7 ms·

For me, personally, this cancels out anything good about Silicon Valley. This is why I really don't give a crap why SV is such a great place for tech entreprene

For me, personally, this cancels out anything good about Silicon Valley. This is why I really don't give a crap why SV is such a great place for tech entrepreneurs. If this is the price, I rather live in a place where people have the decency to compromise their ambition a little bit in favor of those less fortunate. And I'm far from a socialist. I would like many things in my country to be way more libertarian, and on a personal level I'm as selfish as the next guy. But there's a line, a line of common decency and civilization, and this is so far beyond that it's obscene.

venomsnake 13y ago
Eradicating poverty is very good economic investment even if we ignore the decency and compassion - these are people that cannot consume and cannot produce so they behave like a double punch on potential GDP and growth.
- asdfdsa1234 13y ago
  Some people are not currently worth hiring at any wage due to their attitudes, ability, addictions, or mental illness, let alone at a wage that would put them above the poverty line. Eradicating poverty is far from simple, increasingly expensive the further down the tail you go, and almost certainly not a good investment.
  - igrekel 13y ago
    Better yet, if they have any additional income , they will have to spend it so it goes back in the general economy right away.
  - drivingmenuts 13y ago
    < Some people are not currently worth hiring at any wage due to their attitudes, ability, addictions, or mental illness, let alone at a wage that would put them above the poverty line. It would appear that the current solution is to throw them away like so much trash.
    - justin_vanw 13y ago
      Do you honestly believe that these people were in some way 'thrown out'? Like they were doing fine, and someone came along and said "time to live outside, trash!" Lets have an adult attitude here. In general, this means accepting that: - you don't have all the solutions, and if people just did it your way it probably wouldn't help much and would probably make things worse, since your armchair understanding of the problem is probably mostly assumptions and other bullshit. - all the worlds problems are not caused because the people who disagree with you are evil and prefer a world where people suffer, or intentionally want to make things worse. In reality, almost no one is this way, if they propose a different solution or course of action it's because they see the world differently from different experiences and understanding. - if there is a solution, it is very unlikely to be any of the things currently proposed or attempted, and will likely require innovative thinking and new solutions. If someone somewhere had figured out an effective and affordable solution, you could point to it and say "look, they figured out a great solution that we can afford and works well", and everyone would say "YEA!", and that's the end of it, assuming there isn't some non-obvious side effect that crops up later and makes the solution actually more harmful than doing nothing, which there usually is.
diminoten 13y ago
How is this anyone who lives in Silicon Valley's fault? Some people will always be homeless. Your reaction just seems... extreme.
- dictum 13y ago
  Extreme realities—that a place so rich and so interested in change (in the jargon, "disruption") has so many homeless people—elicit extreme reactions.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    I challenge the assertion that Silicon Valley is "so rich". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States#2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties...
    - nostrademons 13y ago
      It's because Silicon Valley has a small number of very rich people living in the same county as a large number of middle-class knowledge workers and immigrant service workers that support them. The latter bring down the averages, while the counties on your list are mostly just affluent bedroom communities for Washington DC. Take a look at the list of highest-income places instead, and in particular the list of highest-income cities with a population >50k: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_in_the_United_States#100_highest-income_places_with_a_population_of_at_least_50.2C000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_i... Palo Alto (#6), Cupertino (#11), Pleasanton (#18), Walnut Creek (#20), Mountain View (#21), and Sunnyvale (#30) are all Bay Area communities that are either in Silicon Valley or exurb bedroom communities for it, and rank higher than the Virginia counties you cite. The same pattern occurs on a smaller scale when you set the bar at >1000 households: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_in_the_United_States#100_highest-income_places_with_at_least_1.2C000_households http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_i... Woodside (#4), Portola Valley (#7), Hillsborough (#9), and Los Altos Hills (#14) are all in Silicon Valley; Atherton would rank ahead of Woodside according to the "population > 1000" list but apparently was left off for unspecified reasons.
temphn 13y ago
That's a silly response. There are seven million people in the Bay Area. A tiny fraction are homeless. Try lifting up an adult human being sometime. It's not easy. These people are frequently mentally ill, addicted to drugs, or otherwise incapable of taking care of themselves. Example: http://www.businessinsider.com/former-business-owner-homeless-in-silicon-valley-2013-8?op=1#ixzz2dZIyTTZj http://www.businessinsider.com/former-business-owner-homeles... She ended up homeless when she turned to California's shelter network and hated it. ... Five years ago she moved into The Jungle and says she has no regrets. If you think differently, I recommend you go down there and try to lift them out of poverty. Once it's your responsibility, you'll quickly find there is a reason they are living like that.
