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> If you don't support the practice when it targets the poor, presumably you shouldn't with the rich either. "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich an

> If you don't support the practice when it targets the poor, presumably you shouldn't with the rich either. "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -- Anatole France (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France) I can't say I see a huge issue with treating the rich worse than the poor in this instance. 'Fair' is just an ideal; at any given moment there's tons of unfairness around, big and small. If SF had a bug tracker, issues of the poor being preyed upon would be P1 bugs. This issue should be a P3 (which means nobody will ever get around to it).

kbenson 9y ago
In this case, the bag results in issues that are both high priority (the poor being taken advantage of) and P3 (the rich being taken advantage of). That you see oneparticular symptom and assume it's P3 is a failure to see the root problem and correctly extrapolate how it may play out with different factors at play. It's sort of like being alerted to a bug that shows random account personal information, and the instance reported happened to be all test accounts. You don't assume the problem is not large just because in this instance the accounts affected were test accounts, you need to determine whether it affects real accounts. There's nothing stopping someone from buying up a poor street and charging more for parking than the residents can bear. That's a much worse scenario, but results from the exact same factors as this scenario.
- akkartik 9y ago
  What's P1, that you charge me more for parking on some street? Man, I'll just park on the next street over when I go to mow somebody's lawn (because most of the time I just use public transport). I commute in from 3 hours away, I promise you I won't even notice this little unfairness amidst all the larger arbitrariness that influences my life. [Disclaimer: first person just as a rhetorical device. Author is privileged.] This sort of arbitrage is fundamentally something you can only do to the middle class or rich, people who are sheltered enough to know convenience. In addition, the richer the people you target, the more likely your scheme is to pay off. This is not the sort of thing to hope for volume with.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > What's P1 That property held in common between a group of people be sold to a third party without their knowledge or consent, possibly because of a tax bill they were not aware of. > This sort of arbitrage is fundamentally something you can only do to the middle class or rich, people who are sheltered enough to know convenience. In addition, the richer the people you target, the more likely your scheme is to pay off. This is not the sort of thing to hope for volume with. I disagree. Poor people sometimes own land that has high market value, but they value their neighborhood more. See gentrification. My neighborhood has a park that our HOA fees go towards. If I was to learn at some point that our HOA mismanaged funds so badly that the park was sold to a private party and someone decided to develop some portion of it into residential or commercial real estate, I would be pissed, and I think I would have reason. It would be a real loss to me, as my family uses the park regularly. What's more, it's a public park, so even though my neighborhood pays for the upkeep, anyone can use it. My neighborhood is new, and isn't poor, but I could easily see something similar playing our in an older neighborhood here (which is not SF), where some interesting property ownership was done during development.
- sitkack 9y ago
  Pretty sure you can't buy poor streets because they haven't co-opted public spaces for their own advantage. If they weren't rich, they wouldn't have been in this predicament in the first place. Make your bed and lie in it.

kbenson 9y ago

In this case, the bag results in issues that are both high priority (the poor being taken advantage of) and P3 (the rich being taken advantage of). That you see oneparticular symptom and assume it's P3 is a failure to see the root problem and correctly extrapolate how it may play out with different factors at play. It's sort of like being alerted to a bug that shows random account personal information, and the instance reported happened to be all test accounts. You don't assume the problem is not large just because in this instance the accounts affected were test accounts, you need to determine whether it affects real accounts. There's nothing stopping someone from buying up a poor street and charging more for parking than the residents can bear. That's a much worse scenario, but results from the exact same factors as this scenario.

akkartik 9y ago
What's P1, that you charge me more for parking on some street? Man, I'll just park on the next street over when I go to mow somebody's lawn (because most of the time I just use public transport). I commute in from 3 hours away, I promise you I won't even notice this little unfairness amidst all the larger arbitrariness that influences my life. [Disclaimer: first person just as a rhetorical device. Author is privileged.] This sort of arbitrage is fundamentally something you can only do to the middle class or rich, people who are sheltered enough to know convenience. In addition, the richer the people you target, the more likely your scheme is to pay off. This is not the sort of thing to hope for volume with.
- kbenson 9y ago
  > What's P1 That property held in common between a group of people be sold to a third party without their knowledge or consent, possibly because of a tax bill they were not aware of. > This sort of arbitrage is fundamentally something you can only do to the middle class or rich, people who are sheltered enough to know convenience. In addition, the richer the people you target, the more likely your scheme is to pay off. This is not the sort of thing to hope for volume with. I disagree. Poor people sometimes own land that has high market value, but they value their neighborhood more. See gentrification. My neighborhood has a park that our HOA fees go towards. If I was to learn at some point that our HOA mismanaged funds so badly that the park was sold to a private party and someone decided to develop some portion of it into residential or commercial real estate, I would be pissed, and I think I would have reason. It would be a real loss to me, as my family uses the park regularly. What's more, it's a public park, so even though my neighborhood pays for the upkeep, anyone can use it. My neighborhood is new, and isn't poor, but I could easily see something similar playing our in an older neighborhood here (which is not SF), where some interesting property ownership was done during development.
sitkack 9y ago
Pretty sure you can't buy poor streets because they haven't co-opted public spaces for their own advantage. If they weren't rich, they wouldn't have been in this predicament in the first place. Make your bed and lie in it.