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„We were chased out of SF after trying to give free Internet to the poorest“
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y agoOpen up all meetings + forms of communications (telephone, email , meetings) to and from public officials and their cabinet members, and this would likely not happen. We let politicians still operate in the shadows, despite being deep into information revolution. It would cost next to nothing to copy , reproduce, organize serially everything that is said and done by a public official in their official capacity. Its time for people to wake up and realize we don't work so we can pay their salaries, but that they work for us.
- Something1234 6y agoPower should only be given to those who don't seek it out. I think "Songs of Distant Earth" had the right idea with random selection of the mayor or council. Just imagine if we picked from a pool of 500 randomly chosen citizens who are active in their community. Like if we required volunteer service before you could be a member of the possible pool. I would actually love to see this put into practice.
- ReadEvalPost 6y agoTidbit: the term for this is "sortition."
- edoceo 6y agoYes! a) great book and b) great concept. I would love to see this too. How to start? Small town mayor? Medium sized city council?
- IG_Semmelweiss 6y ago1) Introduce more volatity. For example, make a random chance your ambition will not be reached even if you do everything right: You run for X position, and either there's (a) a random chance that 2nd,3rd, or 4th place will win and (b) a random chance that your win will be swapped with another random position (say, winner of public advocate switches for winner of state assembly seat, etc). This would scare away big money from campaign politics. 2)Introduce Sacrifice. Cap lifetime earnings to scare away career politicians, and actually bring people who intend to sacrifice. If you win an election, you sign an agreement with the IRS that any lifetime earnings in excess of your avg earnings before being elected, will be taxed at 99% tax rate. Watch those "speaking fees" dissappear overnight! 3) Introduce more turnover. Max 8 years as a publicly elected or appointed figure, and perhaps 16 on public payroll for anyone making X times of poverty income level. No one should be able to life in luxury, off the govt, forever. Always welcome in new blood.
- Fede_V 6y agoI know this is well meaning, but it will almost certainly backfire. Senior leaders (public and private) need to be able to have confidential discussions where they acknowledge trade offs and negotiate deals: if everything was open and broadcast, you'd get a combination of constant nonstop grandstanding and highly aggressive opposition research that would look for snippets that look bad out of context.
- Something1234 6y agoWhat if the feed was delayed by 6 to 18 months or so?
- edoceo 6y agoThen the bad actors have too much time to do the dirty. (See Senators stock trades)
- realsunnyg 6y agoSo just more of what they do already, and a bit more transparently?
- shkkmo 6y agoThere is clearly a trade-off here, but I don't see as clearly weighted in the same direction as you do. What value is there in allowing politicians to keep their own statements of blatant self interest out of the public record? I think that requiring politicians to make public their statements explaining their the decisions on behalf of their constituents would be and unalloyed public good.
- Fede_V 6y ago> I think that requiring politicians to make public their statements explaining their the decisions on behalf of their constituents would be and unalloyed public good Sure, this is fine, but that's very different from requiring all their interactions to be public. Put it this this: how often do you ever hear anything insightful or intelligent in a public congressional/senate hearing? It's always politicians trying to ask really stupid gotcha questions that will make them look good to the audience at home.
- raldi 6y agoIs there any government anywhere in the world, at any level down to an individual town, where this has ever been shown to work? If not, what expertise are you drawing from that has you making these assertions with such confidence?
- flaque 6y agoAlmost all meetings and forms of communication ARE open to the public, with nearly unlimited public comment. San Francisco’s problems are not caused by shadowy figures doing devious deeds in the dark. They’re caused by rampant small-c conservatism: a constant drive to veto everything and anything. In the well meaning interest of allowing the public to participate, anything and everything can be stopped be very people.
- whomst 6y agoI can't speak for California, but Illinois requires these things to be public (either automatically or via a FOIA request). Most state FOIAs work in the same way, but maybe with different sets of exceptions
- panic 6y agoIt's always been weird to me how the Bay Area has to deal with the same monopoly internet providers as everyone else in the country. Surely we have enough talent and capital here to provide free, high-speed internet for the entire area. I guess this is one explanation for why it hasn't happened yet.
- redis_mlc 6y agoIn the US, providers typically negotiate exclusive long-term contracts with local government. The argument is that's the only way to make it profitable enough to invest in building out the infrastructure. The only way around that is for localities to build out the backbone themselves and then request competitive bids, but the providers counter that strategy by lobbying state representatives to ban local Internet infra in the name of privatization or core competency. One workaround for that would be what's done in old European cities where you can't dig or easily run wires/fiber: just build out a backbone for wireless infra, then let providers compete on last mile wifi/billing/service/price.
