9 ms·

Protesters vandalize Google bus, block Apple shuttle

69 points by radley 13y ago

radley 13y ago
Pando: http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-google-bus-in-west-oakland-smashing-window/ http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-googl...
- clarkm 13y ago
  "The San Francisco group was organized by a loose coalition of housing activists, including representatives from Eviction Free SF, Our Mission No Eviction, and Just Cause." Do these organizations seriously campaign for no evictions, or are their names just hyperbole?
  - bmelton 13y ago
    Seems like, basically, exactly that. Or, put another way, you're free to own property and rent it out, but you're only allowed to make as much profit as they want you to, maybe? "We are a direct action group, whose mission is to help stop the wave of speculator evictions that have been hitting San Francisco by holding accountable, and confronting, real estate speculators that have been displacing long time San Francisco residents for profit."
tptacek 13y ago
"While you're at it, Google, stop providing the property tax base for our city, and start having your employees drive individual automobiles to work every day." Google: consider Chicago. We'd be happy to have you. Also our food is better, we have all four seasons, and most of your employees wouldn't even need a special bus to commute, because our public transportation actually works. But you can still run your busses out to Plainfield and Elgin (the approximately equivalent commute from SF to MTV). We'll find the busses charming, not inflammatory. I am of course dignifying what has happened here. Really, this is just a bunch of people thrilled to have an excuse to fuck up a bus.
- Me1000 13y ago
  Google already has an office in Chicago. :) http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations/ http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations/
  - cdibona 13y ago
    It's a pretty great office too. Lots of happy chicagoans work there.
    - jrockway 13y ago
      And they have Chrome Blend coffee. Reason enough to visit :)
- tedivm 13y ago
  Seriously? I'm kind of shocked at the raw stupidity of this comment- just a bunch of people thrilled to have an excuse to fuck up a bus huh? These are actual real problems that need actual solutions, and the elitist attitudes really need to stop. Just because we know technology doesn't make us better than those who don't, and for the bay area to be a sustainable location it really needs all members of the community to work together. The tech companies have failed at this, and that's why these protests are happening. Not because people want to 'fuck things up'. As far as the Chicago bit goes- yeah, it's not a bad city. I feel the bay area could learn a lot from it when it comes to scaling things up. I can live without the snow though.
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    EDIT: Nevermind, this comment thread is a little toxic and I'd rather not add to its length.
  - cynicalkane 13y ago
    If you always try to think in terms of the "actual real problems" you will find yourself unable to make judgments about a lot of obviously terrible ideas, so long as they are distantly related to an "actual problem".
moultano 13y ago
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13513173-the-rent-is-too-damn-high http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13513173-the-rent-is-too-... I highly recommend this book for anyone who is constructively concerned about these issues.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  A person can be "constructive" while fundamentally disagreeing with the premise of these protestors. I would recommend the following as a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare...
  - moultano 13y ago
    Then you'll be happy to know that he attributes the problem to government constraints on supply.
    - yetanotherphd 13y ago
      Hehe, touche, I should have at least read the summary :) But my link is also very relevant to the discussion and covers a different issue. EDIT: in particular, high rents don't necessarily imply that supply should be increased, sometimes it just means poor people need to move somewhere else.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
>"The people outside your Google bus serve you coffee, watch your kids, have sex with you for money, make you food, and are being driven out of their neighborhoods," the flyer read. "While you guys live fat as hogs with your free 24/7 buffet [my emphasis], everyone else is scraping the bottom of their wallets, barely existing in this expensive world that you and your chums helped create." Wow that is a lot of vitriol, it really does feel like back in High School. Too bad for the protestors there are fascist police to protect these fat nerds, er, techies.
- jrockway 13y ago
  If we were all working on farms, or whatever it is their ideal is, we would be making our own coffee, working with our kids out in the fields, and would be too tired to be having sex at all. There's a whole class of shit jobs that wouldn't even exist. I don't think anyone should be grateful for a barista job or whatever, but it's probably better than weeding a cornfield for six cents an hour. If everyone was poorer, everyone would be poorer. Income inequality has always existed and will always exist: money comes from value, and people have to create that value somehow. If you create less value, you'll have less money. (I agree that it's difficult to bootstrap yourself from shit job to riding around in a Wifi-enabled bus, and that's something we should try and fix. But the money to fix it has to come from somewhere.)
- morgante 13y ago
  I particularly enjoyed the insinuation that tech employees are living among and extensively using prostitutes.
  - viraptor 13y ago
