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"- being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around you" This is the one that resonated with me. Obviously "the system" as a whole isn'

"- being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around you" This is the one that resonated with me. Obviously "the system" as a whole isn't objectively crumbling by traditional measures like GDP, but there were things that could give that feeling: Homeless sleeping in the subway and on the main streets, the smells, crime so rampant it's basically ignored (my car was broken into > 5 times), working relationships are brief and cold and high-pressure

woah 8y ago
As a contractor for startups in SF for 6 years and now a founder for 1, I have found the opposite of what you have about business relationships. The homeless problem is not caused by the tech industry, it is caused by the homeowners who have been blocking apartment building construction in 90% of the city for 50 years.
- oblio 8y ago
  Aren't people in the tech industry numerous and powerful enough to lobby for humane conditions for their fellow citizens?
  - woah 8y ago
    The tech industry does overwhelmingly vote for more housing, but many people in tech are young, newly arrived, and very busy. In California’s Byzantine political system, whoever can sit in the right meetings for longest and file the right paperwork at the right time has political power. This ends up being elderly homeowners, and the nonprofits that earn their money servicing the homeless (SF spends more money on this than they do on streets and parks).
    - mirkules 8y ago
      Frankly, I find the notion that people are too busy to fight for causes they believe in laughable. Either make the effort to effect change or accept that you are part of the problem. Face the truth. I don't understand how someone can believe in something, but only when it's convenient.
  - qbaqbaqba 8y ago
    Lech Walesa is currently available.
- nerbert 8y ago
  That reasoning is a good display of the underlying problem. It’s nobody’s fault so nobody takes care of it.
  - vowelless 8y ago
    Collectivism also results in distribution of responsibility. Perhaps it is this distributed responsibility state that could be at the root of many issues.
- brighteyes 8y ago
  The homeowners have much of the blame, you're right, but tech has made things worse by rapid job growth that contributed to rising rent costs.
  - adventured 8y ago
    Tech is a bountiful solution, not a problem. The problem is in not properly taxing the output of the hyper rich tech industry. The taxation then goes into trivially solving the homelessness problem in SF. We're talking about 5,000 people, not 50k or 500k. It is not a problem compared to the enormity of the tech riches. SF is an extremely affluent city that refuses to act.
    - deadmetheny 8y ago
      >The taxation then goes into trivially solving the homelessness problem in SF Homelessness is not a trivial problem that can just be solved by throwing a lot of money at it. It's certainly a start in SV though, all things considered.
      - Kalium 8y ago
        You're right. Homeless is not an easy problem that can be solved with big dollops of cold, hard, cash. Rather, tt's a trivial problem that can just be solved by throwing a lot of housing at it. Incidentally, housing is the one thing that everywhere between Ocean Beach and Diridon are allergic to...
        deadmetheny 8y ago
        Homelessness is not a trivial problem, full stop. There is no way around this. It can be lessened with extra housing for those who are only homeless because of cost of living, but that doesn't get to the root causes of what causes people to lack funds for housing and such.
        ShabbosGoy 8y ago
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  whats important is that there is somebody else to blame.
- fjsousa 8y ago
  yeah, of course you can't blame tech itself, but the whole social democracy project is crumbling down. As an european visiting SF it was heart breaking, the disparity of living conditions. spending the first few days commuting from russian hill to the financial district vs visiting the tenderloin in my last few days. I simply can't understand how a city so socially minded accepts such a wealth gap. I mean, it was like visiting some parts of Brazil. I've found that everyone leaves SF a notch to the left of the political spectrum.
  - knuththetruth 8y ago
    >I simply can't understand how a city so socially minded accepts such a wealth gap. Because “social-mindedness” without at least some opposition to Capitalism is meaningless given the scale of problem that Capitalism creates when things like healthcare and housing are surrendered to it.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- zug_zug 8y ago
