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I wonder how far away the tech industry is from returning to company towns, complete with Bitcoin-like digital scrip to spend at their online stores. It seems

I wonder how far away the tech industry is from returning to company towns, complete with Bitcoin-like digital scrip to spend at their online stores. It seems like the amount of time/energy spent dressing up the bleak economic prospects of structural inequality as new fashions could be put to better use addressing these problems. But then I guess the robber barons of the gilded age didn't have teams of marketers under the thumb of outrageous student loan debt.

paulddraper 10y ago
Company towns only make sense when your purchases need to be local. That's hardly the case anymore.
- s0rce 10y ago
  Or when there isn't housing that is remotely affordable. Stanford has "company" housing for professors.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Sure, I meant company towns with stores. Microsoft has housing for its interns. Not uncommon.
skyrw 10y ago
Under a certain light SF is a company town, especially when you define the 'company' as the collective of Venture Capitalists that have profit interests in every tech shop here.
closeparen 10y ago
>bleak economic prospects of structural inequality The housing crisis has nothing to do with economic inequality. If there are 3 units and 5 people who want them, 2 are going to be dissatisfied, even if they all make the exact same income. Lower inequality just changes the allocation strategy away from "who has the most to spend" to things like government lottery, who was here first, who belongs to the most politically favored class, and who is willing to spend the largest share of their equal incomes on rent (making the most sacrifices in other areas of life). Arguably, we already live in this world, due to SF's progressive policies around housing allocation which seek to dampen the influence of "how much do you have to spend on rent" on what (if any) housing you'll get access to. The housing crisis would remain exactly as severe as it is now if you erased 100% of inequality between people. We have it because there is economic inequality between geographic areas, leading people to migrate to areas where this no room for them, and no will to build vertically to make room. But that's only in a world with flat population. If we were reproducing above replacement rate, a housing crisis would be inevitable without construction, even if every person and every area had exactly the same socioeconomic status.
- curun1r 10y ago
  This is only when you look at it as a zero-sum game, which is only the case because there's not enough new construction happening. If you addressed the inequality between homeowners and non-homeowners by getting rid of the protections afforded by proposition 13, you'd create a situation where it's in everyone's best interests to have lower housing costs and we'd see more new construction as a result. As it is now, homeowners are actually incentivised to oppose new construction since it increases the value of their property.
  - closeparen 10y ago
    Policymakers have set it up as a zero-sum game precisely to address structural inequality: to prevent tech workers from ruining everyone else's lives. Viewing preexisting homeowners here as unfairly advantaged (rather than unfairly disadvantaged by the influx of people with higher incomes than them) is a fringe position that only works on HN. I think it's correct, but it's not going to win a Board of Supervisors election.

paulddraper 10y ago

Company towns only make sense when your purchases need to be local. That's hardly the case anymore.

s0rce 10y ago
Or when there isn't housing that is remotely affordable. Stanford has "company" housing for professors.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Sure, I meant company towns with stores. Microsoft has housing for its interns. Not uncommon.

skyrw 10y ago

Under a certain light SF is a company town, especially when you define the 'company' as the collective of Venture Capitalists that have profit interests in every tech shop here.

closeparen 10y ago

>bleak economic prospects of structural inequality The housing crisis has nothing to do with economic inequality. If there are 3 units and 5 people who want them, 2 are going to be dissatisfied, even if they all make the exact same income. Lower inequality just changes the allocation strategy away from "who has the most to spend" to things like government lottery, who was here first, who belongs to the most politically favored class, and who is willing to spend the largest share of their equal incomes on rent (making the most sacrifices in other areas of life). Arguably, we already live in this world, due to SF's progressive policies around housing allocation which seek to dampen the influence of "how much do you have to spend on rent" on what (if any) housing you'll get access to. The housing crisis would remain exactly as severe as it is now if you erased 100% of inequality between people. We have it because there is economic inequality between geographic areas, leading people to migrate to areas where this no room for them, and no will to build vertically to make room. But that's only in a world with flat population. If we were reproducing above replacement rate, a housing crisis would be inevitable without construction, even if every person and every area had exactly the same socioeconomic status.

curun1r 10y ago
This is only when you look at it as a zero-sum game, which is only the case because there's not enough new construction happening. If you addressed the inequality between homeowners and non-homeowners by getting rid of the protections afforded by proposition 13, you'd create a situation where it's in everyone's best interests to have lower housing costs and we'd see more new construction as a result. As it is now, homeowners are actually incentivised to oppose new construction since it increases the value of their property.
- closeparen 10y ago
  Policymakers have set it up as a zero-sum game precisely to address structural inequality: to prevent tech workers from ruining everyone else's lives. Viewing preexisting homeowners here as unfairly advantaged (rather than unfairly disadvantaged by the influx of people with higher incomes than them) is a fringe position that only works on HN. I think it's correct, but it's not going to win a Board of Supervisors election.