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Build institutions, not apps

marklutter.com

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Re: Build institutions, not apps

#61

Post by cousin_it »

> Apple has committed $2.5 billion to housing in the Bay Area. Google committed $1 billion. Mark Zuckerberg committed another $500 million. Microsoft committed $500 million to housing in the Seattle region... In other words, the tech giants find it easier to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars than to reform city and local land use policies. A politically effective movement would hire a bunch of lobbyists and change zoning and land use for a fraction of the cost.

I think this is a good question, why do tech companies spend so little money on YIMBY lobbying? (At most a few million, AFAIK.)

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#62

Post by DominikD »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55
DominikD wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scooters dropped at random places are a massive problem for blind people and people with mobility disabilities.

The bike hire stations you see in some big cities (e.g. London) are a better solution; you get charged for it until you put it back in the rack. Dumping the bike somewhere just means your credit card will keep charging. It should be the same for the scooters. Mind you, this requires the city to work together with the scooter company, which implies that the city will be pulling one company forwards which may be consid…

Scooters need to be charged every night so juicers collect randomly abandoned scooters before the complete battery failure that would prevent company running the service to track its fleet. So charging for time up to infinity may solve the cost problem on the operator side, doesn't solve the societal problem of scooters left in random places. Where I live scooter users are charged extra if they don't deliver the scooter to a predefined location but that's not enough of a deterrent.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#63

Post by ForHackernews »

zdkl wrote: post #60
ForHackernews wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's probably not even possible to expand housing capacity to a significant degree in most locations it'd matters, This sounds like an excuse. The city of Tokyo alone builds more housing every year than the entire state of California: https://www.thenational.ae/business/property/want-affordable... Tokyo is an in-demand city in an earthquake prone area, and they've managed to create enough housing to stay ahead of d…

This is only tangentially relevant. Japan has a culture where it's accepted that residential property is relatively medium term, and should be upgraded or rebuilt semi-regularily. Contrast that to real estate as an investment/heritance vehicule in the west. Also, personnaly I wouldn't be ready to live in a Tokyo flat and I suspect most of the target population isn't either. That we may not have a choice down the line…

I think I'd live in a Tokyo flat if it cost $1200/month for a one-bedroom spot in the centre! [0] (with outstanding public transit, too)

For that price, you can get a bunk-bed in San Francisco [1]

[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Tokyo

[1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/7/18/20699340/podshare-san-franci...

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#64

Post by eropple »

josephg wrote: post #59
kristopolous wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, now that's a matter of terminology. A holistic focus on improving the lives of everyone in the community, not by raising prices but by improving the material living conditions and reducing the stress and anxiety of economic reproduction and reducing or eliminating the precariat, that's generally not gentrification. The way Australians use "livable city" really doesn't exist in American discourse. A market and pr…

> Yes, now that's a matter of terminology. > A market and property based approach that locks people out, allocates resources according to ability to pay or some other social status, and sees signs of inability to pay, poverty, and hardship including death, as merely personal moral failings, and the market consequences as some amoral natural system, that's gentrification. Yeah this is a disagreement about terminology.…

What he describes is the very standard outcome of urban gentrification in American cities. It may be localized to the United States but he is not doing anything nefarious with his description.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#65

Post by TeMPOraL »

softwarejosh wrote: post #44
pbourke wrote: post #8

> The result is San Francisco, the most innovative city in a generation, proposing a Office of Emerging Technology to require any technology that uses public space, scooters for example, to get prior permission from the city That sounds totally reasonable, lest your city become clogged with broken-ass scooters after the n-th scooter startup goes on their "incredible journey" to the stars. Perhaps if you're going to l…

no offense but from someone coming from a place where oublic transportation was lobbied into non existance, that board sounds exactly like the kind of thing that becomes an umbrella and fucks up every kind of innovation. Are the scooters even a problem?

> Are the scooters even a problem?

Yes.

They're littering the streets. Beyond being just annoying, it creates a life-threatening hazard for the blind people. On top of that, they're used - as intended to be used - on the sidewalks, instead of the streets where they belong. This already killed many people around the world.

One idiot on a Bird copycat almost killed my then-9-months-pregnant wife, as he carelessly rode the sidewalk at high speed and didn't see passengers exiting the bus.

Cities have various policies towards innovation; some entangle everyone in red tape, others wave new ideas through. But the common thread of the famous SV startups in city space, and their copycats around the world, is building a business that dumps a lot of externalities on society, treating city councils as enemies, and then being surprised when said councils don't cooperate. If they want more friendly regulators, then perhaps they should be respectful towards said regulators (and people they represent).

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#66

Post by TeMPOraL »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55
DominikD wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scooters dropped at random places are a massive problem for blind people and people with mobility disabilities.

