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

Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area's rich liberals

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 99 posts

Re: Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area's rich liberals

#61

Post by JumpCrisscross »

almost_usual wrote: post #54
maxxxxx wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a dangerous trend that people with money less and less interact with people with less money. Private schools, super expensive neighborhoods, super expensive gyms, bars and restaurants. These people have the power to influence political decisions but they have no idea how most people live.

This is why YIMBY movements will continue to fall flat on their face.

> This is why YIMBY movements will continue to fall flat on their face

They fall flat on their face because those who are best placed to counter-act the Bay Area's NIMBYism find it fashionable to market their political laziness as cynicism.

Re: Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area's rich liberals

#64

Post by almost_usual »

Karishma1234 wrote: post #56

People complaining about how other people should be spending their money. Huh.

Less about how someone spends their money and more about their ideals. These people are fake and only value wealth. Their values are weak and mold to where the money is. The same people would be racists or bigots a 100-150+ years ago because they would be wealthier with those values. It's socially damaging to be those things today and actually impedes wealth so of course they believe they are "socially liberal".

Including blue collar workers in their community or network of friends does not grow their wealth. They provide no benefit to these people's social worth in their eyes so they are exiled from the community.

Re: Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area's rich liberals

#65

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gizzlon wrote: post #51
vowelless wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No True Scotsman fallacy? I personally give the respect to people to refer them as they would like to be identified. If a Muslim jihadi says he is a jihadi, I respect his self identification and call him that. Similarly, I respect these people's self identification as liberal or progressive.

> I personally give the respect to people to refer them as they would like to be identified Huh? Why? Seriously, I don't understand that kind of thinking. I don't think individuals necessarily deserve that kind of power others. Sometimes we should adjust to save other peoples feelings. But having that as the default seems crazy. What if they are full of shit? Or misuse that power? Or I simply disagree with them.. sho…

These labels are all fuzzy, so self identification is the only reliable way of applying labels in any sense. For example, if the Chinese communist party says they are communist, why would you want to argue with them?

Re: Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area's rich liberals

#67

Post by justaman »

lawlessone wrote: post #9
justherefortart wrote: post #7

While I'm not a religious person, this is a man whose convictions I can respect. Keep fighting the good fight Gregory, this evil atheist is on your side :-)

He seems like the kind of religious person i wish i seen more of in the world.

He is more common than you think.

Re: Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area's rich liberals

#68

Post by kikoreis »

maxxxxx wrote: post #47
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I commute between New York and the Bay Area, and am consistently struck by how plutocratic of a city San Francisco has become. Most social functions are held in private venues and heavily segregated by race and class. Leaving a charity event, a millionaire will casually step over a homeless person en route to their apartment. They will talk about poverty in Africa and then vote in NIMBYist politicians. A total guttin…

It's a dangerous trend that people with money less and less interact with people with less money. Private schools, super expensive neighborhoods, super expensive gyms, bars and restaurants. These people have the power to influence political decisions but they have no idea how most people live.

You have articulated brilliantly something which as a Brazilian disturbs me to no end. I despair seeing cities change their structure to accommodate the desire for segregation.

Re: Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area's rich liberals

#69

Post by rsync »

williamscales wrote: post #48
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I commute between New York and the Bay Area, and am consistently struck by how plutocratic of a city San Francisco has become. Most social functions are held in private venues and heavily segregated by race and class. Leaving a charity event, a millionaire will casually step over a homeless person en route to their apartment. They will talk about poverty in Africa and then vote in NIMBYist politicians. A total guttin…

I couldn't agree with you more. I moved to the Bay Area a few years ago from Vancouver which certainly has its share of extremely wealthy residents and expensive housing problems. I was blown away by the level of social inequality in SF exactly as you describe. In Vancouver, you at least see the rich people partying near you. Perhaps at the next restaurant over on the beach which is much nicer than the one you're at,…

"I couldn't agree with you more. I moved to the Bay Area a few years ago from Vancouver which certainly has its share of extremely wealthy residents and expensive housing problems. I was blown away by the level of social inequality in SF exactly as you describe. In Vancouver, you at least see the rich people partying near you. Perhaps at the next restaurant over on the beach which is much nicer than the one you're at, but the rich don't segregate themselves from the population at large in the same way."

I think there is an additional, confounding element in the transient nature of the population in San Francisco.

Many, many people (rich, successful, young, etc.) are just here for a few years and have no intention of making long term investments in the community or becoming true stakeholders (by, for instance, raising their family here).

This makes it difficult to engage in any way, much less in messy, difficult social problems that are somewhat unique to San Francisco.

Re: Silicon Valley pastor decries hypocrisy of area's rich liberals

#70

Post by TangoTrotFox »

watwut wrote: post #43

"Jesus was a homeless Jew who said it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle" Ok, I agree, but that seem to be unusual take for American nominations. At least my impression was that they did not tend to preach help to poor, rather the opposite. Did I had wrong impression or is this take really the minority one?

Assuming you mean religious denominations. If so, then yeah you have the wrong impression. Churches tend to be extremely involved in helping the poor. They're regularly involved in clothing drives, food banks, christmas gift drives, feeding the homeless, etc.

You might be conflating it with American politicians who wear religion on their sleeve. Religious Americans make up a huge and disproportionate chunk of voters. This includes the traditional religious conservatives as well as a diverse group of WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) types, but also black and Hispanic voters who are also largely religious. This is the reason for absurd pandering like Hillary Clinton stating that her favorite book was the bible.

Religion, in theory, is a great thing since it encourages people to follow an [ideally] positive value system and gives people a way to meet and organize things. In practice the value systems are often pretty screwy, and the whole divine imperative turns plenty of people into self righteous assholes. In many ways modern notions of social justice are turning into a new religion and suffering the exact same problems. This is why we can't have anything nice!

Post reply on HN