    I wonder where did that claim originate. Maybe there's some grain of truth behind it? Or maybe it's just people remembering news like this http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23753946/12-child-prostitutes-rescued-bay-area-raids http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23753946/12-child-prostitutes-...
  - oblique63 13y ago
    I don't know about prostitutes, but one of my good friends works at an upscale strip club here and her clientele does primarily consist of tech workers, especially whenever a conference rolls around.
TomSawyer 13y ago
Oakland! http://youtu.be/CzkoeyhAAdk http://youtu.be/CzkoeyhAAdk
rguzman 13y ago
The xenophobia and lack of basic logic of these protests are appalling. Even the people giving speeches at them[1] have a hard time making the connection between the buses, the evictions, and the tech industry. "we are against the ellis act ... we see that as related to tech and we want the ruling class which is becoming the tech class to listen to our voices" "we are against the tech money that has caused evictions of seniors and people with disabilities throughout the community" uh...wut? I understand that the growth of the tech sector generates quite a bit of demand for housing and that leads to increasing rents if supply is held constant. But, this is a econ 101 problem. The solution is to let more housing be built as to stabilize the prices and not YOU PEOPLE GTFO ALONG WITH ALL THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS THAT HAVING A THRIVING INDUSTRY IN THE LOCAL ECONOMY BRING! [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHbMbkqwDk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHbMbkqwDk
- morgante 13y ago
  What are the police doing in that video? Shouldn't they be arresting protestors for blocking traffic?
  - JumpCrisscross 13y ago
    As a New Yorker, this surprised me too. Tech companies should consider supporting the budgets of the SFPD et al.
    - morgante 13y ago
      > As a New Yorker, this surprised me too. Tech companies should consider supporting the budgets of the SFPD et al. Seriously. NYPD would be all over them blocking traffic and breaking windows.
      - jrockway 13y ago
        They weren't riding bikes, so I doubt the NYPD would care. (Though honestly, the NYPD has been pretty nice to me while riding a bike. But I'm new around here.)
morgante 13y ago
This is really ridiculous. I used to have some sympathy for their cause—through no fault of their own, they're being priced out of their neighborhood. But the point where they start physically attacking employees is the point where they lose any respect. Employees aren't trying to get them evicted. Heck, at least they're taking shared transit instead of private limousines. Sorry, but they've reduced themselves to common hoodlums and should be treated as such. No evictions? Evict every person who participated in a violent attack on their neighbors.
- tedivm 13y ago
  They? Only one of the protest groups did anything, the other groups have just been protesting. I don't think it's reasonable for everyone to drop support for these guys because of a couple of assholes.
  - morgante 13y ago
    > They? Only one of the protest groups did anything, the other groups have just been protesting. I don't think it's reasonable for everyone to drop support for these guys because of a couple of assholes. But the other group also condoned the actions of the hoodlums and declined to disagree with their tactics.
    - tedivm 13y ago
      Source? I haven't seen anything about that.
      - morgante 13y ago
        One of the SF organizers declined to condemn violent protest and said it was "understandable that people are angry." http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-google-bus-in-west-oakland-smashing-window/ http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-googl...
    - obstacle1 13y ago
tsax 13y ago
Delicious! Social justice rhetoric comes back to bite the SV hipsters. I hope the non SJ warriors among the techies pay attention to this demonstration of how the left wing hate machine works. Savor your own denunciation as lackeys of Koch brothers (lol), evil capitalists, rich, white male priviledged running dogs, etc. Then maybe this will make them rethink their own judgments when such rhetoric is used against other industries or classes of people.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  I don't think there are many social justice warriors among "techies", at least those whose title is "Engineer". Some people might go along with it because they really agree or because they fear the consequences (viz Ben Noordhuis) but most of this politics comes from outside the industry, or from the leaders/management.
  - tsax 13y ago
    Sure, I don't think there are many either. But this instance should remove the attraction and 'cool' factor of SJWs in SV.
  - ps4fanboy 13y ago
    hacker news on the other hand...
- hindsightbias 13y ago
  Delirious! Who knew glibertarian Thielians were into social justice?
ultimatedelman 13y ago
Is it just me, or is this less of the tech companies' and workers' fault and more of the greedy landlords jacking up prices? Shouldn't the protesters' anger be directed at them instead?
- viraptor 13y ago
  I'm not sure if they should be angry at anyone at the moment. The market works - jobs mean more people coming in, high salaries mean high rents, people who can afford a good location will choose their place. Unless everyone in one group changes their mind, there will be an unbalanced situation (until the bubble bursts - rent goes so high that some people realise it's not reasonable to pay anymore and some big shift occurs - another campus of a big company gets built, new easier way of commuting is created, etc.) If they really want change, they'll have to figure out a way to create an incentive for the landlords to keep the price low, or for the workers to choose their house location differently. Being angry at anyone trying to maximise their comfort in a lawful way is rarely useful or effective.
  - mempko 13y ago
    clearly the markets are not working for everyone.
    - viraptor 13y ago
