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> Because of things like this, I now think both protests were just whiny children crying but it's not faaaaaaair!! without bothering to think anything through.

> Because of things like this, I now think both protests were just whiny children crying but it's not faaaaaaair!! without bothering to think anything through. Says the guy who didn't bother to do 10 minutes of research either in this thread or anything linked to in it. Heh. Look, I don't think the violence is okay, and I do think to a degree, the protests against the buses and gentrification are poorly aimed. But these people are not protesting without cause. A recent protest focused quite heavily on the number of evictions going around San Francisco, in an effort to raise the rent on the property. The gentrification here is stark- families who have lived here decades have seen their per-month payouts rise by hundreds, if not thousands of dollars over just the last decade. All of this in a city that by and large doesn't receive tax money from companies making the greatest profit(by working outside of the city's bounds and busing their people in), and can't afford to raise taxes very easily without hitting middle-income families. Don't turn into just the caricature of someone too aloof to even attempt to understand.

Meekro 13y ago
You're right, they do have a claimed reason for protesting that I didn't mention (rising rents), but I think it's a very poorly thought out one, based on emotion rather than rational thought. If I was renting out a spare bedroom in my house to a college student for $500 a month, and then another guy shows up and says "I'll pay you $5,000 a month for that bedroom," what do you think my reaction would be? What do you think most people would do in that situation? I claim that nearly every one of the protesters, if they were in the position of the spare-bedroom landlord, would happily kick the first guy out and move in the $5,000 a month guy. I can hardly imagine a way to satisfy the protesters' demands for cheaper rent without taking away that landlord's fundamental right to charge what he wants for use of his own property. And by the way, tons of poor-ish and middle-class San Francisco home owners have made life-changing amounts of money from having their cheap homes increase in value when the tech industry moved in next door. But you never hear about them because they don't fit the narrative of the haves oppressing the have-nots.
- devinj 13y ago
  > I can hardly imagine a way to satisfy the protesters' demands for cheaper rent without taking away that landlord's fundamental right to charge what he wants for use of his own property. There's two ways to do it, and that's neither of them: increase supply (build new structures; apparently SF has over-restrictive policies on building that could be loosened?) or decrease demand (e.g. make corporate-run buses illegal).
  - ahomescu1 13y ago
    > decrease demand (e.g. make corporate-run buses illegal). AFAIK, those buses aren't operated by the companies themselves, but by external transportation companies as contractors. What would you make illegal, "don't take Google as a customer"?

Meekro 13y ago

You're right, they do have a claimed reason for protesting that I didn't mention (rising rents), but I think it's a very poorly thought out one, based on emotion rather than rational thought. If I was renting out a spare bedroom in my house to a college student for $500 a month, and then another guy shows up and says "I'll pay you $5,000 a month for that bedroom," what do you think my reaction would be? What do you think most people would do in that situation? I claim that nearly every one of the protesters, if they were in the position of the spare-bedroom landlord, would happily kick the first guy out and move in the $5,000 a month guy. I can hardly imagine a way to satisfy the protesters' demands for cheaper rent without taking away that landlord's fundamental right to charge what he wants for use of his own property. And by the way, tons of poor-ish and middle-class San Francisco home owners have made life-changing amounts of money from having their cheap homes increase in value when the tech industry moved in next door. But you never hear about them because they don't fit the narrative of the haves oppressing the have-nots.

devinj 13y ago
> I can hardly imagine a way to satisfy the protesters' demands for cheaper rent without taking away that landlord's fundamental right to charge what he wants for use of his own property. There's two ways to do it, and that's neither of them: increase supply (build new structures; apparently SF has over-restrictive policies on building that could be loosened?) or decrease demand (e.g. make corporate-run buses illegal).
- ahomescu1 13y ago
  > decrease demand (e.g. make corporate-run buses illegal). AFAIK, those buses aren't operated by the companies themselves, but by external transportation companies as contractors. What would you make illegal, "don't take Google as a customer"?