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This is a very good point that I wish would get more attention: "Politics is an organizational problem, not a technological one.", "If we want to lower the cost

This is a very good point that I wish would get more attention: "Politics is an organizational problem, not a technological one.", "If we want to lower the cost of living, the cost of housing, the cost of doing business in the Bay Area, tech must get involved in politics." People don't realize how conservative SF is: "The most innovative solutions don’t matter when your government has been captured by interests that want to freeze the city in amber" SF won't even allow companies to put more buses on the road (something that would benefit everyone!) This was news to me: "Support for More HOMES in San Francisco was even stronger, at 74%. Despite this popular support, every member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to oppose More HOMES, except for Asha Safai and Vallie Brown " It seems that politics in SF doesn't represent the majority view. This is part of a much larger set of problems. As we continue into the future all the tech problems get solved or already have been solved. What we're left with is all the problems that can't be solved: those are all political. There will come a day when instead of starting software companies, we'll be starting companies that solve political problems.

Gibbon1 7y ago
I have this other idea, force VC's to point their firehose of cash elsewhere for a change.
- profunctor 7y ago
  If we are going to take control of capital why not directly take control of the land and build more homes rather than firing money at some collection of small towns and hoping that solves a housing crisis somewhere else?
- pixelbath 7y ago
  I genuinely don't get it. Sure, you want some of that VC money for your startup, so you start building in SV, where the exorbitant costs of living and doing business necessitate taking VC money to even stay afloat. Do investors really not invest in companies that don't start in the Valley? I have a hard time believing that, but to hear anybody from the Bay Area tell it, it seems to be the default.
  - cycrutchfield 7y ago
    Talent is the lifeblood of tech companies. Ergo, tech companies set up where it is easier to recruit talent.
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      I agree with you, but I also find it to be confusing. These same companies, when they do open offices in "2nd tier" cities, they offer "2nd tier" salaries. If you go to Houston and offer something close to SF salary, you will be over-run with great talent. I feel like there's some social status or something that comes from paying the higher salaries in places like the valley that just aren't attainable by attracting talent in other cities.
      - inetknght 7y ago
        > If you go to Houston and offer something close to SF salary, you will be over-run with great talent. I live in Houston and I concur. The company I work for has a lot of trouble finding talent that we need. That's not to say the talent doesn't exist here. It absolutely does. It's just that we can't afford Silicon Valley level compensation.
        lonelappde 7y ago
        You can't afford something you need? How are you still in business?
      - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
        "Talent" includes other roles that aren't so fungible. If a VC-backed startup starts a major widget spinning project, they often want to poach a director of spinning widgets from a top company, and Houston won't necessarily have one.
        lonelappde 7y ago
        That doesn't explain why companies DO hire in Houston but refuse to pay close to what they'd pay the same person if the person moved to Mountain View or SF. It's simple status garbage to sustain the illusion that people in SV are "better"
- carapace 7y ago
  > An Opportunity Zone is a designation created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 allowing for certain investments in lower income areas to have tax advantages. The purpose of this program is to put capital to work that would otherwise be locked up due to the asset holder's unwillingness to trigger a capital gains tax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Opportunity_Zones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Opportunity_Zones
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
> every member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to oppose More HOMES, except for Asha Safai and Vallie Brown To my knowledge there aren’t any anti-development supervisors at the moment. The key differentiator is the type of development the supervisor is pushing for.
- Decade 7y ago
  It has long been impractical to appear completely anti-development. The Housing Accountability Act of 1982 makes outright refusal against California law. Instead, NIMBYs have adopted the CIA’s tools for sabotage. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/simple-sabotage.html https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/... So, the majority claim to be for development, but they saddle it with conditions and processes to make it expensive and less likely to succeed. They claim that this process makes the final result “better,” but more often than not what we get is not “better” but “nothing.” And nothing is worse than bad, because what we have is a deep shortage. They’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
bongobongo 7y ago
Lol congrats you just invented the modern university
xtiansimon 7y ago
Maybe all the tech companies should leave SF for San Jose. It has an airport. And SJ isn’t so precious about it’s history.
- AceJohnny2 7y ago
  Indeed. I wonder why there isn't more visible startup activity in SJ. Is it purely cultural/historical, where it emerged in SF and that remains the main regional attractor? Or are there other political/zoning reasons that make SF more attractive? I believe SF is giving some rich companies discounts to keep them around and reap (I assume) local taxes?
  - foobarian 7y ago
    Can you give some comparison baselines to an uninformed East coaster? I thought SJ is part of the Bay Area and part of the skyrocketing housing cost crisis. Is that not true? If not what is an East coast analogy - e.g. Boston is to NYC what SF is to SJ? I knew a number of people who moved to the SV area, got FAANG type jobs way down in the Valley, and yet still chose to live in SF enduring hellish commutes. I never could quite understand why.
    - JimboOmega 7y ago
