the "company town," where the dominate industry in town shoulders even more of the infrastructure.
  - chillaxtian 11y ago
    > They're not legally required to then there shouldn't be any expectation
    - tdaltonc 11y ago
      You must be a fun roommate.
  - EGreg 11y ago
    Back then those barons didn't pay as many taxes, and the towns relied on their charity. The Federal government, for example, took 3% in taxes at the beginning of the 20th century. And I'm pretty sure the robber barons are criticized more than the current Googles of the world. What you are saying when you say these companies should be doing social projects and planning, is that the cities are failing the citizens to do those projects and planning. I agree that they can do it from a perception point of view, but I've found that Social Justice is usually 80% distraction and opportunism, and real solutions should be properly architected by the right entities, and usually have the character of benefiting everyone, not just the oppressed group. Just as a couple examples: body cameras and inverting the clasroom, are not particularly "Black lives matter" solutions, more like improving "all lives" and yet they'd help more than Al Sharpton's opportunistic appearances and all that type of activism. All these movements that make an enemy of those who they should instead try to enlist in the solution, just wind up doing more harm than good. Take for example the BDS movement. And before that, the other "social justice for Palestinians" movements. It's been decades and Palestinians are still stateless. Is BDS gonna topple Israel? No, it's just an outrage-fueled meme to protest Zionism. It doesn't actually help. The way things move forward is not by activists yelling against an enemy, but rather when people constructively get the stakeholders all together and do something that benefits everyone.
rybosome 11y ago
That this is being down voted suggests that we (people in tech) find it difficult to imagine ourselves as contributors to dischord and stratification. My initial reaction is to disagree, but that is defensiveness. What if there is some truth to it? The influx of tech workers really has raised the cost of living in SF substantially (although zoning laws and insufficient development are implicated as well). danharaj, in what ways are tech companies relying on social and economic infrastructure to the detriment of others? I'm well aware of the tragedy of the commons, so what is the finite resource in this case?
- danharaj 11y ago
  I don't live in SV, I live in NYC, so I'm more familiar with the interactions of the tech community here with the rest of the city. Tech in NYC is rather small compared to the behemoth that is the financial industry, so our impact on our fellow New Yorkers is more subtle. The issue ultimately is that the people that constitute a city, work in it, construct it, maintain it, live in it, are completely subject to the whims of capital and private property. Whole districts can be destroyed or forced out by market forces and replaced with a more profitable set of human beings. We are supposed to accept this as not only natural and inevitable, but good! It is fundamentally undemocratic and inhuman. that's why people are angry, because there is no room for their interests in such a system. living in such a system is dehumanizing. The compromise of Liberalism is that the people control the government, which acts as a counterbalance against the market. When government fails to mediate the conflicts between the workers and the capitalists and property owners, class conflict gets worse. i would just like tech workers to realize that we're workers who sell their labor for a wage and that means we're exploited. Economic security, even petty wealth is always a temporary illusion for the worker. Events out of our hands can and often do plunge us into economically precarious situations. We have more in common with people who work for less than us than we do with the people who pay our salaries. furthermore, in a society that is increasingly based on technological structures, we have a civic duty to make sure that technology serves to create a more equal, democratic society. one thing that i personally do towards that end is offer my clients reduced rates if they open source the code i write for them. i'd like to do more activist programming when i'm in between contracts. I'm probably going to get rate-limited on my replies so i'll stop responding to comments. i sure kicked up a hornets' nest here.
jordanb 11y ago
Sure tech companies have a lot to answer for, also the NIMBYs who are restricting the housing supply. But these trustafarian activists focus most of their energy on tech employees---who are just trying to find a place to live just like everyone else.

pslam 11y ago

Nerd bashing, at scale.

DannoHung 11y ago

The two biggest issues that San Francisco faces are housing and transportation. You say that they would be accused of influencing local politics, but I am reasonably sure that busting the building height cap and using money to get better mass transit options would be viewed very favorably by all but a few of the NIMBYest citizens. In any case, the fundamental underlying problem is that tech has created a monotonous economy in the Bay. No locality that has one has good economics for citizens.

convexfunction 11y ago
(I'm not the author of that article, just a friend of mine) I expect that if the tech companies were deeply involved in encouraging development and mass transit, then a sizeable percentage of people in SF and elsewhere would decide that this is bad. Most of the press would focus on individual personalities with bad optics and on sub-issues that involve sacred victims, since those are the kinds of things that the readers want to hear about, and "tech companies are villains who do bad things" is an established narrative that it's easy to understand new events by; public opinion follows naturally. And if that's not the case, one of my takeaways is that there would be something else that people decide is intolerable about the tech companies. The issue is not the issues; the issue is the narrative, into which a limitless number of stories can fit.