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This is going to be somewhat long and heartbreaking but I promise it will converge on an intelligent point at the end. Every time I visit San Francisco, the he
by evangelista 9y ago
This is going to be somewhat long and heartbreaking but I promise it will converge on an intelligent point at the end.
Every time I visit San Francisco, the heart of America's tech economy, I walk down Market Street and view dozens of adult human beings, many with traumatic brain injuries and psychological problems, living like animals, sleeping in tents, defecating directly on the ground and begging for help.
In the richest country in the world, at the very heart of the tech industry...let me repeat this again, we have scores of people living in abject poverty...exactly like animals.
After multiple viewings of this situation, I stopped looking at the homeless people and I started noticing the people walking past these individuals: Staring down at their phones, the residents of Silicon Valley have trained themselves to wear blinders to the abject, deplorable poverty of their fellow men. They are Tweeting, Facebooking, Instagramming, SnapChatting their lunch.
Solving easy problems. Making easy statements. Liking the right comments and the right posts, retweeting the appropriate social messages. So simple and easy! Click! Like! Done!
As I stood in line at one bodega, I noted the professional and skilled manner in which a white collar worker like myself standing in line completely failed to look at, respond to or acknowledge the presence of a drug addict who was begging him for change.
What a wonderful technique, I thought to myself. I had been doing it all wrong previously by even remotely acknowledging the homeless whenever they hassled me on the street. After observing this man's behavior, I adopted it. I learned: Just pretend they don't exist and they will go away.
So back to my main point:
Silicon Valley is a corrupt, horrible place that has decided it's #1 problem to be solved is the gender imbalance in software engineering. Instead of focusing on solving the clear, heart rending, abject poverty around them, the entire tech industry has collectively jammed it's head deep, far into it's own anal cavity and decided that the optimal use of all of it's social justice time should be on ensuring that highly privileged women who have attended universities and received educations which fairly guarantee that they will achieve salaries that only .01% of the entire globe will ever achieve are the most pressing concern of the moment.
Every single day I see nothing but a relentless circular pounding on this topic. Women must learn to code! Women must learn to code! Women must learn to code!
The other half of the issue is just as fun: Our #1 issue as an industry is that women who are in the very upper 0.5% of the world must earn slightly more money. About 3%-5% more money. Yes, THAT is the issue we must harp on constantly all day, every single day online.
And the people living like animals on the streets we are ignoring? Yeah, fuck them, lets teach girls to code.
- neilwilson 9y ago"Instead of focusing on solving the clear, heart rending, abject poverty around them" That requires ensuring everybody that wants a job has one unless exempted by age or infirmity. Having more jobs than people means that the workers have the upper hand in wage negotiations. They always have another option. And if there is one thing business hates, it's having to compete - particularly for workers. A society that cannot work out that healthcare should be based upon need, not ability to pay, is already moribund and dying on the inside.
- droidist2 9y ago> Having more jobs than people means that the workers have the upper hand in wage negotiations. They always have another option. Businesses would never let this happen though, they would just lobby the government to let them bring in more workers from other countries until they have the upper hand again. The third world has virtually an endless supply.
- pkaye 9y agoBusinesses are run by people. Someone right here could choose to start a business and give the workers whatever they want in their wage negotiations. The question is can you do it sustainably.
- mjevans 9y agoIsn't that exactly what 'fixing' the visa situation about? (Also, this is why I'm for giving those foreign workers on visas an easier route to becoming /citizens/ instead; and getting rid of indentured servitude visas.)
- PeterisP 9y agoIt's naturally that they'll lobby the government for that, but it doesn't mean that they should or will succeed in that, after all, the (current) workers have all the votes that politicians want.
- bassman9000 9y agolet's drill the idea that they must be coders into girls' brains, because they're not having it themselves ftfy