      It's working the same way for everyone. It's not beneficial for everyone, but that's always the case.
- nine_k 13y ago
  OTOH it may be not landlords but city officials not allowing enough new construction, and their NIMBY-type electorate who protest against building adequate housing (yes, tall) and working public transportation?
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  It's neither. Landlords have a right to charge as much as they can, and tech companies have a right to pay as much as they like (in fact, I encourage it). The real problems are (1) artificial restrictions on housing supply, and (2) people not being unable to deal with the harsh realities of the market. The free market means you can use money to buy things that other people also would have wanted. In fact, there would be little point in working if we couldn't. There is no reason to feel particularly sympathetic to the people who happened to be living in an area where rents increased. If the adjustment costs are very high, I also have nothing against increased aid to the people affected. But unless a person owns something, they don't have the right to it, and so people who have been renting a long time don't have the right to keep renting indefinitely at that price.
yeukhon 13y ago
The issue is complex, but let's look at demand vs supply. It is simply how the market works. The more people living in the city, the more likely the housing rent will increase. If there is a shortage, the rent will raise. If there are new apartments built, more polished, the rent will be higher. And there are companies pay for housing in MV which results in shortage. The problem is the city does not do a good job securing affordable housing. It isn't like Googlers or Twitter employees don't shop. They probably shop a lot, spend a lot of cash. These high-tech employees are also suffering with the high rent. Not everyone makes 180K a year. At least 1/3 of the salary goes to the government and 401K. The other reason housing becomes less affordable is foreigners who come to invest in real estate. Kick them out? Detroit is be happy to take care these tech geeks. But I bet 10 years later they will just be unhappy when the average residents can't afford an apartment. My problem is with low-pay jobs. Security at big tech companies are hired by contractors and they get low pay. Google should be able to pay more, shouldn't they? I remember there was a series of protest this summer in MV. Maybe Google should just build a dorm. It is sad people can't afford a place to sleep. I can't imagine being homeless right now in NY, it's fucking cold. Can we do better? How do we do better? Should we have more affordable housing and more generous affordable housing policy?
- tsax 13y ago
  How about drastically liberalizing zoning regs? How about taking a sledgehammer to restrictions on increased density? How about letting very tall skyscrapers be built with minimal delays and log rolling? Never forget the SUPPLY part in supply and demand. It's a complex problem of course, but none of this is even being considered.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    > very tall skyscrapers be built with minimal delays Coming from HK, it is indeed a way to make housing more affordable in 5-10 years, until big cash invest in them and then the entry price just goes straight up. The ways to prevent that to happen quickly are limit how many skyscrapers apartments can be built in the next decade and how many must be reserved as affordable housing, plus restricting foreign money. But I am sure there will be resistance. As I said, coming from HK, I was used to living in a city surrounded by walls and bricks. Then NY felt a lot different. Then this summer I went to MV for an internship and when I came back NY was strange to me. I say we can't build a lot of skyscrapers. I don't want to be surrounded by walls again.
melling 13y ago
Maybe Google could just look at a subway map and put an office in a less desirable area, like Oakland, where people can easily commute from SF by subway. They might get good tax breaks if they build/lease in a depressed area. Then they would need a lot fewer buses heading south. There would be an additional benefit that some Google employees would move close to the office in Oakland, thus bringing some wealth into that area, which would hopefully snowball. I don't know the SF area, but here's a subway map. https://www.bart.gov/stations https://www.bart.gov/stations The solution to the problem is building another office in a cheaper area that's close to mass transportation.
yaroslavvb 13y ago
There's a lot of irrational reactions to shuttles for some reason. I live on top of a "deluxe" cheese shop in Lower Polk, and the owner yesterday told me "Google shuttles, yeah, don't like them, they are causing all those techies to move in and drive up rents." Especially strange to hear from the owner since techies are probably the ones buying their $20-$120 bottles of vinegar
- lwan 13y ago
  This really drove the point home for me.
leot 13y ago
There are protest-able problems, and there are unprotest-able ones. The real problem with SF is its density and the people preventing it from getting denser (its density is a third of Paris', e.g.). Unfortunately, there are no protest-magnets for that problem. low density -- attractive -- affordable Pick two.
fuckdc 13y ago
what about the laws in SF that prevents developers from building new places to live? - go to the alley between 17th and 18th on mission and you'll see a picture of 'danny the developer' and gentrification references - this is their attitude although it's inherently wrong - more housing would lower prices but the city (it's rabid pro government constituents) in particular has made it insanely hard to build new projects -- got a neighbor w/3 stories and you want to build a 12 story project? good luck - not going to happen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization the same protestors that are big-government (these aren't anarchists - "anarchists" in america are nothing short of hand to mouth socialists) have found out they can't have their cake and eat it too - fuck them and fuck their precious little government as well