iano 13y ago
This happens everywhere, not just in Silicon Valley. Maybe I'm missing it, but where does this article give evidence that this is the biggest in the US? My home town has 20k people, and has winters with weeks of sustained below 0F temperature. Yet, there is a forested section behind a low budget grocery store where a 30-50 person homeless community exists perpetually. I know this is smaller than the 175 mentioned in the article, but its in a 20k person winter town in the middle of nowhere.
mwfunk 13y ago
Visit San Francisco sometime. You may end up reconsidering how quickly you blame homelessness on the selfishness of the people who live in the region. There's a ton of wealth in SF, and seemingly more per-capita empathy for the less fortunate than anyplace in the entire country, and yet major parts of the city feel like one huge homeless encampment. In a lot of ways, this is because of the empathy the locals feel for the homeless, not a symptom of a lack of concern. The causes of homelessness, and the things which lead to there being more or less homeless people in a particular region, are way more complicated than "the rich locals are selfish".
nanidin 13y ago
You should move somewhere with really harsh weather conditions, that way you can feel good about the relative lack of homeless people.
slykat 13y ago
Have you actually researched the issue? There are over 600K homeless people across the United States. This issue has existed for centuries, and there are people living in this condition across the US. The US has made a conscious decision to not systematically address social issues like homelessness (or lack of healthcare) due to a belief against socialist programs (i.e. we tent to rely on the "free market"). So if programs want this issue solved, you are going to have address this at the national level and maybe support a socialist program (although there may be a free market way of attack this). And if you want to live in place that doesn't have this, go to Germany or the Netherlands because there is no place in America that has addressed homelessness (as far as I'm aware). Funny enough, if you had scrolled a little further down you would see a business insider article talking about a SV exec trying to address this issue: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-jungle-largest-homeless-camp-in-us-2013-8?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-jungle-largest-homeless-c.... Also if you have Googled a bit, you would have found out San Francisco spends over $200M on homeless issues, making it one of the largest city efforts to address the issue. Please do not rely on link-bait from BusinessInsider to be your primary research source; there's a world of knowledge freely available out there through Google & Wikipedia.
justin_vanw 13y ago
You clearly have no idea what is going on here, and you should find out before you casually slander everyone that lives here. The people that live in SV are VERY generous. The consequence is, we have a huge population of homeless people that moved here because the weather is mild and the people are generous, making being homeless here far less terrible than, say, New York or Chicago or Cleveland or Phoenix or even LA. It's really easy to accuse a large and varying group of people of living purely for avarice, especially when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. What are you doing about the homeless problem? Making snide comments on HN that scapegoat other people. References: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-20/national/41427596_1_northern-california-rawson-neal-psychiatric-hospital-patients http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-20/national/41427... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5221311 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5221311 http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Homeless-problem-lingers-as-S-F-spends-millions-3173290.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Homeless-p... http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/the-astonishing-decline-of-homelessness-in-america/279050/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/the-asto...
- bowlofpetunias 13y ago
  Last time I looked, SV was located inside the US. (For the record, my original comment wasn't intended as a snide remark. This however is.) And your comments about homelessness make me want to throw up. As if being discarded as worthless human thrash is in anyway less horrible when "the weather is mild and the people are generous". How on earth do you manage to twist this so that it's the affluent denizens or Silicon Valley that are the victims here? I'm sorry I'm not being constructive, this attitude just pisses me off. Like I said, I don't consider myself morally superior, far from it, I'm a selfish dick 95% of the time, but even I have limits. I couldn't live there and cheerfully ignore the problem. Children are growing up homeless in one richest areas of one of the richest countries in the world. There's no nuance here, no deeper meaning that requires further research before one has the right to formulate an opinion. There are many gray areas in life. Hell, at my age, almost everything turns out to be a grey area. But this isn't one of them.
  - 13y ago
csomar 13y ago
But there's a line, a line of common decency and civilization I think, given a number N of people, there will be always a fraction of them who can't take care of themselves, mentally or physically ill, who gone through bad conditions (bankruptcy, depression...) I know a relative which inherited a lots of money from his parents. Now he has nothing. It's not about giving money to people.

