Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zucktown, USA

thebaffler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 152 posts

Re: Zucktown, USA

#101

Post by greedo »

Spooky23 wrote: post #91
TrickyRick wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm a healthy individual then the risk that I need my healthcare insurance are low (But it has a big impact on my economy if I do need it). However the risk that I need some form of housing is 100% and the impact of not having it is huge which to me makes it a bigger risk. However YMMV depending on your situation.

Circumstances change quickly. I'm married, things happened, and we ended up having a baby. Due to various circumstances beyond our control. That cost $100k. As a healthy guy in my 20's, I suffered an injury through no fault of my own that led to me needing a serious back surgery. Net cost -> $250k. Rolling the dice on something that fundamentally life altering, and expecting society to pick up the tab for the consequ…

So you had a baby due to circumstances beyond your control? And you had an injury, again through no fault of your own? And the sum of those are over $350K.

Who is responsible for your health? I'd argue that the baby is entirely on you, and $100K for a delivery is insane unless you had incredible complications.

And if the back injury wasn't your fault, you could seek redress from whom is responsible. If it's work related, then work should pay. If it's an accident, then whomever is negligent should pay.

Unfortunately, no one wants to take responsibility, and expects "society" to make an individual whole after a loss.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#102

Post by notyourday »

notacoward wrote: post #73
chis wrote: post #13

The linked anti-union article is more interesting than the original article IMO. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/silicon-valleys... I would tend to agree with the tech-ie opinion that unions are becoming obselete in the US. Unions existed to protect workers who were unskilled and interchangeable; the endgame of tech is to automate all those jobs. But obviously I’m not a labor scholar and this is just an…

> Unions existed to protect workers who were unskilled and interchangeable I think that's pretty offensive to a lot of tradespeople. If you think plumbers, carpenters, or electricians are unskilled, try doing what they do. Unions protected both skilled and unskilled workers. Whether they continue to do so, or whether they can serve in that role for information workers, is quite an interesting question, but skilled vs…

They are definitely interchangeable. What currently is happening is that the bottom 95th percentile of people in software engineering and product are discovering that they are also completely utterly interchangeable.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#103

Post by Bartweiss »

gniv wrote: post #89
moonka wrote: post #3

The wording makes this really hard to read.

I cringed at this: "Its CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, has vowed to acquire four million more over the next five years, a muscular move meant to complement his midlife-crisis physique."

Is it just me or is Bezos' fitness a bizarrely common topic for tech-skeptic pieces? I swear I see it written and meme-d about more than basically any other single human-interest factoid about executives.

If that's true, it raises the question of why. The look isn't all that exceptional, he's just somebody who works out a fair bit, and didn't when he was younger. He's not exactly Erik Prince. So the focus on it, and the frequently malicious tone, sort of parse as "he doesn't look like nerds do anymore, that's suspicious".

This could all be apophenia, obviously. It just raises an eyebrow since I've seen athletic programmers greeted with "but you don't look like a programmer!"

Re: Zucktown, USA

#104

Post by notyourday »

humanrebar wrote: post #42
chis wrote: post #13

The linked anti-union article is more interesting than the original article IMO. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/07/silicon-valleys... I would tend to agree with the tech-ie opinion that unions are becoming obselete in the US. Unions existed to protect workers who were unskilled and interchangeable; the endgame of tech is to automate all those jobs. But obviously I’m not a labor scholar and this is just an…

> ...unions are becoming obselete in the US... They don't make sense for knowledge workers. Knowledge workers are rarely interchangeable, so standardizing contracts, job titles, pay schedules, working conditions, etc., makes little sense. There is also the chance for protectionism (closed shops) that runs counter to the freelance culture in tech. Some sort of worker-administered group could make a lot of sense. But m…

> They don't make sense for knowledge workers. Knowledge workers are rarely interchangeable, so standardizing contracts, job titles, pay schedules, working conditions, etc., makes little sense. There is also the chance for protectionism (closed shops) that runs counter to the freelance culture in tech.

If that was the case, no one would have been whining about H1B import companies killing US knowledge jobs.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#105

Post by deadmetheny »

humanrebar wrote: post #38
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #30

It's exactly these biggest companies that should take moral responsibility and relocate / redistribute their work to various cities on the one hand, and if they want to go through with the idea of company towns, campuses etc, they need to move way out of the SF area - there's huge wads of unused space in the US, they could found their own city if need be. Probably not something very attractive to their employees, but…

> Probably not something very attractive to their employees... I keep hearing this meme and I'm skeptical. Far more people live outside the Bay Area than inside it. Are they all poor saps who are waiting to move to Silicon Valley but haven't yet figured out how?

