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I find the “Bay Area exodus” an interesting phenomenon as someone who lives in Austin. I’m curious to see if the same mentality that ruined living conditions th
by lazypenguin 5y ago
I find the “Bay Area exodus” an interesting phenomenon as someone who lives in Austin. I’m curious to see if the same mentality that ruined living conditions there (and other large cities in the US with large tech presence) will repeat itself here or if Austin/Texas have better conditions to avoid that fate. Anecdotally I already feel the changes to Austin are negative, as I assume the old residents felt when I moved here in 2007. What I can’t discern is whether it’s a sign of the times or specifically a consequence of the tech worker affluence/politics coming to the city.
- beebmam 5y agoRedmond was a rural town before Microsoft. Now it's one of the best places to live in the US.
- donsupreme 5y agoYou could argue that people who moved away from Bayarea to other places are not as aligned with the far left, so in theory their ideology and politics should be more deviated from the Bayarea norm.
- imilk 5y agoFYI - what you call "far left" is considered pretty centrist in almost every other highly developed country. And the Bay Area as a whole is in no way "far left".
- inglor_cz 5y agoSpeaking from Central Europe: economically sort-of, socially helluva no. Especially the awful obsession with race is nowhere near centrist in Europe.
- imilk 5y agoI'm speaking of climate change, healthcare, education, taxes, womens & minority rights, etc.. (central issues that matter to the country). It's entirely on you if you choose to get involved in the hot button social issue discussion of the week. If you don't care to engage in that, it doesn't affect you at all.
- inglor_cz 5y agoDepends. I am not sure what combination of policies created the San Francisco street filth and petty crime problems and whether those policies qualify as far left in the U.S. It is certainly an outlier in the developed world, too, especially when the total wealth of the region is taken into account.
- imilk 5y agoTake a trip to any of the major US cities (especially older US cities) and you'll find them by and large to be much much worse than SF in terms of crime. Which is a much more a result of the gross economic disparity found in America than any "far left" policies. Some people are very poor while others are very rich. The poor people feel desperate/trapped and want what the people living near them have. The only places with as much economic disparity as America that have less crime most often have authoritarian governments. Blaming a local city government for country-wide issues is quite short-sighted in perspective and not helpful when talking about solutions.
- atweiden 5y agoChina doesn’t have the same problems as the US, but has almost as much wealth disparity [1]. Economic determinism is junk science. [1]: https://china.usc.edu/wealth-inequality-us-and-china https://china.usc.edu/wealth-inequality-us-and-china
- imilk 5y ago> The only places with as much economic disparity as America that have less crime most often have authoritarian governments.
- atweiden 5y agoSweden has higher wealth inequality than the US, but far lower crime. See also: https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/ https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- k8sToGo 5y agoThe whole "woke culture" is definitely not considered centrist.
- SaberTail 5y agoYou'll find most extreme leftists (by that I mean marxists, maoists, dedicated anarchists) don't care much about "woke culture", because they care much more about class divisions than racial or gender or sexuality or other divisions. "Woke culture" is primarily a center-left phenomenon.
- sanxiyn 5y agoYes, but most center left is not woke. It's particularly American and Bay Area thing, weird to global central left.
- rufus_foreman 5y agoSome of the founders of Black Lives Matter described themselves as Marxist, and it was that organization that popularized the term. And for them it would be a mistake to focus only on class. They would argue that there are multiple systems of oppression that interact with each other and need to be considered as a whole rather than individually, the critical race theory term for that is intersectionality. I don't consider critical race theory to be a center-left phenomenon. Right wing politicians would be overjoyed to find out that people on the center-left do.
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago[flagged]
- imilk 5y agoFor the last few years, the only people using the word "woke" are constantly outraged conservative commentators. It's impossible to take you seriously when you use terms like that. Since I don't exist in that bubble, can you define "woke" & "woke culture"?
- 5y ago
- test0account 5y agoFrom France to Asia, Oceania and Latin America, the American Left is considered an extreme ideology.
- imilk 5y agoI couldn't disagree more. But based on your framing, we're obviously looking at 2 different realities that will not be able to find common ground here.
- test0account 5y agoFor the American Left, individual responsibility doesn't exist. We don't control our life. It's all about systemic <racism/sexism/classism/elitism> We in the rest of the world laugh our ass off.
- imilk 5y ago> For the American Left, individual responsibility doesn't exist. We don't control our life. You need to turn off the conservative talk shows for awhile and go for a nice walk outside. Maybe meet some real people and have an actual conversation. Because your post sounds completely deranged.