venomsnake 13y ago

Eradicating poverty is very good economic investment even if we ignore the decency and compassion - these are people that cannot consume and cannot produce so they behave like a double punch on potential GDP and growth.

asdfdsa1234 13y ago
Some people are not currently worth hiring at any wage due to their attitudes, ability, addictions, or mental illness, let alone at a wage that would put them above the poverty line. Eradicating poverty is far from simple, increasingly expensive the further down the tail you go, and almost certainly not a good investment.
- igrekel 13y ago
  Better yet, if they have any additional income , they will have to spend it so it goes back in the general economy right away.
- drivingmenuts 13y ago
  < Some people are not currently worth hiring at any wage due to their attitudes, ability, addictions, or mental illness, let alone at a wage that would put them above the poverty line. It would appear that the current solution is to throw them away like so much trash.
  - justin_vanw 13y ago
    Do you honestly believe that these people were in some way 'thrown out'? Like they were doing fine, and someone came along and said "time to live outside, trash!" Lets have an adult attitude here. In general, this means accepting that: - you don't have all the solutions, and if people just did it your way it probably wouldn't help much and would probably make things worse, since your armchair understanding of the problem is probably mostly assumptions and other bullshit. - all the worlds problems are not caused because the people who disagree with you are evil and prefer a world where people suffer, or intentionally want to make things worse. In reality, almost no one is this way, if they propose a different solution or course of action it's because they see the world differently from different experiences and understanding. - if there is a solution, it is very unlikely to be any of the things currently proposed or attempted, and will likely require innovative thinking and new solutions. If someone somewhere had figured out an effective and affordable solution, you could point to it and say "look, they figured out a great solution that we can afford and works well", and everyone would say "YEA!", and that's the end of it, assuming there isn't some non-obvious side effect that crops up later and makes the solution actually more harmful than doing nothing, which there usually is.

diminoten 13y ago

How is this anyone who lives in Silicon Valley's fault? Some people will always be homeless. Your reaction just seems... extreme.

dictum 13y ago
Extreme realities—that a place so rich and so interested in change (in the jargon, "disruption") has so many homeless people—elicit extreme reactions.
- diminoten 13y ago
  I challenge the assertion that Silicon Valley is "so rich". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States#2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties...
  - nostrademons 13y ago
    It's because Silicon Valley has a small number of very rich people living in the same county as a large number of middle-class knowledge workers and immigrant service workers that support them. The latter bring down the averages, while the counties on your list are mostly just affluent bedroom communities for Washington DC. Take a look at the list of highest-income places instead, and in particular the list of highest-income cities with a population >50k: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_in_the_United_States#100_highest-income_places_with_a_population_of_at_least_50.2C000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_i... Palo Alto (#6), Cupertino (#11), Pleasanton (#18), Walnut Creek (#20), Mountain View (#21), and Sunnyvale (#30) are all Bay Area communities that are either in Silicon Valley or exurb bedroom communities for it, and rank higher than the Virginia counties you cite. The same pattern occurs on a smaller scale when you set the bar at >1000 households: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_in_the_United_States#100_highest-income_places_with_at_least_1.2C000_households http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_places_i... Woodside (#4), Portola Valley (#7), Hillsborough (#9), and Los Altos Hills (#14) are all in Silicon Valley; Atherton would rank ahead of Woodside according to the "population > 1000" list but apparently was left off for unspecified reasons.

temphn 13y ago

That's a silly response. There are seven million people in the Bay Area. A tiny fraction are homeless. Try lifting up an adult human being sometime. It's not easy. These people are frequently mentally ill, addicted to drugs, or otherwise incapable of taking care of themselves. Example: http://www.businessinsider.com/former-business-owner-homeless-in-silicon-valley-2013-8?op=1#ixzz2dZIyTTZj http://www.businessinsider.com/former-business-owner-homeles... She ended up homeless when she turned to California's shelter network and hated it. ... Five years ago she moved into The Jungle and says she has no regrets. If you think differently, I recommend you go down there and try to lift them out of poverty. Once it's your responsibility, you'll quickly find there is a reason they are living like that.

