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Berlin Google Campus occupied

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Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#51

Post by ant6n »

driverdan wrote: post #29
Xylakant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been in the area? There's no single family housing there at all for quite some distance (I'd say a few kilometers in each direction at least). It's mostly densely built-up with 3-5 story apartment buildings.

3-5 story isn't very tall. Tear them down and go taller.

Firstly, the higher you build, the more space you need between buildings, and the more space inside the buildings is used for infastructure. There are diminishing returns, and it runs out that areas with good coverage of 5 story buildings can have very high density, often more than areas with high rises.

Plus, Berlin likes to protect their heritage; often tearing down and rebuilding whole neighborhoods turned out to be a very bad idea.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#52

Post by titzer »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #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 payin…

> This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists

I don't think you quite grasp the effects of a massive influx of hundreds to thousands of new individuals making $150k-250k. It increases rent across the board, which impacts all the people in an area. Sure, it might create a few new jobs for baristas and shopkeepers, a few bartenders and waitresses. But ultimately it just leads to gentrification and prices people out of the market. It negatively affects all renters and only benefits speculators and owners in the area.

You wonder why people are angry? It's because of tonedeaf responses from big companies pushing their agendas.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#53

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #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 payin…

> This is more the fault of NIMBYs and supply&demand-denialists who work hard to prevent new housing from going up.

I wonder if the supply-and-demand model you're referring to is insufficient in this scenario. It sounds like political factors are at play here as well.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#54

Post by jklinger410 »

bonsai80 wrote: post #35

Insulting the people you want to join you seems line a poor way to get support: "...work-shy benefit scroungers, strike-hungry air traffic controllers, long-living pensioners, unruly refugees, and all other local pests from the neighborhood..."

A big whoosh for you, my friend. Or worse, an intentional bad-faith reading.

Those are clearly terms of endearment. Meant to evoke anger that OTHERS call them that. Owning the words to take them back, as they say.

Also, this is German. Go do a little cultural research next time before the lazy comment.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#55

Post by Killes »

ebikelaw wrote: post #26
Killes wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

Part of the German economic success story has been keeping housing cheap, so they can keep pay down, so they can export. As soon as housing prices rise, pay rises, and the story falls apart.

Not so sure about that. Germany doesn't compete on firesale prices for its export products. Germany is amongst the top 5 richest countries whatever that means.

I simply see many good and skilled workers paid way too little. How am I earning as much as a med tech with 12 years experience after being in IT proper for 2 years ? The answer lays, admitted within my limited view, in the skilled labor force simply accepting middling pays. Which is maybe harder to pull off in the IT branch it attracting more workers not ready to simply accept lower pays for their work.

In the end I have colleagues with way more experience than me earning less than me simply because they asked for less...Somehow its more a kind of established cultural thing and companies / management taking good advantage of it. Lets not pretend C levels are badly paid in Germany XD.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#56

Post by cbnotfromthere »

Xylakant wrote: post #8
fnatreq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No true Scotsman, true? If they act like anarchists and smell like anarchists, they are anarchists. They also proudly use the squatting symbol: https://twitter.com/besetzenberlin

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…

"many people that had been living there for decades and sometimes were quite involved in the improvement of the area are now forced to move"

Please slow down with fake news. No eminent domain ever happened in that area since 50 years ago, hence literally NOBODY was forced to move out.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#58

Post by baud147258 »

bonsai80 wrote: post #35

Insulting the people you want to join you seems line a poor way to get support: "...work-shy benefit scroungers, strike-hungry air traffic controllers, long-living pensioners, unruly refugees, and all other local pests from the neighborhood..."

> strike-hungry air traffic controllers

Regarding strike-prone air traffic controllers, I've heard that the worst (or best, depending how you're looking at it) in term of number of strike days are the French air controller.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#59

Post by prolikewh0a »

kerng wrote: post #27

>>The Google Campus is intended to be a magnet for annoying young entrepreneurs whose IT-sweatshops (“start-ups”) promise to deliver new ideas to Google’s company business. Those are some pretty emotional words, but show how much in a bubble we tech people might live. Curious if anyone knows more about the movement behind this, I doubt it's a majority opinion of the public?

It's exactly how I feel in Seattle, and I work in tech.

Re: Berlin Google Campus occupied

#60

Post by wgerard »

beat wrote: post #45
wgerard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scenery is simultaneously beautiful and heartbreaking: Idi Amin's ghost is still very much around. I knew very little about Amin until visiting and every third conversation ended up involving him somehow. You can still go see the caves where he kept prisoners, some of whom wrote messages in blood on the walls that are still visible. It really is a lovely country that's been through horrible situation after horrib…

I once had a co-worker (in IT) from Uganda. I was having lunch with her and another co-worker, sort of a generic American conservative. He said something ignorant about working harder or something with regards to Africa, she just went off on him. She asked him if he'd ever had to step over the bodies of his neighbors as a child. Of course, she went on to get a western education and move to the US, but she never forgo…

Yeah, it was quite a reality check to hear our host talk very nonchalantly about how Amin took his father away and had him killed - it was just so common that men of his age had their fathers murdered by Amin, that it didn't even seem to register to him as unusual (of course, that's just my interpretation).

Definitely put my own problems in perspective.

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