- alfalfasprout 5y agoyeah, no... most europeans make fun of the radical leftists you tend to find in the Bay Area when they encounter them.
- imilk 5y agoAre you saying they don't make fun of the "radical rightists" who deny climate change is real, refuse to take basic safety measure in a worldwide pandemic, decry a war on Christians & Christmas, yet worship a man who raw dogged a porn star when his 3rd wife was home with their new born baby? Your framing and perspective is interesting to say the least.
- math_denial 5y agoThe comment was talking about what it is being made fun of, that has no bearing of what it is not.
- imilk 5y agoSo most Europeans make fun of anyone outside of centrist politics in America? That seems to be such an amazing benign statement that it's not really saying anything at all.
- renewiltord 5y agoThat is not true. The American Left is concerned with issues in a manner that is not consistent with leftism elsewhere. Can you come up with mainstream centrist parties in Western nations that match what you believe are being described as “far left” here?
- imilk 5y agoOn issues that matter to the country like climate change, healthcare, education, taxes, womens & minority rights - sure there's plenty. If you're talking about hot button social issues of the week that right wing commentators care/talk about 1000x more than anyone else, I don't know because I don't care about that at all.
- davidw 5y agoTech workers were not, by and large, the ones with political power in the bay area that locked the area down and prevented homes from being built. There are other things wrong besides the housing crisis, but that's certainly a component of why people leave.
- nopenopenopeno 5y agoThis is exactly the type of delusional ignorance and self-congratulatory excuses that produce the dysfunction. Any American denying the overwhelming influence of rich people and rich industries on the American political system can’t (and rightfully won’t be) trusted.
- davidw 5y agoThere's a lot of money in the Bay Area that's not tech money. I would recommend this book to learn something about the situation there with regards to housing politics: https://www.powells.com/book/golden-gates-9780525560210 https://www.powells.com/book/golden-gates-9780525560210 A lot of the problems got their start in the 70ies, with Prop 13.
- maherbeg 5y agoAustin is still fighting the updates to the building code after many many years which would have helped growth within the city itself. If Austin can keep building housing, then it might be ok.
- jeffwask 5y agoIt needs the transportation network before the houses and it's too late for that.
- davidw 5y agoIt really tends to be the other way around. If you build a transit network and no one is riding on it, people freak out about their money being wasted (and they're not entirely wrong). It's entirely possible to build out transportation at a later date. Look at cities in Europe, which are historic and difficult to work with: the people are there first, and then they add the transportation. Part of the problem (a huge part) is our land use decisions in the US, which require that people possess and store an automobile for even the most basic things in life.
- sanxiyn 5y agoI live in Seoul and here transportation network and housing are planned together. Yes it's possible to build transportation later, but it's unnecessarily painful, so why bother?
- davidw 5y agoIt's great if you can kind of plan some things out together, but I think flexibility and adaptability are more important than trying to plan out everything ahead of time. It's impossible to predict the future. In the US, we try and rigidly control and plan out land use and are surprised when it causes huge problems like the Bay Area housing crisis.
- jeffwask 5y agoIt was already really bad before the most recent push. It was bad in 2013 and nothing has been done since to fix it.
- lenchik 5y agoWhat changes have you felt?
- jeffwask 5y agoJust try buying a house in Austin right now and you'll see the impact.
- nopenopenopeno 5y agoIt certainly appears to be a repeat of the same delusional elite behaviors and outcomes. Look no further than the outright brutality, irresponsibility, shameless excuses, and self-congratulatory ignorance with which SF, and now Austin, have responded to their unprecedented homelessness crises. If this were any other nation, it would be declared a human rights emergency.
- nimos 5y agoI moved to Vegas and am similarly interested to how it shakes out. Not super familiar with the local politics but they seem very amenable to building. There are a huge amount of SFH and midrise apartments going up all over. I think the Casio's have a vested interested in keeping the city affordable given the amount of labor they consume.
- somethoughts 5y agoI think the issues the Bay Area faces are due to the diversity of residents and the diversity of their needs and not specific to the Bay Area. Its a byproduct of having a dense, creative economy. Who gets to "define" the goals and strategy of the region? Do the original techies get to define it or is it the new media techies or the original residents or the service workers supporting the techie lifestyles? Just like Los Angeles used to be fairly homogenous and conservative prior to embracing the creative economy, eventually any city which has any success attracting the diversity of views required by a creative economy well face these issues.