First of all, I hate the word "techie". It's almost like a racial slur. The word makes me sick. I don't want to be lumped in the same group with this asshole: h

First of all, I hate the word "techie". It's almost like a racial slur. The word makes me sick. I don't want to be lumped in the same group with this asshole: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/01/article-0-1B1DC13A00000578-729_634x629.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/01/article-0-1B1DC13A... ... or this guy: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--WS3fM3LB--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/cwxf5y853smw6sqqyt28.jpg http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--WS3fM3LB... I also find it obvious that the rage is mis-directed. The villains are (a) the NIMBYs, who are mostly owners rather than renters, who keep the supply of housing artificially low, and many of whom have nothing to do with tech, and (b) the Valley elite out in Atherton, who've created the most "placist" paper-belt economy in existence right now. The reason I pin this on the Athertons is that, because the VC strategy of the past 15 years has been to take well-known and illegal financial strategies for public markets (e.g. pump-and-dump, collusive market manipulation, insider trading) and apply them to unregulated private equities (where they may be unethical, but aren't illegal) they've had to keep their industry concentrated in one geographic area, because the VCs can't put anything they do in writing. The result of this is an unnatural concentration of new jobs in one tiny geographic area, starving the rest of the country. It's bad for everyone but them. The Bay Area gets congested, while the rest of the country falls to pieces. However, the likelihood that the bus vandals will direct their anger at Atherton or the NIMBYs, where it belongs, is really low. Instead, they attack middle-class tech-company employees who've done absolutely nothing wrong, and who are just as victimized by the exorbitant rents (by 40, they'll be facing age discrimination and have zero net worth thanks to SF rent) as anyone else. It makes me think that most of these anti-tech protesters are just trying to start shit with no strategy or real cause.