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As someone who's family has been in the bay area for over a century I was disappointed the article didn't mention any of the old money families who've controlle

• proc0 5y ago
  Yeah, I haven't heard of that, but it seems like this kind of corruption is the most possible explanation.
  • bsder 5y ago
    Possibly, but I don't think its required. The Irvine Company is very similar in Southern California. It seems like they own everything when you want office real estate. So, it's corruption, right? Well, except that if you talk to any contractors (like your internet provider installer) you find that they love The Irvine Company because there is someone who has a little bit of competence for them to talk to when they need to. As opposed to every other real estate company that seems to be staffed by brain-damaged monkeys. So, you can posit corruption. Or, you can posit that real estate management is one of those markets that tends toward monopoly because you can amortize the costs more effectively the more properties you own.
    • proc0 5y ago
      Well, the corruption comes in when they start influencing politics, and also when they use their monopoly in shady ways to evict people and such. I agree it's problem regardless of corruption.
    • MarkSweep 5y ago
      To add further color to this, the Irvine Company benefits enormously from Prop 13. This law guarantees that once you hold property for long enough, your tax burden will be so much lower than everyone else you have a cost advantage that newcomers will not be able to match. So the current state law favors older companies over new ones. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
      • 88913527 5y ago
        Your tax burden would stay the same, relative to future buyers, if prices stay flat. At which some point, they're bound to plateau. How many people or institutions will buy single family homes once they're $10 million each, but the median household income is still somewhere around $100k? It's a subtle point, but the benefits of Prop 13 aren't a function of time, they're a function of appreciation. It just so happens to be the decades following Prop 13 came with great price appreciation, some of that attributable to Prop 13 itself, but most of it attributable to local rule of land use policy.
        • space_fountain 5y ago
          I think inflationary monetary policy (a good thing) more or less guarantees that in dollar terms (the thing that matters for prop 13) prices will go up every year. I think prop c does allow for some price adjustment for inflation, but it has a crazily low cap
          • lowkey 5y ago
            I think you need to defend your claim that inflationary monetary policy is a good thing. How is it good for the residents of a country?
            • space_fountain 5y ago
              I mean to the best of my knowledge basically all economists think it is, but beyond that imagine a world where we had stagnation or worse deflation. You would have much less of an incentive to invest money rather than just keep it in the bank.
    • imtringued 5y ago
      Land is already a monopoly in its own right. There is no real estate without a monopoly even if it is a tiny one.
• ryanobjc 5y ago
  I find the Economist has fairly shallow "analysis" if you can even call what they do analysis. So I am disappointed but not surprised that they missed on the real story. The Economist is as useful in terms about learning about the world as reading headlines.
  • Calvin02 5y ago
    I’m sorry you’re getting downvoted but as someone who has subscribed to The Economist for 20+ years now, I feel the same way as you do. In areas that are on the periphery, their coverage feels shallow and unsatisfying. I would imagine that the writers, who are some of the best in business, are doing their research but trying to make the content accessible. I can’t fault them for that. However, in this day and age, I would expect them to offer more depth.
  • nindalf 5y ago
    You’re not wrong but you also miss the point. I subscribe to both the Economist, a newspaper that covers a range of topics and Stratechery, a newsletter that specialises in tech. On any tech topic Stratechery dives in deep, analysing the incentives, actions and outcomes of each player. Every quarterly report from the big tech companies is analysed. The author also has the courage to make predictions, many of which turn out to be true. It’s worth the money in my book. The Economist also covers tech topics but at a high level, and for an audience that isn’t tech inclined. Take for example, this gem of an article - Why Companies Struggle With Recalcitrant IT (https://www.economist.com/business/2020/07/18/why-companies-struggle-with-recalcitrant-it https://www.economist.com/business/2020/07/18/why-companies-...). For a layman it’s a great intro on software is always delayed and over budget. For those of us who work in IT, it’s all obvious stuff. A person familiar with IT might say “go deeper, talk about other issues”. In fact, I did just that. I contacted the author and pointed out a couple of difficulties in software that increase complexity, like dependency management. The author was aware of this already but chose not to add this for the sake of keeping the article a manageable length [1]. That’s what the Economist does - covers a wide range of topics, while not assuming the reader is knowledgeable about any of it. Even though finance focussed newspaper, they painstakingly explain every term before they use it. But these two constraints - covering breadth and not assuming knowledge mean there is a limit to how deep they can go on any topic. If you find a newspaper that analyses every topic in the world to your desired level of detail, please let us know. Also, if the newspaper isn’t staffed by aspiring fiction writers gratifying themselves by writing impossibly large “long reads”, that would be even better. —— [1] - their response to my letter : Dear nindalf, Thank you for your letter. You're right, of course - I've always thought it's a bit like an ancient city like Istanbul, with modern buildings sitting on top of layers of old architecture that's only half-mapped and whose builders are long forgotten. Unfortunately there wasn't space to get too evocative in the piece itself. I've forwarded your letter for publication, though, because it's an important point. Best, Tim Cross Technology Editor The Economist
• poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
  I think a story about an ultra wealthy ruling class that stands behind the public political class is not going to get published in mainstream outlets. I mean it will if it's about Russia or China or historical periods like "the Gilded Age", but I guess you don't see it talked about for modern day West.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • smolder 5y ago
    Upsetting super wealthy people too much will get you the gawker treatment, or something similarly debilitating.
  • raincom 5y ago
    This has to do with collusion between the ultra wealthy class, the media class, and the political class.