iribe 13y ago
Note that these hipsters moved to Oakland/SF thanks to paying higher rent compared to the black people they kicked out.
sytelus 13y ago
Google + Apple employees combined count is less than 1% of Bay Area population. If you include all other rich tech firms, their total employees would probably account for less than 3% of population in Bay Area. So it seems incorrect to think that these people are driving others from their neighborhoods. My view on California real estate is a giant bubble that fuels itself by boom in tech industry but ignoring above numbers. Last time it tried to bust it got deflated only by 25% and it back up to those levels again and going up even more. If you wanted to short some market this is probably it.
skc 13y ago
I'm idly wondering how many of those protestors use Google or iPhones on a daily basis. If people really want to get some attention from these corporates, vote your displeasure with your wallet en masse.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
I'm posting the full text of a flier[1] so people can see just how nasty and threatening these protestors were (in addition to the actual violence): In case you’re wondering why this happened, we’ll be extremely clear. The people outside your Google bus serve you coffee, watch your kids, have sex with you for money, make you food, and are being driven out of their neighborhoods. While you guys live fat as hogs with your free 24/7 buffets, everyone else is scraping the bottom of their wallets, barely existing in this expensive world that you and your chums have helped create. You are not innocent victims. Without you, the housing prices would not be rising and we would not be facing eviction and foreclosure. You, your employers, and the housing speculators are to blame for this new crisis, so much more awful than the last one. You live your comfortable lives surrounded by poverty, homelessness, and death, seemingly oblivious to everything around you, lost in the big bucks and success. But look around, see the violence and degradation out there? This is the world that you have created, and you are clearly on the wrong side. Predictably, you might even believe that the technologies you create serve the betterment of all humans. But in reality, the benefactors of technological development are advertisers, the wealthy, the powerful, and the NSA analysts running dragnet surveillance over email, phone calls, and social media. If you want a Bay Area where the ultra-rich are pitted against hundreds of thousands of poor people, keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll have a nice revolution outside your door. But if you want out then you should quit your jobs, cash out, and go live a life that doesn’t completely fuck up someone else’s. GET THE FUCK OUT OF OAKLAND! [1] http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/20/google-bus-protesters-manifesto-get-o/ http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/20/google-bus-proteste...
belgianguy 13y ago
Modern-day Luddites, the lot of them. Holding up or attacking buses with employees on their way to work is an easy target. Not to mention the protestors mental acrobatics to somehow blame the passengers of the bus for the rising housing prices. That's very shortsighted and flimsy justification fodder for some extreme political activists to start riots. At no point will violence and vandalism be a valid argument in this discussion. The fact that the different spokespersons seemed to go out of their way to not condemn this act, is telling of their expectations from their members. They're willing to place themselves above the law or at least are willing to try and look the other way if their supporters commit crimes, but at the same time they want sympathy and understanding for their dire situation? Good luck with that. It's an economic reality that if a property attracts higher value through development (eg richer people moving in to a part of town), that its surroundings will rise in value as well. Shops and services targeting this new demographic will start to show up, catering to their (often different) needs, which have new needs of their own etc, ... This will affect everything from the pavement, the cars in the street, the small shops, the traffic lights, to the big brand supermarkets. It's usually a welcome sign that an area is improving. Yet from the protester perspective, they see the housing prices starting to outgrow their incomes and see themselves being forced out by their landlords to make room for richer people who can afford the rent. They don't want the area to develop further, they want to keep it at a status quo to stop the housing price from rising further. Does that make is less of a tragedy? No, leaving one's house because one can't afford it anymore is a heartbreaking decision, but it's a decision that a houseowner should make sometimes. You can't keep something just because you think you deserve to have it. We aren't living in an utopia and we must adapt to changes in our environments, whether that is getting an extra job or moving elsewhere, or trying to get more housing developed to satisfy demand and stop the prices from skyrocketing. Why not protest the government? IMO the protesters had a cause, but this violent act has done them much more harm than good. Protesting is a right, but when your words aren't heard, you don't get to throw stones at buses and expect to get a free pass. People will judge a group by its most prominent and vocal members. Grammatical dissection of whether or not the spokespersons are in fact not condemning the act doesn't really help their case, it rather defuses their argument and makes them look juvenile and opportunistic in the process, exactly what those who want them out, want them to be. Great success.

