Huh, we're building a campus in Berlin? Neat! I work in the Munich office, but Berlin seems nice too.
Berlin Google Campus occupied
11–20 of 187 posts
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
The occupiers are not anarchists. It's a diverse group of people that carry the protests, some even with ties to the established political parties. Some of them certainly have ties with anarchist movements, but placing them all in the same bucket is willfully ignoring the diversity. While I'm not certain that the methods they are using will help their cause or whether the problem is actually even solvable, I understa…
Their "problem" can be solved through voting. But nobody cares about it, so they should accept it and "fuck off", as they themselves say.
No, their problem cannot easily be solved by voting. Quite a few people care about the issue, but the issue is problematic as it's about balancing the common good versus private ownership. It's a nontrivial problem and it's one of the major political and civic issues that are currently on the table in Berlin (and other large german cities)
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#13occupation is over, the police arrested a few of the occupiers, there are reports that a person was injured in the process. Source: Our office is in the same building.
Per twitter, one of the protestors got injured gravely, and someone mentioned that a security guard got hit by his own pepper spray.
I'd hate the security guard to be injured, he's a nice person. (edit: this may sound wrong: I also hate that any other person got injured, but I don't know that person, so I sort of feel less personal involvement)
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#14> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city.
This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high paying jobs, did we not? If the people need more housing, the solution is, shockingly enough, to build more housing.
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#15> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…
There's no space in that area to build more housing. Pretty much all the space is being used to build offices for tech companies.
There's also the question of how people that do not work for one of those high paying tech companies are supposed to pay for their housing.
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their "problem" can be solved through voting. But nobody cares about it, so they should accept it and "fuck off", as they themselves say.
No, their problem cannot easily be solved by voting. Quite a few people care about the issue, but the issue is problematic as it's about balancing the common good versus private ownership. It's a nontrivial problem and it's one of the major political and civic issues that are currently on the table in Berlin (and other large german cities)
So should complicated and problematic issues for which consensus is difficult be solved by brute force?
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#17> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…
Sure enough adding more housing when there is speculation works as we’ve seen in Vancouver.
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#18> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…
Unfortunately, it's more profitable to speculate on the rising property prices than selling them to home builders...
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#19> New tech companies are driving the rents up in the area higher and higher. The endpoint of this process can be seen in San Francisco, which once must have been a halfway livable city. This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up. Yes, tech companies brought the demand because of good jobs, but last I checked, we wanted companies to offer high payin…
There's no space in that area to build more housing. Pretty much all the space is being used to build offices for tech companies. There's also the question of how people that do not work for one of those high paying tech companies are supposed to pay for their housing.
Always in Berlin the knee jerk response to what is going on "We have to keep the rents down!" in response to housing crisis....never "We have to raise pays!"
Pay situation for many jobs in Berlin and to some extent most of Germany is just abysmal, even in tech in many cases.
If people here put half the energy in fighting for fairer remuneration for their work rather than whining about the raising rent and property prices that come with being a desirable city and country...
Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
The occupiers are not anarchists. It's a diverse group of people that carry the protests, some even with ties to the established political parties. Some of them certainly have ties with anarchist movements, but placing them all in the same bucket is willfully ignoring the diversity. While I'm not certain that the methods they are using will help their cause or whether the problem is actually even solvable, I understa…
Their "problem" can be solved through voting. But nobody cares about it, so they should accept it and "fuck off", as they themselves say.
How will voting help when property rights are concerned? Are you advocating for eminent domain?
FYI, rising rents are a hotly debated topic in Berlin, and have been for years. Sadly, the previous government was asleep at the wheel in the last decade with regard to housing. The current government is a center-left three-party coalition. The department responsible for urban development is led by a politician from the Left party. Her previous undersecretary (Andrej Holm) had somewhat radical views with regards to urban housing but was forced out by what I consider a smear campaign soon after the government was formed.