      It's something very roughly and geographically like if SF is DC, then SJ is Baltimore. You could theoretically commute between them, but it's quite impractical. SJ is part of the Bay Area and absolutely has skyrocketing costs; it usually tops the lists of cities with the fastest growing housing prices. When I got a job in Redwood City (in between the two), I thought about moving there from SF, but found the costs to be about the same to live there versus SF. So I stayed in SF; it's definitely the anchor of culture of the Bay Area. For everything outside of work it's a much better place to be (for me, a single queer person, especially). I since got a job in SF and have no intention to move or work south again. In fact, the general trend has been for companies to move towards SF away from the peninsula, but mostly because it's where workers want to be. It's much more easier to get by without a car in the city than in the peninsula, it has much better clubs/nightlife, etc. For a young person, the city (meaning SF) is often much more appealing, though of course different people have different preferences.
ditonal 7y ago
The engineer personality profile is basically allergic to organizing. Too passive and introverted, or delusionally individualistic. Silicon Valley engineers see themselves as temporarily embarrassed hotshot entrepreneurs. The funny thing is to the extent engineers do organize it’s usually leftist organization for the lower wage workers (tech workers coalition), which is noble but doesn’t advance engineer goals. Police, teachers, doctors, all have political organization and therefore voice but tech workers cede that voice to their execs. I fantasize about changing that but I’ve come to accept the personality profiles of engineers make it an impossible problem.
- buss 7y ago
  I'm an engineer; I wrote the piece in the OP. I'm running for DCCC and am a political activist. We exist! Support my campaign :) https://buss2020.org/donate https://buss2020.org/donate
  - muzz 7y ago
    If the thesis were true, why wouldn't VCs get into the landlord game? Seems like they would want to lessen this effect, if it were actually the case.
    - fiestaman 7y ago
      Private capital is certainly getting into the landlord game--and in record numbers. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/single-family-landlords-wall-street/582394/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/singl... https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/rent-wall-street-is-my-landlord https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/rent-wall-street-is-my-l...
- rexpop 7y ago
  I have goals. They pay me six figures, but I'm not on track to own a home within biking distance of the office, and as an individual, I can't move the office. I don't get to control who owns my tech company, which means I don't get to decide what our superordinate goals are. I don't get to decide who our customers are. I don't get to decide the extent to which we participate in the Military-Industrial Complex, or the Prison-Industrial Complex, each of which threatened to destroy people like me. Due to the constraints of office hours, my social development and creative passions are extruded through a meager four hours before sleep—most of which must be spent on trains, due to housing and transit limitations. If you don't think tech workers are alienated, you're fooling yourself. It's industry-standars to "burn out" every 3 years, and flee toxic, stagnant positions for a fresh workplace. This tells me that firms are unaccommodating, and foist the risk of personal development on us as individuals. That refusal to accommodate us is precisely the inhumane factor fomenting alienation. What you've "come to accept" is your own vitality's truncation. Edit: people are downvoting me for saying "I can't afford to live near my work or my friends"? Or because they're in denial of Tech's complicity in Military- and Prison-Industrial atrocities?
Pxtl 7y ago
Oh, the more homes is easy. Everybody supports more homes in the abstract, but every specific plan gets shot down because it's too tall or too sprawl or not in keeping with the feel of the neighborhood - often by the same people who want more housing, just NIMBY.
- dev_dull 7y ago
  Or they don’t want to remove the debilitating environment and neighborhood regulation which makes new home construction take years when it could be months. Or they want lots of new housing, but they also want the owner to rent control all units. Or they want at least 30% of the units to be under market rent. In other words, they want something for nothing and they’re fine with YOU being stuck with the consequences.
- noneeeed 7y ago
  Rural housing in the UK is hamstrung by this problem. On the one hand everyone complains that their kids have to move away because they can't afford to live in the village they grew up in, but if you suggest building more houses they kick up a stink. Then they complain that the village is dying because it's all rich people's second homes in the country. While I have distain for a lot of politicians, at the same time I'm not sure anything would convince me to be one, it's a pretty thankless task full of no-win situations in which people will bitch and main no matter what you do.
  - sien 7y ago
    You could join UK YIMBY https://www.ukyimby.com/ https://www.ukyimby.com/
    - noneeeed 7y ago
      I'd not heard of that, cool. Glad to see people are starting to push back against all the cake-and-eat-it nimbys. I live in Bath, which despite being a world heritage site, is actually building quite a lot of new home, some in developments on the outskirts, and lots of infill on brownfield sites. Not a fan of some of the architecture, but glad to see more being built. Now if we ould just sort out the bus network...
tathougies 7y ago
> People don't realize how conservative SF is: You realize having restrictions and governmental regulation is exactly the opposite of 'conservative' (in the republican sense, which it's usually used in pejoratively), right?
- draw_down 7y ago
  Nope, that is conservatism.
sieabahlpark 7y ago
San Francisco is conservative? I highly doubt that. I can absolutely see anyone not wanting to give away their house they spend $4m "for the greater good" of everyone else who didn't have the capital to buy a house.
antpls 7y ago
> "Politics is an organizational problem, not a technological one." Conway's theorem : "Any organization that designs a system (defined more broadly here than just information systems) will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure." > we'll be starting companies that solve political problems. That already exists : lobbying companies, "CivicTech" and "GovTech" companies. I understood CivicTech and GovTech are startups that take the current political processes, and try to digitalise them. But they don't revolutionize the rules nor change the balance of power, since they must be reviewed and approved by the current government. In the short term, they follow Conway's law.
JDiculous 7y ago
Are there people that actually think politics is a technological problem? Politics is quit possibly the lowest tech sphere in existence. I remember going to a city council meeting in NYC and being shocked that they were recording votes by roll call. They're still stuck in the 17th century.