The bike hire stations you see in some big cities (e.g. London) are a better solution; you get charged for it until you put it back in the rack. Dumping the bike somewhere just means your credit card will keep charging. It should be the same for the scooters. Mind you, this requires the city to work together with the scooter company, which implies that the city will be pulling one company forwards which may be consid…

> Mind you, this requires the city to work together with the scooter company

And some cities would be happy to. Problem is, scooter companies don't want to work together with cities! They just show up and open shop, Uber style...

> The city could also pick up any scooters that are in the way / abandoned and fine the owner company for each of them

...and then cry foul when that happens, because why, this is destroying innovation and assaulting honest businessmen.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

akudha wrote: post #56
greendave wrote: post #32

> There is an emerging political consciousness in Silicon Valley. Technologists are advancing a new way of understanding the challenges facing America and how to solve them that do not split neatly along the traditional left right axis. However, to implement change along those new lines, there must be a will. Really? Technologists are offering real solutions to the challenges of poverty and inequality in America? Loo…

There is a town in Mexico where the locals chased away the loggers, gangsters and much of politicians. They do a lot of things themselves which normally you'd expect a government to do. That is an extreme example (maybe necessary in gang infested areas of Mexico), but I wonder if it is time for communities to help themselves as much as they can, before looking to governments, institutions and billionaires. It sucks t…

You'd have to have communities, though. From what I can tell, cities in the West don't have the kind of communities you're looking for. The kind consisting of people living and working in the same area, so that they know each other and have some level of personal relationship to each other, who own enough of the area they live in that they can meaningfully self-govern. In a modern Western town, people living in the same area work all across the town, never see each other, and most of them only rents the places they live in.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#68

Post by TeMPOraL »

champagneben wrote: post #54
throwaway882321 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who suffers from depression due to previous drug abuse I can't even begin to imagine what you mean by just get on with being happy, I have a loving wife, good job and I guess what most people would call a happy life but I'm never more than two steps away from just opting out, I have been through therapy and various anti-depressants but they leave me feeling the emptiness even more profoundly. My brain chem…

Stay strong. >My brain chemistry is irreversibly fucked for lack of a better word Are you sure it's completely irreversible?

It may or may not be. Nobody knows the whole science, it accrues too fast for people to keep track of it. Maybe some PhD somewhere out there wrote a paper about a chemical or therapy that would solve GP's problems. Or maybe it will exist in 10 years. Or maybe never.

I assume GP did a lot of searching and experimentation, and haven't found a solution. From my own experience I can tell that the process of searching itself is very draining, especially if your trial-and-error has to involve help from a specialist at each step. So at some point one just figures out a coping strategy and cuts their losses.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#69

Post by TeMPOraL »

drewcoo wrote: post #48
daguar wrote: post #11

I think the motivation behind this is right. In my experience many in Silicon Valley don't understand the mechanics of long-term institutional change. In part, that's simply because — much like entrepreneurship — expertise comes from practical experience. Tacit, not-easily-transferrable knowledge dominates. I find Ezra Klein's recent line here useful: "[W]hatever the recommendations, the same thing is needed: A susta…

Or it could be that in tech entrepreneurship, goals are quarterly instead of long-term, they're measured in dollars instead of happiness and welfare, and completely failing, folding, and starting anew is admired and encouraged. This approach seems incompatible with the public good.

In tech entrepreneurship, goals are growth metrics that indicate the chance of for the business to have "an exit" in a year or two.

A startup that dies quickly after proving itself non-viable is a good thing, because it doesn't take money or attention from investors anymore. And if the founders were any good, they've learned things that will be useful on their next venture.

A startup that shows large exponential growth is the best, because the investors can sell the hot potato to a bigger fool before it implodes or gets gutted by the buyer. This kind of company is the whole reason behind tech investment.

The worst is the sustainable, slowly growing business. Such company isn't going to bring home 10x return for the investors. And it stubbornly refuses to die. The people running such company are more proven than random first-time founders, so it would be better, from investor POV, if they just killed their company and get back to the startup game.

Hence failing, folding and starting anew is admired and encouraged. Because it's better for the investors than succeeding, but not succeeding big.

Re: Build institutions, not apps

#70

Post by 1auralynn »

papeda wrote: post #9
bsder wrote: post #2

Horseshit. Andrew Carnegie was a robber baron bastard, but it was him actually cutting checks that gave us museums and concert halls that persist to this day. The Silicon Valley "elite" like to bitch, but they want everyone else to cut the check.

It seems easier to bankroll museums and concert halls (especially when Carnegie lived) than change the kind of legislation that gets passed. This article is more about the second impact.

It wasn't just about museums - he also set up and gave money to educational institutions and gave tons of money to libraries. This had a huge impact long term.
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