  > As a contractor for startups in SF for 6 years and now a founder for 1, I have found the opposite of what you have about business relationships. I'm glad not everybody had such a callous experience as mine. > The homeless problem is not caused by the tech industry I don't buy either tech nor housing as the root cause, but at the end of the day I didn't really care who to blame, I just wanted to be able to walk down the street without feeling like I was going to get ebola. But nobody felt safe even acknowledging the problem ("How dare you admit that a half-dressed drug-addict screaming sexual profanities at the woman in front of you makes you uncomfortable! Privilege much?"). People just wanted to blame someone or not even open that can of worms.
  - ajryan 8y ago
    This is an insanely privileged thing to say though. The problem, in your mind, is that you have to see sick people, not that there are sick people who need help.
    - lobotryas 8y ago
      Your interpretation is not charitable. Are these people in need of help? Yes. Should they be out in the street while getting said help? No. Does their presence in the street present a problem? Yes. Here's just one example: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/13/550674476/san-diego-washing-streets-with-bleach-to-combat-hepatitis-a-outbreak https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/13/550674476...
    - Veelox 8y ago
      >> But nobody felt safe even acknowledging the problem ("How dare you admit that a half-dressed drug-addict screaming sexual profanities at the woman in front of you makes you uncomfortable! Privilege much?"). > This is an insanely privileged thing to say though. ...
    - sporkland 8y ago
      I have to be physically threatened to be stabbed by / watch them threaten to shoot other people / watch them destroy property / watch them break down their stolen bikes. Ironically, you're the one being judgemental here. I agree they need help, but this goes way beyond the deep sadness of seeing really sick people and wishing you could help them.
- joshuawright11 8y ago
  Surely the abundant usage of crack has something to do with it too...
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  It's not caused by the tech industry, but I'd say the tech industry exacerbates it.
mc32 8y ago
The one thing that you didn’t get in the Soviet Union was everyday crime, well, what we understand as crime. Sure they could and did send people off to the camps for weird [political and crimes against the state] offenses, but property crimes and such were close to non existent.
- baybal2 8y ago
  >property crimes and such were close to non existent. Whaaaaaaaat? Well, according to official statistics. From my father's side, we had relatives living in a closed down military city, but they were totally paranoid about break-ins during "Peak Brezhnev." Break ins were 50/50 annual events. Street poverty existed as well, just not in big cities, where classless were either branded as substance abusers and locked away in jail, or being labeled as mentally ill and locked away in jail. The regime tried really, really hard to make it appear that there were something wrong with the classless people, and "you keep your head low and everything be alright"
  - mc32 8y ago
    Huh. Interesting. Maybe it depended on where you lived. The people I’ve talked to from the former USSR were all city folk, West of the Urals
    - AlexandrB 8y ago
      Ukraine had plenty of crime under the USSR as well. My mom was shocked when arriving in Canada that people kept their doors unlocked or even open for most of the day in the suburbs.
  - rdtsc 8y ago
    > Break ins were 50/50 annual events. It really depends on the city and region. For example some of the people I went to school with ended up as serial burglars and pickpocket. Most came from broken homes with alcoholic or otherwise absent parents. Many were caught, sent to prison, then back out again presumably becoming even more hardened criminals. Others from the same school though ended up as software devs in the West, accountants and CEOs. Going by personal narratives you can basically support either point of view. I've lived in more dangerous places in US in general, yet I've experience more personal harassment and bullying in the Soviet Union in the 80's than here in US. It's just hard to compare overall without good statistics.
sneak 8y ago
Except that one was driven by actual scarcity, and the other is driven simply by people who think eating the cheapest calories ever produced in history is simply gross.
njoro 8y ago
The situation in the Bay Area is the default for cities with high inequality. You can go to Hong Kong, Bangkok or Cape Town and find a variation of the same. Even Zurich at one point.
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
> This is the one that resonated with me. I grew up in the Eastern Bloc, now I live and work in the Silicon Valley, and the whole thread resonated with me.