Gibbon1 7y ago

I have this other idea, force VC's to point their firehose of cash elsewhere for a change.

profunctor 7y ago
If we are going to take control of capital why not directly take control of the land and build more homes rather than firing money at some collection of small towns and hoping that solves a housing crisis somewhere else?
pixelbath 7y ago
I genuinely don't get it. Sure, you want some of that VC money for your startup, so you start building in SV, where the exorbitant costs of living and doing business necessitate taking VC money to even stay afloat. Do investors really not invest in companies that don't start in the Valley? I have a hard time believing that, but to hear anybody from the Bay Area tell it, it seems to be the default.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  Talent is the lifeblood of tech companies. Ergo, tech companies set up where it is easier to recruit talent.
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    I agree with you, but I also find it to be confusing. These same companies, when they do open offices in "2nd tier" cities, they offer "2nd tier" salaries. If you go to Houston and offer something close to SF salary, you will be over-run with great talent. I feel like there's some social status or something that comes from paying the higher salaries in places like the valley that just aren't attainable by attracting talent in other cities.
    - inetknght 7y ago
      > If you go to Houston and offer something close to SF salary, you will be over-run with great talent. I live in Houston and I concur. The company I work for has a lot of trouble finding talent that we need. That's not to say the talent doesn't exist here. It absolutely does. It's just that we can't afford Silicon Valley level compensation.
      - lonelappde 7y ago
        You can't afford something you need? How are you still in business?
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      "Talent" includes other roles that aren't so fungible. If a VC-backed startup starts a major widget spinning project, they often want to poach a director of spinning widgets from a top company, and Houston won't necessarily have one.
      - lonelappde 7y ago
        That doesn't explain why companies DO hire in Houston but refuse to pay close to what they'd pay the same person if the person moved to Mountain View or SF. It's simple status garbage to sustain the illusion that people in SV are "better"
carapace 7y ago
> An Opportunity Zone is a designation created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 allowing for certain investments in lower income areas to have tax advantages. The purpose of this program is to put capital to work that would otherwise be locked up due to the asset holder's unwillingness to trigger a capital gains tax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Opportunity_Zones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Opportunity_Zones