69 points by radley 13y ago

Pando: http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-google-bus-in-west-oakland-smashing-window/ http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-googl...

clarkm 13y ago
"The San Francisco group was organized by a loose coalition of housing activists, including representatives from Eviction Free SF, Our Mission No Eviction, and Just Cause." Do these organizations seriously campaign for no evictions, or are their names just hyperbole?
- bmelton 13y ago
  Seems like, basically, exactly that. Or, put another way, you're free to own property and rent it out, but you're only allowed to make as much profit as they want you to, maybe? "We are a direct action group, whose mission is to help stop the wave of speculator evictions that have been hitting San Francisco by holding accountable, and confronting, real estate speculators that have been displacing long time San Francisco residents for profit."

tptacek 13y ago

"While you're at it, Google, stop providing the property tax base for our city, and start having your employees drive individual automobiles to work every day." Google: consider Chicago. We'd be happy to have you. Also our food is better, we have all four seasons, and most of your employees wouldn't even need a special bus to commute, because our public transportation actually works. But you can still run your busses out to Plainfield and Elgin (the approximately equivalent commute from SF to MTV). We'll find the busses charming, not inflammatory. I am of course dignifying what has happened here. Really, this is just a bunch of people thrilled to have an excuse to fuck up a bus.

Me1000 13y ago
Google already has an office in Chicago. :) http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations/ http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/locations/
- cdibona 13y ago
  It's a pretty great office too. Lots of happy chicagoans work there.
  - jrockway 13y ago
    And they have Chrome Blend coffee. Reason enough to visit :)
tedivm 13y ago
Seriously? I'm kind of shocked at the raw stupidity of this comment- just a bunch of people thrilled to have an excuse to fuck up a bus huh? These are actual real problems that need actual solutions, and the elitist attitudes really need to stop. Just because we know technology doesn't make us better than those who don't, and for the bay area to be a sustainable location it really needs all members of the community to work together. The tech companies have failed at this, and that's why these protests are happening. Not because people want to 'fuck things up'. As far as the Chicago bit goes- yeah, it's not a bad city. I feel the bay area could learn a lot from it when it comes to scaling things up. I can live without the snow though.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  EDIT: Nevermind, this comment thread is a little toxic and I'd rather not add to its length.
- cynicalkane 13y ago
  If you always try to think in terms of the "actual real problems" you will find yourself unable to make judgments about a lot of obviously terrible ideas, so long as they are distantly related to an "actual problem".

moultano 13y ago

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13513173-the-rent-is-too-damn-high http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13513173-the-rent-is-too-... I highly recommend this book for anyone who is constructively concerned about these issues.

yetanotherphd 13y ago
A person can be "constructive" while fundamentally disagreeing with the premise of these protestors. I would recommend the following as a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare_economics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorems_of_welfare...
- moultano 13y ago
  Then you'll be happy to know that he attributes the problem to government constraints on supply.
  - yetanotherphd 13y ago
    Hehe, touche, I should have at least read the summary :) But my link is also very relevant to the discussion and covers a different issue. EDIT: in particular, high rents don't necessarily imply that supply should be increased, sometimes it just means poor people need to move somewhere else.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

>"The people outside your Google bus serve you coffee, watch your kids, have sex with you for money, make you food, and are being driven out of their neighborhoods," the flyer read. "While you guys live fat as hogs with your free 24/7 buffet [my emphasis], everyone else is scraping the bottom of their wallets, barely existing in this expensive world that you and your chums helped create." Wow that is a lot of vitriol, it really does feel like back in High School. Too bad for the protestors there are fascist police to protect these fat nerds, er, techies.

jrockway 13y ago
If we were all working on farms, or whatever it is their ideal is, we would be making our own coffee, working with our kids out in the fields, and would be too tired to be having sex at all. There's a whole class of shit jobs that wouldn't even exist. I don't think anyone should be grateful for a barista job or whatever, but it's probably better than weeding a cornfield for six cents an hour. If everyone was poorer, everyone would be poorer. Income inequality has always existed and will always exist: money comes from value, and people have to create that value somehow. If you create less value, you'll have less money. (I agree that it's difficult to bootstrap yourself from shit job to riding around in a Wifi-enabled bus, and that's something we should try and fix. But the money to fix it has to come from somewhere.)
morgante 13y ago
I particularly enjoyed the insinuation that tech employees are living among and extensively using prostitutes.
- viraptor 13y ago
  I wonder where did that claim originate. Maybe there's some grain of truth behind it? Or maybe it's just people remembering news like this http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23753946/12-child-prostitutes-rescued-bay-area-raids http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23753946/12-child-prostitutes-...
- oblique63 13y ago
  I don't know about prostitutes, but one of my good friends works at an upscale strip club here and her clientele does primarily consist of tech workers, especially whenever a conference rolls around.

