One-third of SF Bay Area residents hope to leave soon, poll finds

yeah its a really fun time. Along with all of the shops, microbreweries and bars that opened up within the last four years, there is a makerspace called the center of gravity which opened fairly recently [1]. It's got 3D printers and all that jazz. The city has done a nice job reinventing itself.

[1]: http://www.tvcog.net

> The density is caused by people wanting to move to SF. High rises are a way to deal with the reality, not providing housing isn't going to solve the problem in any way people are going to be happy with.

Quite likely, just as many (if not more, in both absolute and proportional terms) people in SF will be unhappy with adoption of high-rises as the solution; the lack of availability under the current regime constrains some of the problems because it limits the ability of people to move in regardless of their desire to do so; relieving that constraint -- especially if the problems besides finding places to store the bodies aren't addressed -- just makes all the other problems of density worse.

> Alternatively, repealing Prop 13, so that property taxes rise with the value. Or increasing property taxes as you get more homes. Both of these would decrease housing prices significantly.

More significantly, they would mean that the increased demand for property driving prices would also result in increased public resources to deal with the issues produced.

Let me explain what you don't understand and can't follow. The massive influx of people into Austin has degraded what Austin was because it has exceeded any capacity to fully absorb them without a degradation. When you arrive at something that others built and paid for and yet still have full access to as if you had paid for it, that's when you are mooching and freeloading specifically. That's the whole definition of freeloading, not paying for something that you are using or taking advantage of.

Now that you are provided with the information to understand what you could previously not, let me further help by illustrating the only way in which it could not be freeloading and mooching. If new comers had to pay exponentially higher tax rates, essentially as a kind of compensation and even a rate of return, which in turn then lowered the taxes of locals that would be the only way to not be freeloading and mooching, especially in a system like Austin that is in no way capable of sustaining the influx of people without significant impact and degradation of the very thing that attracted the freeloading and mooching types.

You seem to be under the impression that somehow paying the cost of operation is sufficient to compensate for prior investments, let alone rates of return. It's quite ironic that such an erroneous mindset would exist in this forum. Then again, it is a tech startup forum, so it really isn't all that surprising.

Think of it this way. If you take n amount of money and invest it in starting a company by buying facilities, equipment, various other capital goods, and hire people; how long to you think you would last by selling your product or goods at the cost of variable inputs alone? ... not even to mention the return on capital or investment. And that still doesn't even get close to capturing the human factor of community and society and culture that is lost through such a destructive locust like swarming of places.

I get that most people in here can't think past their own selfish wants and desires, but what do you think makes a place, any place, so attractive so that you want to go there, it's not your contribution that you made to that place. You are a textbook freeloader at that point, especially in smaller places like Austin used to be where all the things that attracted people to Austin like community and culture existed before they smothered it.

We are going to see ever more of these kinds of things happen as the internet causes human swarming behaviors. Maybe one day people will start realizing it and its absolutely detrimental impact on society and humanity. It is in effect a great leveling and averaging of humanity, a regression to mediocre mean that destroys uniqueness, actual diversity, and civilization, and incentive for community and creation. What are we when there is nothing unique anymore because the second something becomes great and a community comes together, an influx of freeloaders that want to mooch off of it start pulling it down? We are facing a future of the commoditization of humanity, accelerated by the internet and the exponential pace at which anything good or unique is discovered and immediately smothered and trampled.

I don't disagree that there exist a good number of people making $WAY_MORE, but it certainly seems like that number of people is greatly overstated - as in, for every such senior engineer I personally know, I know probably 10-20x making (much) less than that. In fact, I know senior engineers who aren't pulling that much; granted they aren't at Google/FB/Apple/Amazon.

Even the senior folks making bank aren't necessarily all willing to plunk down $2m for a crappy house in Cupertino. Simple economics will disperse at least some of this talent pool.