4 ms·
I'm normally critical of SV culture where it's merited but this article is just blaming SV for stuff it doesn't like 1) Silicon Valley isn't to blame for the f
by spamizbad 7y ago
I'm normally critical of SV culture where it's merited but this article is just blaming SV for stuff it doesn't like
1) Silicon Valley isn't to blame for the fact that in the 90s landowners tightly constrained the construction of new housing in an effort to maintain the housing stock as an investment vehicle for existing homeowners. And while supply/demand doesn't perfectly explain the housing market, the fact is the United States no longer has the political will to build housing units where demand is, because of entrenched landowner interests. You can't build "dense" housing because it will "ruin" the character of a neighborhood. You can't build subsidized affordable housing because it will "attract crime". So you get nothing... well, that's not true: You're priced out, but maybe you can buy a 2800sqft home in an exurb that's a 90 minute drive from your job. Too big, too expensive, or too far for you? Too bad!
2) Scooters are good, actually: When we had them in Chicago were shown to connect people between public transit access points. Unlike Uber/Lyft, which cut into public transit utilization, e-scooters seem to actually encourage public transit use.
3) The gig economy is a symptom, not the cause, of a larger economic shift away from general prosperity. The social contract used to at least hint at the idea that if you worked hard and did an honest days labor you would at least be entitled to a roof over your head, food in your belly, and the ability to support a family. There was a marked shift away from this in the 1970s, in the name of "meritocracy" to allow higher earnings for those who "deserve" it in exchange for lower wages for those don't. The late Paul Volcker is said to have carried around a card containing auto worker wages in his pocket as a reminder of this so-called injustice. Basically: the college-educated workforce should be entitled to higher wages at the expense of workers who don't. A somewhat tragic view now in an age where your barista may hold a graduate degree. I think this thinking was more widespread among elite babyboomers and (thankfully) hasn't been adopted by millennials or zoomers, but the social stigma around the trades still exists.
- virtuous_signal 7y agoThe concept of scooters is indeed great, but two (fixable) problems the article touched on were real: the mess it creates on sidewalks, and the charging jobs not being "good enough". The first has been addressed in other cities by requiring scooters to be dropped off in certain geographical locations. The second is debatable as a problem. Driving-around-charging-scooters is an entirely new class of jobs; it (probably) didn't displace other kinds of jobs; and people could choose other industries until Lime were forced to offer higher wages.
- spamizbad 7y agoTo me it's just completely unfair how little time we're requiring these scooter programs to get things "right". The automobile has been a scourge on cities for generations and we've allowed this as long as they're willing to show incremental improvements. Scooters are like 70% of the way there; in a few years they'll have it sorted.
- Nasrudith 7y agoTo be fair there are some substantial differences - cars brought some majorly new things to the table. Scooters aren't new nor are the many niches filled - community bike shares cover many but not all of the niches (the sweat factor). Even if they are being judged unduly harsh they bring lesser benefits to the table.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoIf people are using scooters a lot, doesn't that by itself demonstrate that they do fill many niches?
- beamatronic 7y agoYou can buy that 2800 sq ft house, as close to your job as you’d like. It just costs $$$
- CPLX 7y agoYour #1 is not a fair generalization. Here in NYC there’s a consensus that building large amounts of dense housing is necessary to have a functioning city and society. So it happens. Apartments got way way more expensive but a lot of new buildings have started to push pricing back down. California is different on this topic, and the Bay Area is positively pathological. It’s completely reasonable to call out SV specifically for that mindset.
- spamizbad 7y agoI don't think SV supports constraining housing supply in California. Quite the opposite. Its workforce is stuck coughing up their paychecks to their landlords.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoSV tech companies, and their employees, are almost universally in favor of building large amounts of dense housing. Google and Facebook are even building housing themselves because they don't think local developers are building enough.
- CPLX 7y agoApple just put 12,000 employees into a low rise complex surrounded by parking lots with no access to mass transit of any kind.