  • mattmanser 5y ago
    Especially not the Economist. I mean they spend paragraphs bashing the 'leftie' DA before admitting the problem is actually the police being rubbish. I knew they were biased, but the article seems especially bad.
    • alexanderchr 5y ago
      Not exactly surprising since The Economist is owned by the ultra wealthy ruling class. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Group https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Group
  • pasabagi 5y ago
    Well, I think there are some good reasons for that. It's traditionally been an antisemetic trope, and often smoothly blends into antisemitism (Rothschilds, etc). It's also one of those things where the evidence is by necessity weak, and you really can't write weakly-evidenced critical articles about rich people without getting sued. Personally, I'm very glad that this isn't a mainstream way of understanding problems. Rich people are kind of fungible, in that they usually don't want to pay taxes, but other than that usually have about the same range of politics as everybody else. Focusing on individual malfeasance tends to protect dysfunctional systems.
• nradov 5y ago
  If SF politics is really controlled by a wealthy cabal then why have they allowed the situation to deteriorate so much? What possible benefit could they derive from homelessness, dirty streets, rampant property crime, and a dysfunctional government? The wealthy people who control NYC politics seem less tolerant of such issues.
  • Hermitian909 5y ago
    I think your imagery paints an image of a much more organized group than exists. There are probably at least two dozen families, each of which has a few powerful members. Getting them all to agree on anything besides their own self-interest of maintaining their own wealth and power is quite hard. But the city government has delivered very well on that one shared interest of theirs. They own a lot of property and property values are way up over the past few decades.
  • poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
    Why assume that the ultra wealthy should care about the lesser citizens? What about all the rampant looting in NYC? I don't think they cared then. Maybe many of them just aren't pro American. In almost every other country the media/politics carefully try to project some national pride and sense of unity; it's actually the opposite here in the US isn't it?
    • throwawaylinux 5y ago
      Actually the US is not exceptional in that regard. Media and politicians sometimes use patriotic and popular sentiment (usually empty gestures like sport) to boost their popularity, but around the world in most western countries the tone is increasingly that they should be ashamed of themselves, of their original (secular) sin, and by no means should they take any pride or celebration in their society or its achievements.
      • pasabagi 5y ago
        I guess the problem is, if you're interested in history, you often do find there's lots to be proud of in a nation's past, but it's usually the precise opposite of the people you can find statues of. So when you're proud of your nations past, what past? I think there's a lot of admirable stuff in british history, for example, but the streets and statues generally memorialize a bunch of really shitty people.
• iammisc 5y ago
  Except the aliotos cannot get elected. I'm happy to believe in conspiracies but if they control so much as you say, why can't they get their own elected.
  • nathanvanfleet 5y ago
    Do they try to get elected? why would you need to get elected when you can control any candidate, or control things regardless of who is in power???
    • iammisc 5y ago
      Yes. Angela alioto, daughter of ex mayor Sam alioto has campaigned as a conservative democrat and loses spectacularly. There is no basis to claim they run the city. This is just mindless conspiracy.
  • akomtu 5y ago
    Elected officials are a lot like C-suite: they run the company, but they don't own it. Owners sit on the board and rarely seek publicity.
    • iammisc 5y ago
      Except Angela alioto has run unsuccessfully for mayor multiple times. The family seeks political power but does not get it. This is just ungrounded conspiracy
      • akomtu 5y ago
        Just like some board members like to get hands dirty and run things themselves. Musk is this type. But that's an exception.
        • iammisc 5y ago
          Oh okay so basically your argument is 'my premise is certainly true and the counter example you provided is simply an exception that I didn't mention'
• akomtu 5y ago
  Are Pritzkers involved in "SF management"? They manage Illinois and Chicago in particular, and the politics style is similar to that in SF.
• rayiner 5y ago
  There you have it. Why is San Francisco’s city government so dysfunctional? Because no matter how bad it gets and how much liberal policies fail, voters can convince themselves that the problem is “moneyed elites” and “not enough liberalism.” Just amazing.
  • fnmk 5y ago
    It is kind of ironic, isn't it? These days Tucker Carlson talks about pardoning Assange, the deep state and that house prices in SF are too high for the middle class. Literally Noam Chomsky could be saying the same things. But people still believe that Republicans will take away your freedoms and Democrats will solve everything (I don't believe either will solve much).
    • archagon 5y ago
      The Republicans are actively eroding voting rights around the country (see Texas) and actually tried to annul the last election. Gee, I wonder why people believe that.
      • rayiner 5y ago
        "Erode" compared to what? Texas's voting laws are still vastly more loosey goosey compared to voting in France. The Netherlands didn't even have mail in voting for the elderly last year. Most European countries have very limited early voting compared to even the "restrictive" new Texas rules. Voting rules should instill confidence in elections among people who are low information and don't trust the other side. You can't build an election system on telling the other side "trust us" and "you can't prove bad things happened." And elections should be decided quickly and decisively, again to foster faith in the system. The NYC Democratic Primary was a shit show in this regard. Look at how they do voting in Taiwain--we should do it that way too: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3855762 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3855762 Democrats tried to "annul" the 2004 and 2016 elections too. They had Congressional hearings over "voter fraud" in Ohio, based on the supposed mismatch between exit polls and the final results. (And that was with a 2 point margin for Bush, vastly bigger than the ones at issue in 2020.)
• simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  Which are these two rich families who controlled a fourth of FiDi in the 90s?