woah 8y ago

As a contractor for startups in SF for 6 years and now a founder for 1, I have found the opposite of what you have about business relationships. The homeless problem is not caused by the tech industry, it is caused by the homeowners who have been blocking apartment building construction in 90% of the city for 50 years.

oblio 8y ago
Aren't people in the tech industry numerous and powerful enough to lobby for humane conditions for their fellow citizens?
- woah 8y ago
  The tech industry does overwhelmingly vote for more housing, but many people in tech are young, newly arrived, and very busy. In California’s Byzantine political system, whoever can sit in the right meetings for longest and file the right paperwork at the right time has political power. This ends up being elderly homeowners, and the nonprofits that earn their money servicing the homeless (SF spends more money on this than they do on streets and parks).
  - mirkules 8y ago
    Frankly, I find the notion that people are too busy to fight for causes they believe in laughable. Either make the effort to effect change or accept that you are part of the problem. Face the truth. I don't understand how someone can believe in something, but only when it's convenient.
- qbaqbaqba 8y ago
  Lech Walesa is currently available.
nerbert 8y ago
That reasoning is a good display of the underlying problem. It’s nobody’s fault so nobody takes care of it.
- vowelless 8y ago
  Collectivism also results in distribution of responsibility. Perhaps it is this distributed responsibility state that could be at the root of many issues.
brighteyes 8y ago
The homeowners have much of the blame, you're right, but tech has made things worse by rapid job growth that contributed to rising rent costs.
- adventured 8y ago
  Tech is a bountiful solution, not a problem. The problem is in not properly taxing the output of the hyper rich tech industry. The taxation then goes into trivially solving the homelessness problem in SF. We're talking about 5,000 people, not 50k or 500k. It is not a problem compared to the enormity of the tech riches. SF is an extremely affluent city that refuses to act.
  - deadmetheny 8y ago
    >The taxation then goes into trivially solving the homelessness problem in SF Homelessness is not a trivial problem that can just be solved by throwing a lot of money at it. It's certainly a start in SV though, all things considered.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      You're right. Homeless is not an easy problem that can be solved with big dollops of cold, hard, cash. Rather, tt's a trivial problem that can just be solved by throwing a lot of housing at it. Incidentally, housing is the one thing that everywhere between Ocean Beach and Diridon are allergic to...
      - deadmetheny 8y ago
        Homelessness is not a trivial problem, full stop. There is no way around this. It can be lessened with extra housing for those who are only homeless because of cost of living, but that doesn't get to the root causes of what causes people to lack funds for housing and such.
        ShabbosGoy 8y ago
throwaway2048 8y ago
whats important is that there is somebody else to blame.
fjsousa 8y ago
yeah, of course you can't blame tech itself, but the whole social democracy project is crumbling down. As an european visiting SF it was heart breaking, the disparity of living conditions. spending the first few days commuting from russian hill to the financial district vs visiting the tenderloin in my last few days. I simply can't understand how a city so socially minded accepts such a wealth gap. I mean, it was like visiting some parts of Brazil. I've found that everyone leaves SF a notch to the left of the political spectrum.
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  >I simply can't understand how a city so socially minded accepts such a wealth gap. Because “social-mindedness” without at least some opposition to Capitalism is meaningless given the scale of problem that Capitalism creates when things like healthcare and housing are surrendered to it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
zug_zug 8y ago
> As a contractor for startups in SF for 6 years and now a founder for 1, I have found the opposite of what you have about business relationships. I'm glad not everybody had such a callous experience as mine. > The homeless problem is not caused by the tech industry I don't buy either tech nor housing as the root cause, but at the end of the day I didn't really care who to blame, I just wanted to be able to walk down the street without feeling like I was going to get ebola. But nobody felt safe even acknowledging the problem ("How dare you admit that a half-dressed drug-addict screaming sexual profanities at the woman in front of you makes you uncomfortable! Privilege much?"). People just wanted to blame someone or not even open that can of worms.
- ajryan 8y ago
  This is an insanely privileged thing to say though. The problem, in your mind, is that you have to see sick people, not that there are sick people who need help.
  - lobotryas 8y ago
    Your interpretation is not charitable. Are these people in need of help? Yes. Should they be out in the street while getting said help? No. Does their presence in the street present a problem? Yes. Here's just one example: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/13/550674476/san-diego-washing-streets-with-bleach-to-combat-hepatitis-a-outbreak https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/13/550674476...
  - Veelox 8y ago
    >> But nobody felt safe even acknowledging the problem ("How dare you admit that a half-dressed drug-addict screaming sexual profanities at the woman in front of you makes you uncomfortable! Privilege much?"). > This is an insanely privileged thing to say though. ...
  - sporkland 8y ago
    I have to be physically threatened to be stabbed by / watch them threaten to shoot other people / watch them destroy property / watch them break down their stolen bikes. Ironically, you're the one being judgemental here. I agree they need help, but this goes way beyond the deep sadness of seeing really sick people and wishing you could help them.
joshuawright11 8y ago
Surely the abundant usage of crack has something to do with it too...
s73v3r_ 8y ago
It's not caused by the tech industry, but I'd say the tech industry exacerbates it.

mc32 8y ago

The one thing that you didn’t get in the Soviet Union was everyday crime, well, what we understand as crime. Sure they could and did send people off to the camps for weird [political and crimes against the state] offenses, but property crimes and such were close to non existent.

baybal2 8y ago
>property crimes and such were close to non existent. Whaaaaaaaat? Well, according to official statistics. From my father's side, we had relatives living in a closed down military city, but they were totally paranoid about break-ins during "Peak Brezhnev." Break ins were 50/50 annual events. Street poverty existed as well, just not in big cities, where classless were either branded as substance abusers and locked away in jail, or being labeled as mentally ill and locked away in jail. The regime tried really, really hard to make it appear that there were something wrong with the classless people, and "you keep your head low and everything be alright"
- mc32 8y ago
  Huh. Interesting. Maybe it depended on where you lived. The people I’ve talked to from the former USSR were all city folk, West of the Urals
  - AlexandrB 8y ago
    Ukraine had plenty of crime under the USSR as well. My mom was shocked when arriving in Canada that people kept their doors unlocked or even open for most of the day in the suburbs.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  > Break ins were 50/50 annual events. It really depends on the city and region. For example some of the people I went to school with ended up as serial burglars and pickpocket. Most came from broken homes with alcoholic or otherwise absent parents. Many were caught, sent to prison, then back out again presumably becoming even more hardened criminals. Others from the same school though ended up as software devs in the West, accountants and CEOs. Going by personal narratives you can basically support either point of view. I've lived in more dangerous places in US in general, yet I've experience more personal harassment and bullying in the Soviet Union in the 80's than here in US. It's just hard to compare overall without good statistics.

sneak 8y ago

Except that one was driven by actual scarcity, and the other is driven simply by people who think eating the cheapest calories ever produced in history is simply gross.

njoro 8y ago

The situation in the Bay Area is the default for cities with high inequality. You can go to Hong Kong, Bangkok or Cape Town and find a variation of the same. Even Zurich at one point.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago

> This is the one that resonated with me. I grew up in the Eastern Bloc, now I live and work in the Silicon Valley, and the whole thread resonated with me.