- gruez 6y agoFYI, you seem to be shadowbanned. You might want to email the mods about that.
- BuyMyBitcoins 6y agoThe Bay Area can disrupt anything, except for the local party machine.
- worker767424 6y agoWhat about Sonic?
- yalok 6y agoThey are slowly spreading their reach from SF area down south, so will take them quite a few years to be at South Bay unfortunately
- deleted 6y ago
- jayd16 6y agoSo what did they need supervisor approval for?
- raldi 6y agoNothing gets done in San Francisco without the approval of six members of the board of supervisors. See, for example, the recent battle over (checks notes) whether to extend the contract of a ferris wheel in a park.
- sjburt 6y ago... where half the proceeds were going to an independent non-profit organization implicated in a Federal corruption probe involving city officials.
- raldi 6y agoI don't know the story on that or if it's true, but the actual debate was entirely about "it's a park, not an amusement park" and whether birds might get confused by the wheel's illumination.
- kmeisthax 6y agoI'm not surprised. As far as I can tell, the only thing the San Francisco government wants is for poor people to leave so they can stop reducing property values. This is the same city council that deliberately plans to have half the housing units they actually need, after all. The entire city is one big real estate scam being foisted on tech companies, and people living in it just get in the way.
- Skhalar 6y agoTexas is next. Companies are moving out of SF for Texas.
- BobbyJo 6y agoYou assume the companies are the source of the shenanigans, which I disagree with. It seems counter productive for a tech company to want their worker's cost of living to be higher, as that just means they will cost more. The reality is the companies create a large inelastic demand for living space, and the local government and property owners of exploit that for profit. If you just create adequate supply (build residential), or constrain demand (don't build office space), the problem doesn't happen.
- SR2Z 6y agoI'm not so sure that it's counterproductive, because the senior leadership of those tech companies is also frequently part of the local NIMBY class.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoThey have the same general characteristics as the local NIMBY class, but I think I'd want to see more evidence that they are actually members of that class. It's a substantial accusation to make without evidence, especially since you purport to link that to tech companies being NIMBY by policy -- again, a claim I've not seen evidence for.
- 6y ago
- diogenescynic 6y agoSan Francisco government is corrupt and incompetent. They’ve ruined a great city with toxic politics. Chesa Boudin has made the city completely lawless and dangerous.
- themolecularman 6y agoI'm not happy with Chesa either. For anyone in the same boat there's a recall campaign here: https://recallchesaboudin.org/ https://recallchesaboudin.org/.
- Kina 6y agoThe Progressive Era left a flaming dumpster fire of direct democracy levers that has has only increased government dysfunction in California rather than its intended goal of holding elected official more accountable. What exactly will this recall prove? The justification for the recall on the website comes off as fatuous hearsay (and why is it also a JPEG?) without additional explanations. I am extremely skeptical of the recall process providing any real value and think it has often been hijacked to serve dark influence interests preying on the frustrations of the public. The recall of Grey Davis was motivated and funded by Issa trying to get the governorship via a shortcut; I still remember him bawling at his press conference announcing he was stepping out of the race once Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy [1]. [1] https://youtu.be/7VW0v7wwfkQ?t=86 https://youtu.be/7VW0v7wwfkQ?t=86
- ardit33 6y agoNice try Chesa... you just opened this account to defend that guy that indirectly has led to the killing for 3 people, and the rape of a immigrant woman. People that he let go, just went back and created those crimes. Also, his numbers of prosecution tells that he needs to go. Don't get elected if you can't are are not willing to do your job
- junipertea 6y agoFor non locals, is there a summary of what Chesa Boudin did?
- pdx6 6y agoI remember when this happened. Over the years, telco fiber projects have been blocked by neighbors and city hall too. Often over odd things — The sidewalk boxes are ugly, or will get tagged, or will cause cancer. Fiber is also supposed to go in when streets are repaved, but when I asked after mine was done, I was told nothing was trenched. The voters put up bond money for these repaves and it was poorly planned. RIP Mayor Lee, but that was under his watch.
- EvilEy3 6y ago> The sidewalk boxes are ugly, Mayor who cares how their city looks like. An odd thing indeed!
- Hnrobert42 6y agoIf true, this is scandalous. It seems a lot of folks accept these claims on face. Maybe it conforms with their pre-existing belief that politicians are corrupt and self-serving. Personally, I don’t find this uncorroborated testimony believable.
- baron816 6y agoHmm...maybe it’s time to try some alternatives to democracy. What if we chose councilors from a pool at random? To get into the pool, you’d have to take some training and pass a series of exams. Training consists of how to write laws, how to read data and adapt policy to data, communication, consensus building, etc. People serve short stints on the council as an act of service.
