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Because the bay area is home to many extremely rich people who give absolutely nothing back to their communities, encourage rampant gentrification and generally

by hypeit 3y ago

Because the bay area is home to many extremely rich people who give absolutely nothing back to their communities, encourage rampant gentrification and generally despise poor people and advocate for anti-worker policies. Take a scroll through the likes of some of the famous VCs who constantly complain about SF's homelessness and crime. They tend to be more mask off far-right in their likes vs tweets (some will straight up tweet it though). If I had >$1B I would simply stop complaining and start doing something to fix the problem.

buzzert 3y ago
> extremely rich people who give absolutely nothing back to their communities + > encourage rampant gentrification Something tells me any attempt to give back to their community would be unwelcome, and labeled as "rampant gentrification". I certainly see it in the Mission, where any attempt at renovating old decrepit buildings is stopped in the name of gentrification. Now there's rats in the ceilings of public schools: https://missionlocal.org/2019/06/rat-droppings-crumbling-ceilings-and-broken-equipment-buena-vista-horace-mann-parents-say-district-allowing-school-to-fester/ https://missionlocal.org/2019/06/rat-droppings-crumbling-cei...
- hypeit 3y ago
  There's nothing in that link that suggests either billionaires paying to repair that school or people objecting to it.
  - buzzert 3y ago
    I think that's supposed to come from the extremely high taxes that they already pay. Which, in the context of the original article posted here, is all apparently wasted. I certainly wouldn't want to give any more money to an organization that clearly wastes all of their income currently taken by force.
    - hypeit 3y ago
      I think you might be replying to the wrong comment. I didn't say anything about taxes. I said that billionaires could help with homelessness if they chose to.
      - buzzert 3y ago
        Imagine I take half of your income, and I tell you that it's supposed to go towards helping the poor. Instead, the poor become poorer, all city services get worse, and nobody really seems to be getting helped. You are then expected to take even more of your income AND now time as well trying to solve this issue for which there are hundreds (thousands?) of city/state employees who are supposed to be doing this as their full time job? It makes perfect sense to me why they aren't doing anything. Maybe it would be better if we didn't collect taxes?
        hypeit 3y ago
        Again, I have no idea why you're talking about taxes. Most wealthy people only pay capital gains tax which is hardly onerous. If you have billions of dollars and you have some sort of problem, it's absolutely within your means to do something about it (other than whine on twitter).
        buzzert 3y ago
        I'm talking about taxes because I don't think money is the problem. If money was the problem, we should be able to raise taxes to meet the needs of, say, the public school system. The problem is, the additional amount of taxes to be collected needs to be an absolute/agreed upon value, not just "more".
giraffe_lady 3y ago
Or just take a scroll through the comments here today and also every week when this comes up on HN. The cruelty of the consensus here is astounding.
- bloopernova 3y ago
  There's a huge majority of people here who seem to have immense privilege and think that anyone can just get a tech job paying 6 figures. The selfishness on display is frightening.
SoftTalker 3y ago
The things we've tried to fix the problem have only made it worse. You have to be honest and accept that given the choice, some small percentage of people prefer to live on the streets with zero responsibility. Who is the one not giving back to the community, the billionaire VC who is funding hundreds of high-paying jobs, or the person who shits in the street and demands to be fed and provided with a host of other services at no cost to himself?
- kevingadd 3y ago
  Ignoring the fact that you're generalizing about the vast homeless population and implying that they all are homeless by choice and being a public nuisance by choice... It's worth considering the context that if no business will allow an unhoused person to use the toilet (okay, totally fair - private property!) and we refuse to maintain a sufficient number of public toilets, where are they supposed to defecate? During COVID this got really extreme. You could be going on a road trip (like when I moved cross-state) and be a paying customer at a gas station or restaurant or grocery store and they all tell you "sorry, no public restroom". What are you supposed to do? Obviously, defecating in public is uncivilized, but we're not giving people many options. For example, a city as large as San Francisco has a grand total of 25 public toilets: https://www.sfpublicworks.org/services/public-toilets https://www.sfpublicworks.org/services/public-toilets
scarface_74 3y ago
And the so called libertarians begged for the government’s help when the banks they relied on were going under. “There are no libertarians in bank runs”