TomSawyer 13y ago

Oakland! http://youtu.be/CzkoeyhAAdk http://youtu.be/CzkoeyhAAdk

rguzman 13y ago

The xenophobia and lack of basic logic of these protests are appalling. Even the people giving speeches at them[1] have a hard time making the connection between the buses, the evictions, and the tech industry. "we are against the ellis act ... we see that as related to tech and we want the ruling class which is becoming the tech class to listen to our voices" "we are against the tech money that has caused evictions of seniors and people with disabilities throughout the community" uh...wut? I understand that the growth of the tech sector generates quite a bit of demand for housing and that leads to increasing rents if supply is held constant. But, this is a econ 101 problem. The solution is to let more housing be built as to stabilize the prices and not YOU PEOPLE GTFO ALONG WITH ALL THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS THAT HAVING A THRIVING INDUSTRY IN THE LOCAL ECONOMY BRING! [1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHbMbkqwDk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSHbMbkqwDk

morgante 13y ago
What are the police doing in that video? Shouldn't they be arresting protestors for blocking traffic?
- JumpCrisscross 13y ago
  As a New Yorker, this surprised me too. Tech companies should consider supporting the budgets of the SFPD et al.
  - morgante 13y ago
    > As a New Yorker, this surprised me too. Tech companies should consider supporting the budgets of the SFPD et al. Seriously. NYPD would be all over them blocking traffic and breaking windows.
    - jrockway 13y ago
      They weren't riding bikes, so I doubt the NYPD would care. (Though honestly, the NYPD has been pretty nice to me while riding a bike. But I'm new around here.)

morgante 13y ago

This is really ridiculous. I used to have some sympathy for their cause—through no fault of their own, they're being priced out of their neighborhood. But the point where they start physically attacking employees is the point where they lose any respect. Employees aren't trying to get them evicted. Heck, at least they're taking shared transit instead of private limousines. Sorry, but they've reduced themselves to common hoodlums and should be treated as such. No evictions? Evict every person who participated in a violent attack on their neighbors.

tedivm 13y ago
They? Only one of the protest groups did anything, the other groups have just been protesting. I don't think it's reasonable for everyone to drop support for these guys because of a couple of assholes.
- morgante 13y ago
  > They? Only one of the protest groups did anything, the other groups have just been protesting. I don't think it's reasonable for everyone to drop support for these guys because of a couple of assholes. But the other group also condoned the actions of the hoodlums and declined to disagree with their tactics.
  - tedivm 13y ago
    Source? I haven't seen anything about that.
    - morgante 13y ago
      One of the SF organizers declined to condemn violent protest and said it was "understandable that people are angry." http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-google-bus-in-west-oakland-smashing-window/ http://pando.com/2013/12/20/breaking-protesters-attack-googl...
  - obstacle1 13y ago

tsax 13y ago

Delicious! Social justice rhetoric comes back to bite the SV hipsters. I hope the non SJ warriors among the techies pay attention to this demonstration of how the left wing hate machine works. Savor your own denunciation as lackeys of Koch brothers (lol), evil capitalists, rich, white male priviledged running dogs, etc. Then maybe this will make them rethink their own judgments when such rhetoric is used against other industries or classes of people.

yetanotherphd 13y ago
I don't think there are many social justice warriors among "techies", at least those whose title is "Engineer". Some people might go along with it because they really agree or because they fear the consequences (viz Ben Noordhuis) but most of this politics comes from outside the industry, or from the leaders/management.
- tsax 13y ago
  Sure, I don't think there are many either. But this instance should remove the attraction and 'cool' factor of SJWs in SV.
- ps4fanboy 13y ago
  hacker news on the other hand...
hindsightbias 13y ago
Delirious! Who knew glibertarian Thielians were into social justice?

ultimatedelman 13y ago

Is it just me, or is this less of the tech companies' and workers' fault and more of the greedy landlords jacking up prices? Shouldn't the protesters' anger be directed at them instead?

