Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#101

Post by briandon » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:19 AM UTC

gobbluth wrote: post #95

hollerith wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans tolerate more onerous restrictions on individual liberty than Americans do. The combination of high degrees of individual liberty and high population density tends to produce a less predictable, sometimes disheartening and sometimes dangerous environment that wealthy people in the U.S. tend to prefer not to live in (at least after their young adulthoods). The point is that there are good reasons why most Am…

I'm sorry, but you're associating liberty with cars, and that's just not true. If you live in Nowhere, Indiana, then you're completely dependent on your car to get ANYWHERE, including to buy food, get to work, or see your mother in the hospital. If it breaks down and you can't afford the repair? How free are you to travel now? You're not completely incorrect, insofar as European cities (and any worthwhile city) are f…

Cars really do give individuals more liberty.

Replace cars with, for example, private refrigerators and public transport with communal refrigerators and think it through.

Any time that you smoosh people together and force or nudge them into using shared or communal facilities rather than their own, personal freedom of action is being curtailed.

We can argue that whatever we're getting in return is worthwhile but we can't pretend that we're not giving anything up.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#102

Post by ahh » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:24 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #84

The big hack for living in the Bay Area seems to be having roommates. I'm currently trying to find a really nice, big house in San Mateo County (the only Bay Area county which is pro firearms ownership, thanks to an excellent sheriff, Greg Munks). There's really spotty availability of nice houses in a "reasonable" price range (2-3br/2ba for $3000 or less) anywhere reasonable, but a lot of huge, absurdly nice houses (…

I've been looking all over for such a situation--can you show a link to one such house? I'm not convinced they exist.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#103

Post by hollerith » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:26 AM UTC

gobbluth wrote: post #95

hollerith wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans tolerate more onerous restrictions on individual liberty than Americans do. The combination of high degrees of individual liberty and high population density tends to produce a less predictable, sometimes disheartening and sometimes dangerous environment that wealthy people in the U.S. tend to prefer not to live in (at least after their young adulthoods). The point is that there are good reasons why most Am…

I'm sorry, but you're associating liberty with cars, and that's just not true. If you live in Nowhere, Indiana, then you're completely dependent on your car to get ANYWHERE, including to buy food, get to work, or see your mother in the hospital. If it breaks down and you can't afford the repair? How free are you to travel now? You're not completely incorrect, insofar as European cities (and any worthwhile city) are f…

You have misunderstood me, so let me give you an example.

When I used to live in the Mission District of San Francisco, sometimes "poor, urban" type people would stand around on the sidewalk and street in front of my window and yell at each other for hours in the early in the morning. (My guess is it had something to do with pimping and prostitution.) If I lived in an outer suburb of San Francisco (Walnut Creek miles from a BART station for example), people like that would have a hard time getting to my street, because most of them do not have cars; and since there would be nothing near my home besides other homes, it would be a boring environment for them unless perhaps they are into jogging or walking their dog or something like that. Ditto the people who used to park across the street and play their car stereo really loud. And the guy with the pick-up truck who was helping his friend move and left his car alarm on the most sensitive setting, so that it would go off every time a car passed by it. The French and other nations on the continent of Europe are much more accepting than Americans of the use various policing, administrative and legal procedures to encourage the aforementioned individuals to stop the aforementioned behaviors and conform to a quieter or more conventional patterns of behavior. This is an example of what I meant when I said that Europeans tolerate more onerous restrictions on individual liberty than Americans do, and this is a significant part of why IMO wealthy people in France mostly consider the core of Paris a nice place to live whereas wealthy people in the U.S. mostly do not want to live in American inner cities -- at least they do not want to after they turn 30 or so.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#104

Post by gobbluth » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:28 AM UTC

briandon wrote: post #99

gobbluth wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do live in an urban environment (NYC for a decade now), and you're... confused on some counts. Public transportation is radically faster than cars, at least in any city with a fraction of the same population. Have you ever tried to drive through Atlanta or Miami? And living in an urban environment doesn't demand high-rise towers -- walkable townhouses and height-restricted buildings abound, and there's no shortage…

The walkable townhouses and height-restricted buildings you're talking about (1.) only exist so long as the aesthetic/lifestyle value of a low-risey city balances against the demand for more housing and developers' desire to make money and (2.) make public transport trips take longer because you have to walk past more of your neighbors' low-rise buildings to get to a public transport hub and the bus/train/whatever ha…

You, sir, have never been to Brooklyn.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#105

Post by wes-exp » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:30 AM UTC

ttfntatafornow wrote: post #94

wes-exp wrote: post #10

Also, not as many women => not as many babies supporting population growth.

there are just as many women here as anywhere else. Males: 408,462 (50.7%) Females: 396,773 (49.3%) if anything, when you consider that there are far more homosexual men than homosexual women, men have it good here. http://www.city-data.com/city/San-Francisco-California.html

Well, whatever the population figures, something creates an overabundance of single men. This must create a drag on the reproductive rate. Also, what you're saying might apply to SF itself, but not necessarily to South Bay / Silicon Valley.

http://creativeclass.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/...

One other thought... even given a balanced overall population, we need to look specifically at those of reproductive age. Population figures will include children, which should be roughly 50/50 m/f, until they move away as adults (perhaps due to the high rents!).