iano 13y ago

This happens everywhere, not just in Silicon Valley. Maybe I'm missing it, but where does this article give evidence that this is the biggest in the US? My home town has 20k people, and has winters with weeks of sustained below 0F temperature. Yet, there is a forested section behind a low budget grocery store where a 30-50 person homeless community exists perpetually. I know this is smaller than the 175 mentioned in the article, but its in a 20k person winter town in the middle of nowhere.

mwfunk 13y ago

Visit San Francisco sometime. You may end up reconsidering how quickly you blame homelessness on the selfishness of the people who live in the region. There's a ton of wealth in SF, and seemingly more per-capita empathy for the less fortunate than anyplace in the entire country, and yet major parts of the city feel like one huge homeless encampment. In a lot of ways, this is because of the empathy the locals feel for the homeless, not a symptom of a lack of concern. The causes of homelessness, and the things which lead to there being more or less homeless people in a particular region, are way more complicated than "the rich locals are selfish".

nanidin 13y ago

You should move somewhere with really harsh weather conditions, that way you can feel good about the relative lack of homeless people.

slykat 13y ago

Have you actually researched the issue? There are over 600K homeless people across the United States. This issue has existed for centuries, and there are people living in this condition across the US. The US has made a conscious decision to not systematically address social issues like homelessness (or lack of healthcare) due to a belief against socialist programs (i.e. we tent to rely on the "free market"). So if programs want this issue solved, you are going to have address this at the national level and maybe support a socialist program (although there may be a free market way of attack this). And if you want to live in place that doesn't have this, go to Germany or the Netherlands because there is no place in America that has addressed homelessness (as far as I'm aware). Funny enough, if you had scrolled a little further down you would see a business insider article talking about a SV exec trying to address this issue: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-jungle-largest-homeless-camp-in-us-2013-8?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-jungle-largest-homeless-c.... Also if you have Googled a bit, you would have found out San Francisco spends over $200M on homeless issues, making it one of the largest city efforts to address the issue. Please do not rely on link-bait from BusinessInsider to be your primary research source; there's a world of knowledge freely available out there through Google & Wikipedia.

justin_vanw 13y ago

You clearly have no idea what is going on here, and you should find out before you casually slander everyone that lives here. The people that live in SV are VERY generous. The consequence is, we have a huge population of homeless people that moved here because the weather is mild and the people are generous, making being homeless here far less terrible than, say, New York or Chicago or Cleveland or Phoenix or even LA. It's really easy to accuse a large and varying group of people of living purely for avarice, especially when you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. What are you doing about the homeless problem? Making snide comments on HN that scapegoat other people. References: http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-20/national/41427596_1_northern-california-rawson-neal-psychiatric-hospital-patients http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-20/national/41427... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5221311 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5221311 http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Homeless-problem-lingers-as-S-F-spends-millions-3173290.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Homeless-p... http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/the-astonishing-decline-of-homelessness-in-america/279050/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/the-asto...

bowlofpetunias 13y ago
Last time I looked, SV was located inside the US. (For the record, my original comment wasn't intended as a snide remark. This however is.) And your comments about homelessness make me want to throw up. As if being discarded as worthless human thrash is in anyway less horrible when "the weather is mild and the people are generous". How on earth do you manage to twist this so that it's the affluent denizens or Silicon Valley that are the victims here? I'm sorry I'm not being constructive, this attitude just pisses me off. Like I said, I don't consider myself morally superior, far from it, I'm a selfish dick 95% of the time, but even I have limits. I couldn't live there and cheerfully ignore the problem. Children are growing up homeless in one richest areas of one of the richest countries in the world. There's no nuance here, no deeper meaning that requires further research before one has the right to formulate an opinion. There are many gray areas in life. Hell, at my age, almost everything turns out to be a grey area. But this isn't one of them.
- 13y ago

csomar 13y ago

But there's a line, a line of common decency and civilization I think, given a number N of people, there will be always a fraction of them who can't take care of themselves, mentally or physically ill, who gone through bad conditions (bankruptcy, depression...) I know a relative which inherited a lots of money from his parents. Now he has nothing. It's not about giving money to people.