>Are they all poor saps who are waiting to move to Silicon Valley but haven't yet figured out how?

I hope this comment was not made in earnest, because this attitude is exactly why SV is a dumpster fire that I have no desire of taking part in. I'll continue living my poor ramshackle existence here in flyover country, thank you very much.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#106

Post by Spivak »

jschwartzi wrote: post #97
jsjohnst wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you get fired, you basically lose your healthcare Not in the US, at least not for 18 months anyway. It’s called COBRA and is available to anyone with work provided insurance.

Anyone with work provided insurance who can also afford the group rate the company pays.

Which is basically saying that when you lose your job they stop paying you.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#107

Post by emodendroket »

Bartweiss wrote: post #93
cupscale wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, does Harold ever agree with either party? Tammy and Roy both want low housing costs, and Harold doesn't. Sure, you can get to an armistice with Harold and Tammy: Housing costs are high but your salary is such that even spending 66% of your pay on housing leaves you with an ample amount of money. But I wouldn't call that agreement anything other than begrudging.

> Actually, does Harold ever agree with either party? Tammy and Roy both want low housing costs, and Harold doesn't. This seems like the essential problem. Harold isn't actually a buyer in the housing market; he locked in a fixed-rate mortgage 20 years ago. If he's planning on retiring somewhere outside the city, or to a managed community, he might never be on the buyer's side of the market again. But he's definitely…

There is a limit to the extent which the higher property taxes are tolerable and most people aren't really investors. However, as I understand it (I am on the East Coast), in California's case your property tax is actually locked in at the time of purchase regardless of appreciation.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#108

Post by evanlivingston »

jsjohnst wrote: post #94
humanrebar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you get fired you also get evicted. If you get fired, you basically lose your healthcare, which in many cases is much worse. Though quite a number of Americans seem fine with that arrangement for some reason.

> If you get fired, you basically lose your healthcare Not in the US, at least not for 18 months anyway. It’s called COBRA and is available to anyone with work provided insurance.

And is insanely expensive

Re: Zucktown, USA

#109

Post by lawrenceyan »

greedo wrote: post #101
Spooky23 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Circumstances change quickly. I'm married, things happened, and we ended up having a baby. Due to various circumstances beyond our control. That cost $100k. As a healthy guy in my 20's, I suffered an injury through no fault of my own that led to me needing a serious back surgery. Net cost -> $250k. Rolling the dice on something that fundamentally life altering, and expecting society to pick up the tab for the consequ…

So you had a baby due to circumstances beyond your control? And you had an injury, again through no fault of your own? And the sum of those are over $350K. Who is responsible for your health? I'd argue that the baby is entirely on you, and $100K for a delivery is insane unless you had incredible complications. And if the back injury wasn't your fault, you could seek redress from whom is responsible. If it's work rela…

How do you feel about people with debilitating genetic diseases/disorders? Through no fault of their own other than being born into this world, and no health care provider wants to anything to do with them. They are guaranteed money losers, and if insurance companies didn’t have to deal with pesky regulations, they would happily find and drop these patients.

I make no judgements on your moral character, but to follow your philosophy requires a fundamental acceptance that certain human life has less intrinsic value than other human life.

Re: Zucktown, USA

#110

Post by danans »

jonbarker wrote: post #86
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making money is not evil. Wall street makes money, pharma makes money, lawyers make money, insurance makes money, automobiles, consumer goods, real estate - all huge industries. Now that tech is being used on a massive scale of course the tech companies are making money. So what? It doesn't make sense to equate rich with evil - either for companies or for people. SF (and many cities in the US and across the world) ha…

Making money is not evil, but social class increases likelihood of utilitarianism. Being a tech elite in the valley arguably makes one more likely to be more of a utilitarian. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/psyched/201304/the-rich... . Large scale usage does not increase likelihood of profit, either. There aren't any hard disk drive billionaires, for example. Also they aren't in the same town; those who are try…

> those who are trying to make it or work in the 'supporting cast' take BART from oakland or richmond

At this point BART or other mass transit access to your workplace is itself a sort of privilege, perhaps not for the tech elite who wouldn't take mass transit anyway, but for rank and file skilled employees.

For many of them, mass transit is preferable to hours spent in car traffic. I'm one of those who feels privileged to be able to take BART to work.

It's service workers who have often been pushed out beyond the Bay Area into mega commutes.

Post reply on HN