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#106

Post by gobbluth » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:32 AM UTC

briandon wrote: post #101

gobbluth wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but you're associating liberty with cars, and that's just not true. If you live in Nowhere, Indiana, then you're completely dependent on your car to get ANYWHERE, including to buy food, get to work, or see your mother in the hospital. If it breaks down and you can't afford the repair? How free are you to travel now? You're not completely incorrect, insofar as European cities (and any worthwhile city) are f…

Cars really do give individuals more liberty. Replace cars with, for example, private refrigerators and public transport with communal refrigerators and think it through. Any time that you smoosh people together and force or nudge them into using shared or communal facilities rather than their own, personal freedom of action is being curtailed. We can argue that whatever we're getting in return is worthwhile but we c…

Is that really a good analogy? Do you really feel that sitting in your car on a freeway is so radically different (and liberating) than sitting in a subway car?

If you're so certain that public transportation means giving something up, what is it that you're losing?

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#107

Post by WildUtah » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:37 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #70

gobbluth wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with you and MJN. The US is in desperate need of investment in public transportation. Europeans have absolutely mastered the art of urban design and public transportation, and I wish we'd learn from their example. But try telling 99% of the US that 1) their shitty sprawled real estate is effectively worthless, 2) their obese asses will have to give up their cars, and 3) we've spent 70 years of infrastructure i…

Europeans tolerate more onerous restrictions on individual liberty than Americans do. The combination of high degrees of individual liberty and high population density tends to produce a less predictable, sometimes disheartening and sometimes dangerous environment that wealthy people in the U.S. tend to prefer not to live in (at least after their young adulthoods). The point is that there are good reasons why most Am…

I don't know what you are suggesting about high degrees of personal liberty and high density being incompatible. European cities and even the denser US cities like San Francisco and New York are known for better civil liberties records than the majority of the USA.

And the USA is not reluctant to really cram down civil liberties to control crime, if that's your unstated implication. The rate of imprisonment is many times higher in the USA than in Europe. You might be suggesting that controlling crime in the USA is simply impossible with anything short of a police state but criminological research indicates the high crime rates are largely a result of poor policing policy.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#108

Post by raldi » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:40 AM UTC

DanBlake wrote: post #63

raldi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it another way, when someone can't afford food, we provide them food stamps, paid for by our shared tax revenue. We don't make grocery store owners grant them discounts out of pocket.

Thats a pretty good analogy. I am absolutely for helping out those in need- I just dont think it should be shelved on the landlords shoulders- It should be a responsibility of government.

And it could be financed by higher property taxes for landlords, so that the average landlord is in the same financial situation before and after, but the element of luck is greatly reduced, and the perverse market incentives are removed.

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#109

Post by staunch » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:41 AM UTC

bfrs wrote: post #87

DanBlake wrote: post #27

As a new landlord in San Francisco, I can tell you that the biggest issue forcing this is rent control. The way rent control works is certainly designed to help those in need but instead it creates a artificial demand for affordable housing. Without rent control, the market is free to compete and suddenly open up a ton of bottled up apartments. The issue is, a family on welfare with a income of 40k a year should not…

As a former Civil Engineer [4] and advocate of commodity-housing [1], I can tell you that rent control [3] is the minor issue here. I'm glad that HN is finally paying some attention to the elephant in the room ...zoning laws. I bet that for most HNers who pay rent, it is about 50-60% of monthly expenses. This is freaking ridiculous! Look at it from a Civil Engineer's perspective: modern houses are built from very dur…

Maybe you're someone to ask. Why don't we have sweet apartment buildings like the kind you find Tokyo? In the heart of Tokyo you can rent a tiny (but complete, clean, modern, beautiful) apartment for They're small as hell, but totally sufficient and way nicer than living in a bigger shittier place.

I think someone could make a killing bringing these kinds of buildings to the US.

Any reason it's not possible?

Re: Why the San Francisco Bay Area should have 11 million residents today

#110

Post by gobbluth » Tue, May 15, 2012, 6:41 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #103

gobbluth wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but you're associating liberty with cars, and that's just not true. If you live in Nowhere, Indiana, then you're completely dependent on your car to get ANYWHERE, including to buy food, get to work, or see your mother in the hospital. If it breaks down and you can't afford the repair? How free are you to travel now? You're not completely incorrect, insofar as European cities (and any worthwhile city) are f…

You have misunderstood me, so let me give you an example. When I used to live in the Mission District of San Francisco, sometimes "poor, urban" type people would stand around on the sidewalk and street in front of my window and yell at each other for hours in the early in the morning. (My guess is it had something to do with pimping and prostitution.) If I lived in an outer suburb of San Francisco (Walnut Creek miles…

Fair enough, but that's not really more liberty. Presumably the police would also arrest a homeless guy screaming about prostitutes if he were in your front lawn in the suburbs.

You'd just like to pay extra to be so far away from everyone that you won't see homeless people. Besides the obvious suggestion of directing the money taxpayers are forced to spend on exurban roads, water pipes, etc. towards asylums, rehab clinics, and shelters... you realize that gentrification means you can have your cake and eat it too, right? Especially in NYC, while there are still tons of bums and Jersey douchebags, the gangster element has all but died off. (Though you still have stupid assholes in the Bronx and Bed-Stuy, gangs aren't the problem you see everywhere else.) Having mixed-income, dense neighborhoods makes policing WAY easier and makes NYC the safest American city.