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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 initia

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.
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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.

deleted 11y ago
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