by hypeit 3y ago

buzzert 3y ago

> extremely rich people who give absolutely nothing back to their communities + > encourage rampant gentrification Something tells me any attempt to give back to their community would be unwelcome, and labeled as "rampant gentrification". I certainly see it in the Mission, where any attempt at renovating old decrepit buildings is stopped in the name of gentrification. Now there's rats in the ceilings of public schools: https://missionlocal.org/2019/06/rat-droppings-crumbling-ceilings-and-broken-equipment-buena-vista-horace-mann-parents-say-district-allowing-school-to-fester/ https://missionlocal.org/2019/06/rat-droppings-crumbling-cei...

hypeit 3y ago
There's nothing in that link that suggests either billionaires paying to repair that school or people objecting to it.
- buzzert 3y ago
  I think that's supposed to come from the extremely high taxes that they already pay. Which, in the context of the original article posted here, is all apparently wasted. I certainly wouldn't want to give any more money to an organization that clearly wastes all of their income currently taken by force.
  - hypeit 3y ago
    I think you might be replying to the wrong comment. I didn't say anything about taxes. I said that billionaires could help with homelessness if they chose to.
    - buzzert 3y ago
      Imagine I take half of your income, and I tell you that it's supposed to go towards helping the poor. Instead, the poor become poorer, all city services get worse, and nobody really seems to be getting helped. You are then expected to take even more of your income AND now time as well trying to solve this issue for which there are hundreds (thousands?) of city/state employees who are supposed to be doing this as their full time job? It makes perfect sense to me why they aren't doing anything. Maybe it would be better if we didn't collect taxes?
      - hypeit 3y ago
        Again, I have no idea why you're talking about taxes. Most wealthy people only pay capital gains tax which is hardly onerous. If you have billions of dollars and you have some sort of problem, it's absolutely within your means to do something about it (other than whine on twitter).
        buzzert 3y ago
        I'm talking about taxes because I don't think money is the problem. If money was the problem, we should be able to raise taxes to meet the needs of, say, the public school system. The problem is, the additional amount of taxes to be collected needs to be an absolute/agreed upon value, not just "more".

giraffe_lady 3y ago

Or just take a scroll through the comments here today and also every week when this comes up on HN. The cruelty of the consensus here is astounding.

bloopernova 3y ago
There's a huge majority of people here who seem to have immense privilege and think that anyone can just get a tech job paying 6 figures. The selfishness on display is frightening.

SoftTalker 3y ago

The things we've tried to fix the problem have only made it worse. You have to be honest and accept that given the choice, some small percentage of people prefer to live on the streets with zero responsibility. Who is the one not giving back to the community, the billionaire VC who is funding hundreds of high-paying jobs, or the person who shits in the street and demands to be fed and provided with a host of other services at no cost to himself?

kevingadd 3y ago
Ignoring the fact that you're generalizing about the vast homeless population and implying that they all are homeless by choice and being a public nuisance by choice... It's worth considering the context that if no business will allow an unhoused person to use the toilet (okay, totally fair - private property!) and we refuse to maintain a sufficient number of public toilets, where are they supposed to defecate? During COVID this got really extreme. You could be going on a road trip (like when I moved cross-state) and be a paying customer at a gas station or restaurant or grocery store and they all tell you "sorry, no public restroom". What are you supposed to do? Obviously, defecating in public is uncivilized, but we're not giving people many options. For example, a city as large as San Francisco has a grand total of 25 public toilets: https://www.sfpublicworks.org/services/public-toilets https://www.sfpublicworks.org/services/public-toilets

scarface_74 3y ago

And the so called libertarians begged for the government’s help when the banks they relied on were going under. “There are no libertarians in bank runs”