I think most people have an intuitive understanding of free market principals. If a person can pay more for an apartment, they not only have the legal right, b

I think most people have an intuitive understanding of free market principals. If a person can pay more for an apartment, they not only have the legal right, but the moral right, to outbid someone else. In order to deal with inequality, we have progressive income tax and welfare. These mechanisms are the fairest, because they don't favor people based on their individual preferences. Now a poor person who lived their whole life in SF doesn't really have an inherent preference for living in SF. And they probably are made worse off by the tech industry. But it is still the government, if anyone, who should compensate such people for their changed circumstance, and it's also practically impossible to figure out if that person is really worse off than, say, a person with the same income who lived in Detroit their whole life. So there is no valid principal by which people should hate people in tech, and I think most people actually understand this. However, people dislike nerds, and they like to rationalize their beliefs. I remember people called me arrogant in school, not because I was, but because that way they could enjoy the moral indignation. I think something similar is happening here.