viraptor 13y ago
I'm not sure if they should be angry at anyone at the moment. The market works - jobs mean more people coming in, high salaries mean high rents, people who can afford a good location will choose their place. Unless everyone in one group changes their mind, there will be an unbalanced situation (until the bubble bursts - rent goes so high that some people realise it's not reasonable to pay anymore and some big shift occurs - another campus of a big company gets built, new easier way of commuting is created, etc.) If they really want change, they'll have to figure out a way to create an incentive for the landlords to keep the price low, or for the workers to choose their house location differently. Being angry at anyone trying to maximise their comfort in a lawful way is rarely useful or effective.
- mempko 13y ago
  clearly the markets are not working for everyone.
  - viraptor 13y ago
    It's working the same way for everyone. It's not beneficial for everyone, but that's always the case.
nine_k 13y ago
OTOH it may be not landlords but city officials not allowing enough new construction, and their NIMBY-type electorate who protest against building adequate housing (yes, tall) and working public transportation?
yetanotherphd 13y ago
It's neither. Landlords have a right to charge as much as they can, and tech companies have a right to pay as much as they like (in fact, I encourage it). The real problems are (1) artificial restrictions on housing supply, and (2) people not being unable to deal with the harsh realities of the market. The free market means you can use money to buy things that other people also would have wanted. In fact, there would be little point in working if we couldn't. There is no reason to feel particularly sympathetic to the people who happened to be living in an area where rents increased. If the adjustment costs are very high, I also have nothing against increased aid to the people affected. But unless a person owns something, they don't have the right to it, and so people who have been renting a long time don't have the right to keep renting indefinitely at that price.

yeukhon 13y ago

The issue is complex, but let's look at demand vs supply. It is simply how the market works. The more people living in the city, the more likely the housing rent will increase. If there is a shortage, the rent will raise. If there are new apartments built, more polished, the rent will be higher. And there are companies pay for housing in MV which results in shortage. The problem is the city does not do a good job securing affordable housing. It isn't like Googlers or Twitter employees don't shop. They probably shop a lot, spend a lot of cash. These high-tech employees are also suffering with the high rent. Not everyone makes 180K a year. At least 1/3 of the salary goes to the government and 401K. The other reason housing becomes less affordable is foreigners who come to invest in real estate. Kick them out? Detroit is be happy to take care these tech geeks. But I bet 10 years later they will just be unhappy when the average residents can't afford an apartment. My problem is with low-pay jobs. Security at big tech companies are hired by contractors and they get low pay. Google should be able to pay more, shouldn't they? I remember there was a series of protest this summer in MV. Maybe Google should just build a dorm. It is sad people can't afford a place to sleep. I can't imagine being homeless right now in NY, it's fucking cold. Can we do better? How do we do better? Should we have more affordable housing and more generous affordable housing policy?

tsax 13y ago
How about drastically liberalizing zoning regs? How about taking a sledgehammer to restrictions on increased density? How about letting very tall skyscrapers be built with minimal delays and log rolling? Never forget the SUPPLY part in supply and demand. It's a complex problem of course, but none of this is even being considered.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  > very tall skyscrapers be built with minimal delays Coming from HK, it is indeed a way to make housing more affordable in 5-10 years, until big cash invest in them and then the entry price just goes straight up. The ways to prevent that to happen quickly are limit how many skyscrapers apartments can be built in the next decade and how many must be reserved as affordable housing, plus restricting foreign money. But I am sure there will be resistance. As I said, coming from HK, I was used to living in a city surrounded by walls and bricks. Then NY felt a lot different. Then this summer I went to MV for an internship and when I came back NY was strange to me. I say we can't build a lot of skyscrapers. I don't want to be surrounded by walls again.

melling 13y ago

Maybe Google could just look at a subway map and put an office in a less desirable area, like Oakland, where people can easily commute from SF by subway. They might get good tax breaks if they build/lease in a depressed area. Then they would need a lot fewer buses heading south. There would be an additional benefit that some Google employees would move close to the office in Oakland, thus bringing some wealth into that area, which would hopefully snowball. I don't know the SF area, but here's a subway map. https://www.bart.gov/stations https://www.bart.gov/stations The solution to the problem is building another office in a cheaper area that's close to mass transportation.

yaroslavvb 13y ago

There's a lot of irrational reactions to shuttles for some reason. I live on top of a "deluxe" cheese shop in Lower Polk, and the owner yesterday told me "Google shuttles, yeah, don't like them, they are causing all those techies to move in and drive up rents." Especially strange to hear from the owner since techies are probably the ones buying their $20-$120 bottles of vinegar

lwan 13y ago
This really drove the point home for me.

leot 13y ago

There are protest-able problems, and there are unprotest-able ones. The real problem with SF is its density and the people preventing it from getting denser (its density is a third of Paris', e.g.). Unfortunately, there are no protest-magnets for that problem. low density -- attractive -- affordable Pick two.