SomeOldThrow 7y ago

> every member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to oppose More HOMES, except for Asha Safai and Vallie Brown To my knowledge there aren’t any anti-development supervisors at the moment. The key differentiator is the type of development the supervisor is pushing for.

Decade 7y ago
It has long been impractical to appear completely anti-development. The Housing Accountability Act of 1982 makes outright refusal against California law. Instead, NIMBYs have adopted the CIA’s tools for sabotage. https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/simple-sabotage.html https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/... So, the majority claim to be for development, but they saddle it with conditions and processes to make it expensive and less likely to succeed. They claim that this process makes the final result “better,” but more often than not what we get is not “better” but “nothing.” And nothing is worse than bad, because what we have is a deep shortage. They’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

bongobongo 7y ago

Lol congrats you just invented the modern university

xtiansimon 7y ago

Maybe all the tech companies should leave SF for San Jose. It has an airport. And SJ isn’t so precious about it’s history.

AceJohnny2 7y ago
Indeed. I wonder why there isn't more visible startup activity in SJ. Is it purely cultural/historical, where it emerged in SF and that remains the main regional attractor? Or are there other political/zoning reasons that make SF more attractive? I believe SF is giving some rich companies discounts to keep them around and reap (I assume) local taxes?
- foobarian 7y ago
  Can you give some comparison baselines to an uninformed East coaster? I thought SJ is part of the Bay Area and part of the skyrocketing housing cost crisis. Is that not true? If not what is an East coast analogy - e.g. Boston is to NYC what SF is to SJ? I knew a number of people who moved to the SV area, got FAANG type jobs way down in the Valley, and yet still chose to live in SF enduring hellish commutes. I never could quite understand why.
  - JimboOmega 7y ago
    It's something very roughly and geographically like if SF is DC, then SJ is Baltimore. You could theoretically commute between them, but it's quite impractical. SJ is part of the Bay Area and absolutely has skyrocketing costs; it usually tops the lists of cities with the fastest growing housing prices. When I got a job in Redwood City (in between the two), I thought about moving there from SF, but found the costs to be about the same to live there versus SF. So I stayed in SF; it's definitely the anchor of culture of the Bay Area. For everything outside of work it's a much better place to be (for me, a single queer person, especially). I since got a job in SF and have no intention to move or work south again. In fact, the general trend has been for companies to move towards SF away from the peninsula, but mostly because it's where workers want to be. It's much more easier to get by without a car in the city than in the peninsula, it has much better clubs/nightlife, etc. For a young person, the city (meaning SF) is often much more appealing, though of course different people have different preferences.

ditonal 7y ago

The engineer personality profile is basically allergic to organizing. Too passive and introverted, or delusionally individualistic. Silicon Valley engineers see themselves as temporarily embarrassed hotshot entrepreneurs. The funny thing is to the extent engineers do organize it’s usually leftist organization for the lower wage workers (tech workers coalition), which is noble but doesn’t advance engineer goals. Police, teachers, doctors, all have political organization and therefore voice but tech workers cede that voice to their execs. I fantasize about changing that but I’ve come to accept the personality profiles of engineers make it an impossible problem.

