(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 transi

(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.