fuckdc 13y ago

what about the laws in SF that prevents developers from building new places to live? - go to the alley between 17th and 18th on mission and you'll see a picture of 'danny the developer' and gentrification references - this is their attitude although it's inherently wrong - more housing would lower prices but the city (it's rabid pro government constituents) in particular has made it insanely hard to build new projects -- got a neighbor w/3 stories and you want to build a 12 story project? good luck - not going to happen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanization the same protestors that are big-government (these aren't anarchists - "anarchists" in america are nothing short of hand to mouth socialists) have found out they can't have their cake and eat it too - fuck them and fuck their precious little government as well

iribe 13y ago

Note that these hipsters moved to Oakland/SF thanks to paying higher rent compared to the black people they kicked out.

sytelus 13y ago

Google + Apple employees combined count is less than 1% of Bay Area population. If you include all other rich tech firms, their total employees would probably account for less than 3% of population in Bay Area. So it seems incorrect to think that these people are driving others from their neighborhoods. My view on California real estate is a giant bubble that fuels itself by boom in tech industry but ignoring above numbers. Last time it tried to bust it got deflated only by 25% and it back up to those levels again and going up even more. If you wanted to short some market this is probably it.

skc 13y ago

I'm idly wondering how many of those protestors use Google or iPhones on a daily basis. If people really want to get some attention from these corporates, vote your displeasure with your wallet en masse.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

I'm posting the full text of a flier[1] so people can see just how nasty and threatening these protestors were (in addition to the actual violence): In case you’re wondering why this happened, we’ll be extremely clear. The people outside your Google bus serve you coffee, watch your kids, have sex with you for money, make you food, and are being driven out of their neighborhoods. While you guys live fat as hogs with your free 24/7 buffets, everyone else is scraping the bottom of their wallets, barely existing in this expensive world that you and your chums have helped create. You are not innocent victims. Without you, the housing prices would not be rising and we would not be facing eviction and foreclosure. You, your employers, and the housing speculators are to blame for this new crisis, so much more awful than the last one. You live your comfortable lives surrounded by poverty, homelessness, and death, seemingly oblivious to everything around you, lost in the big bucks and success. But look around, see the violence and degradation out there? This is the world that you have created, and you are clearly on the wrong side. Predictably, you might even believe that the technologies you create serve the betterment of all humans. But in reality, the benefactors of technological development are advertisers, the wealthy, the powerful, and the NSA analysts running dragnet surveillance over email, phone calls, and social media. If you want a Bay Area where the ultra-rich are pitted against hundreds of thousands of poor people, keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll have a nice revolution outside your door. But if you want out then you should quit your jobs, cash out, and go live a life that doesn’t completely fuck up someone else’s. GET THE FUCK OUT OF OAKLAND! [1] http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/20/google-bus-protesters-manifesto-get-o/ http://blogs.kqed.org/newsfix/2013/12/20/google-bus-proteste...

belgianguy 13y ago

Modern-day Luddites, the lot of them. Holding up or attacking buses with employees on their way to work is an easy target. Not to mention the protestors mental acrobatics to somehow blame the passengers of the bus for the rising housing prices. That's very shortsighted and flimsy justification fodder for some extreme political activists to start riots. At no point will violence and vandalism be a valid argument in this discussion. The fact that the different spokespersons seemed to go out of their way to not condemn this act, is telling of their expectations from their members. They're willing to place themselves above the law or at least are willing to try and look the other way if their supporters commit crimes, but at the same time they want sympathy and understanding for their dire situation? Good luck with that. It's an economic reality that if a property attracts higher value through development (eg richer people moving in to a part of town), that its surroundings will rise in value as well. Shops and services targeting this new demographic will start to show up, catering to their (often different) needs, which have new needs of their own etc, ... This will affect everything from the pavement, the cars in the street, the small shops, the traffic lights, to the big brand supermarkets. It's usually a welcome sign that an area is improving. Yet from the protester perspective, they see the housing prices starting to outgrow their incomes and see themselves being forced out by their landlords to make room for richer people who can afford the rent. They don't want the area to develop further, they want to keep it at a status quo to stop the housing price from rising further. Does that make is less of a tragedy? No, leaving one's house because one can't afford it anymore is a heartbreaking decision, but it's a decision that a houseowner should make sometimes. You can't keep something just because you think you deserve to have it. We aren't living in an utopia and we must adapt to changes in our environments, whether that is getting an extra job or moving elsewhere, or trying to get more housing developed to satisfy demand and stop the prices from skyrocketing. Why not protest the government? IMO the protesters had a cause, but this violent act has done them much more harm than good. Protesting is a right, but when your words aren't heard, you don't get to throw stones at buses and expect to get a free pass. People will judge a group by its most prominent and vocal members. Grammatical dissection of whether or not the spokespersons are in fact not condemning the act doesn't really help their case, it rather defuses their argument and makes them look juvenile and opportunistic in the process, exactly what those who want them out, want them to be. Great success.