buss 7y ago
I'm an engineer; I wrote the piece in the OP. I'm running for DCCC and am a political activist. We exist! Support my campaign :) https://buss2020.org/donate https://buss2020.org/donate
- muzz 7y ago
  If the thesis were true, why wouldn't VCs get into the landlord game? Seems like they would want to lessen this effect, if it were actually the case.
  - fiestaman 7y ago
    Private capital is certainly getting into the landlord game--and in record numbers. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/single-family-landlords-wall-street/582394/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/singl... https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/rent-wall-street-is-my-landlord https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/rent-wall-street-is-my-l...
rexpop 7y ago
I have goals. They pay me six figures, but I'm not on track to own a home within biking distance of the office, and as an individual, I can't move the office. I don't get to control who owns my tech company, which means I don't get to decide what our superordinate goals are. I don't get to decide who our customers are. I don't get to decide the extent to which we participate in the Military-Industrial Complex, or the Prison-Industrial Complex, each of which threatened to destroy people like me. Due to the constraints of office hours, my social development and creative passions are extruded through a meager four hours before sleep—most of which must be spent on trains, due to housing and transit limitations. If you don't think tech workers are alienated, you're fooling yourself. It's industry-standars to "burn out" every 3 years, and flee toxic, stagnant positions for a fresh workplace. This tells me that firms are unaccommodating, and foist the risk of personal development on us as individuals. That refusal to accommodate us is precisely the inhumane factor fomenting alienation. What you've "come to accept" is your own vitality's truncation. Edit: people are downvoting me for saying "I can't afford to live near my work or my friends"? Or because they're in denial of Tech's complicity in Military- and Prison-Industrial atrocities?

Pxtl 7y ago

Oh, the more homes is easy. Everybody supports more homes in the abstract, but every specific plan gets shot down because it's too tall or too sprawl or not in keeping with the feel of the neighborhood - often by the same people who want more housing, just NIMBY.

dev_dull 7y ago
Or they don’t want to remove the debilitating environment and neighborhood regulation which makes new home construction take years when it could be months. Or they want lots of new housing, but they also want the owner to rent control all units. Or they want at least 30% of the units to be under market rent. In other words, they want something for nothing and they’re fine with YOU being stuck with the consequences.
noneeeed 7y ago
Rural housing in the UK is hamstrung by this problem. On the one hand everyone complains that their kids have to move away because they can't afford to live in the village they grew up in, but if you suggest building more houses they kick up a stink. Then they complain that the village is dying because it's all rich people's second homes in the country. While I have distain for a lot of politicians, at the same time I'm not sure anything would convince me to be one, it's a pretty thankless task full of no-win situations in which people will bitch and main no matter what you do.
- sien 7y ago
  You could join UK YIMBY https://www.ukyimby.com/ https://www.ukyimby.com/
  - noneeeed 7y ago
    I'd not heard of that, cool. Glad to see people are starting to push back against all the cake-and-eat-it nimbys. I live in Bath, which despite being a world heritage site, is actually building quite a lot of new home, some in developments on the outskirts, and lots of infill on brownfield sites. Not a fan of some of the architecture, but glad to see more being built. Now if we ould just sort out the bus network...

tathougies 7y ago

> People don't realize how conservative SF is: You realize having restrictions and governmental regulation is exactly the opposite of 'conservative' (in the republican sense, which it's usually used in pejoratively), right?

draw_down 7y ago
Nope, that is conservatism.

sieabahlpark 7y ago

San Francisco is conservative? I highly doubt that. I can absolutely see anyone not wanting to give away their house they spend $4m "for the greater good" of everyone else who didn't have the capital to buy a house.

antpls 7y ago

> "Politics is an organizational problem, not a technological one." Conway's theorem : "Any organization that designs a system (defined more broadly here than just information systems) will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure." > we'll be starting companies that solve political problems. That already exists : lobbying companies, "CivicTech" and "GovTech" companies. I understood CivicTech and GovTech are startups that take the current political processes, and try to digitalise them. But they don't revolutionize the rules nor change the balance of power, since they must be reviewed and approved by the current government. In the short term, they follow Conway's law.

JDiculous 7y ago

Are there people that actually think politics is a technological problem? Politics is quit possibly the lowest tech sphere in existence. I remember going to a city council meeting in NYC and being shocked that they were recording votes by roll call. They're still stuck in the 17th century.