- ruined 6y agothat's not not-democracy. it's called sortition. sortition is considered by some to be a necessary part of democracy, and is even used by anarchists in some contexts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
- fmajid 6y agoIt was used extensively by the original democracy, Athens.
- worker767424 6y ago> maybe it’s time to try some alternatives to democracy. I've long maintained most people are too easily manipulated and pandered to, and have too poor of an understanding of policy to vote. It's too bad poll tests have a bad history in the US.
- zapita 6y agoManipulation of voters works best in low turnout elections. The more people vote, the harder it is to manipulate either the voters or the voting results.
- worker767424 6y agoThat's a fair point. In a two party system, you drive turnout where you know you can benefit, pass enough broadly popular legislation to have a plausible bid for reelection, then ignore your constituents and do what your party and donors want.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- addicted 6y agoThe Sacca tweet is about something 15 years ago that I haven’t found any resources for. So let’s discuss the actual situation that he is responding to. The $25mm donation towards summer school programs, that has been temporarily paused while they look into it. What exactly are they looking into? The fact that the donations are coming through an organization that is designated as a political lobbying group that can hide its donors, as opposed to a traditional charitable organization. Is it really that much of a stretch to suggest that a donation from a group that has chosen to structure itself as a political lobbying group may be intended for political lobbying, and is unlike a charitable donation for a group that is setup as a charity? At the very least pausing the donation while it’s investigated further seems reasonable.
- wbl 6y agoIt's a donation to the school district. The school district is the ones in charge of how to spend it.
- ardit33 6y agoIt is a donation to the KIDS, not to the OFFICIALS of the school district. Big difference. The parents of the school district should be the ones deciding to send their kids/participate in it, not some corrupted bureaucrat throwing an ideological purity test/hissy fit.
- ardit33 6y ago"I haven’t found any resources for". -- are you a city official, or just spreading fud here and talking out of your arse.... we know that SF had a major corruption scandal just few years ago, with even the late Ed Lee being involved, and multiple people arrested. What Sacca is telling seems completely believable given the backdrop of gross mismanagement, and corruption in the city. It is like those bannana republics that have hit oil, and yet keep grossly miss-managing the revenue/position that they are in. This is just one of them, where this already a guilty plea: SF City Hall faces money laundering scandal, duo to plead guilty https://abc7news.com/zuniga-money-laundering-sf-city-hall-san-francisco-scandal/10401393/ https://abc7news.com/zuniga-money-laundering-sf-city-hall-sa...
- jancsika 6y ago> The network would be anonymous, with no ads, no cookies, etc. Let me see if I understand-- Google (dude's employer) was just going to gift internet to the entire city of San Francisco, starting with the poor, 100% free in perpetuity, and somehow promise to never use the data for any advertising purposes whatsoever? Also-- at this moment my comment is the only one showing even mild skepticism wrt the veracity of this tweet. Good times. Edit: clarification
- dcow 6y agoHow is this different from any other internet provider? If the users go to google.com then they are giving their traffic to google. Google benefits when more people use the internet, period. AD free means people wanting to use the network wouldn’t have ads forced on them at the ISP level.
- tomcooks 6y agoYou can check if the Mountain View free internet project happened or not, for starters
- ardit33 6y agoNYC has the LinkNyc free wifi program. Guess who uses it the most? ..... the homeless, and the poor. (they replaced pay phones with it, and i have seen it being used always by the less than fortunate types). Connecting to it is not great, but it is better than nothing. This would have helped the poorest people, yet SF turned it away without providing a substitute.
- busterarm 6y agoLinkNYC is run by Intersection (a merger of Control Group and Titan (who owned all of the MTA advertising)), which is owned by Sidewalk Labs. Those LinkNYC terminals also run huge display ads 24/7, specifically targeted at the people in range of seeing them. Internally, the terminals are two Android devices. Sidewalk Labs' parent company? Alphabet. aka Google.
- nlh 6y agoJust to add to the sibling comment: LinkNYC absolutely benefits from this commercially. Those terminals are packed with sensors & cameras, and they collect MAC addresses, count pedestrians, etc. etc. etc. Free WiFi in exchange for prime on-street real estate for your sensors turned out to be a superb deal for them.
- dcow 6y agoIt’s a poorly run city with corrupt officials. I’ve talked to Uber drivers from South America who say SF essentially feels like their cities back home but with less violence. Just leave and spend your tax money elsewhere. I did. And please, don't make the same political mistakes. What matters should be helping the kids, not the career of some corrupt council members who care more about drama than reality.
- unnouinceput 6y agoRegardless of your country when dealing with a government official always have a recording, at least audio, of said meeting. Then name and shame, make them lose election. Crying 15 years later is kinda pointless.