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Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

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Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#41

Post by jmccree »

lutusp wrote: post #21
jcc80 wrote: post #19

"The sworn officer would focus on helping local schools increase their safety and prevent student truancy and on working with the area's large businesses to improve their security" This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses. I say that because if you want to address the underlying issues and really "solve" the problem, you wouldn't do it with police.…

> This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses. It's also probably unconstitutional, on the ground that it produces at least the appearance of selective enforcement. This kind of goal is usually achieved by hiring a private security guard, rather than paying a (normally) taxpayer-funded police department to focus its attention on a specific zone.

I'm not really not sure about the unconstitutional argument, but it's extremely common. Normally it's done more explicitly by hiring off duty officers. NYPD has the paid detail unit to organize private details for businesses. Where I live in Atlanta, every neighborhood you'd want to live in has their own privately paid force of off-duty officers patrolling. I'm more surprised that facebook is basically offering a grant/donation than outright hiring their own off-duty officers.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#42

Post by satori99 »

skore wrote: post #39
pdkl95 wrote: post #33

Add this data point to Facebook setting up their own dorm/apartment project[1] and their efforts prevent employees from having any free time outside of work[2] so they can undo the last century or so of social progress that gave us stuff like "(classic) feminism" and "unions"[3]. Facebook is trying to set up their own Company Town . Usually, the response to this interpretation is to dismiss the possibility, with the…

Having read Snow Crash... I'm getting used to appreciate Neal Stephensons rather heavy handed (if only at first glance) use of Sci-Fi tropes as very dry pragmatism. Yes, this is feudalism, plain and simple. They're simply abusing basic democratic institutions to obfuscate the fact.

“This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them.”

― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#43

Post by vellum »

jcc80 wrote: post #19

"The sworn officer would focus on helping local schools increase their safety and prevent student truancy and on working with the area's large businesses to improve their security" This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses. I say that because if you want to address the underlying issues and really "solve" the problem, you wouldn't do it with police.…

This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses.

It's also safer if they let the cops do the skull-cracking. This way Zuck doesn't have to give an awkward press conference about why his security guards were filmed beating up some teenagers in the parking lot.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#45

Post by Pxtl »

pdkl95 wrote: post #33

Add this data point to Facebook setting up their own dorm/apartment project[1] and their efforts prevent employees from having any free time outside of work[2] so they can undo the last century or so of social progress that gave us stuff like "(classic) feminism" and "unions"[3]. Facebook is trying to set up their own Company Town . Usually, the response to this interpretation is to dismiss the possibility, with the…

To be fair, the problem is that the neighboring cities have completely failed to manage growth. The tax-bases of these places are positively exploding, but what have they done with them? Have they improved intensification in the urban core? With property values skyrocketing, builders would be lined up around the block to make condos for all these young, single developers. Better transit?

Ultimately, when the local municipalities are failing to provide the big companies with the housing and services that are needed by their employees (who are citizens and potential citizens of these municipalities) then those municipalities are failing to perform their function.

Part of this falls on FB/Apple/Google for using out-of-town campuses instead of core urban highrise office towers that would allow better access for employees in the surrounding area via the existing transit/housing infrastructure. But still - these cities have completely failed to properly work with the hand they've been dealt.

And if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#46

Post by skore »

satori99 wrote: post #42
skore wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having read Snow Crash... I'm getting used to appreciate Neal Stephensons rather heavy handed (if only at first glance) use of Sci-Fi tropes as very dry pragmatism. Yes, this is feudalism, plain and simple. They're simply abusing basic democratic institutions to obfuscate the fact.

“This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them.” ― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

"It's like, if you — people of a certain age — would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn't have to take these drastic measures."

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#47

Post by pdkl95 »

pnathan wrote: post #40
pdkl95 wrote: post #33

Add this data point to Facebook setting up their own dorm/apartment project[1] and their efforts prevent employees from having any free time outside of work[2] so they can undo the last century or so of social progress that gave us stuff like "(classic) feminism" and "unions"[3]. Facebook is trying to set up their own Company Town . Usually, the response to this interpretation is to dismiss the possibility, with the…

I've lived near several Company Towns before. In the modern incarnation, it's not terrible . The execs could run the town, but they don't bother - they just seem to put in the right word in the right ear when things could be troublesome for them. Otherwise they don't seem to directly run the place. I am sure that any protest vs. the Company might turn out to be prosecuted surprisingly fast and aggressively. On the fl…

We're not there yet. For some time we regulated things, and some of the nastier abuses of the past were attenuated a bit. The particularly bad abuses were prevented entirely, and some of the wealth was distributed in a more equitable way.

The modern version that we've seen for a while still has some of the nasty effects, such as making the town (intentionally or not) a very difficult situation to leave. Forcing decisions that are bad for and rejected by a community such "lets go fracking really close to where the drinking water comes form!" seems to be popular in modern times (and a lot of local variation).

The problem, as I mentioned towards the end of the other post, is when business and government are no longer working against each other. We extract value, as citizens from the resulting equilibrium, because the nastier tendencies of either group are restrained. I'm suggesting that the NEW change, is a dramatic and sudden shift away from that regulation. You see this in Facebook and other big players such as the banks that were labeled "Too Big To Fail". Some of the traditional power-players like the coal industry simply have a bit of historical inertia to overcome.

We've been the reducing government's ability to regulate for some time now, making the modern, milder, modern Company Town as you describe increasingly rarer as this progress.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#48

Post by a3n »

Shenglong wrote: post #2

Interesting. Increased security, faster response times, and public image at such a cheap rate is probably a no-brainer for large tech companies like Facebook. I feel like we're going to see more private funding for public positions in the (perhaps distant) future, but I suppose the obvious question is: at what point does private funding of public officials become theoretically troublesome? Some would call this the st…

We name stadiums after corporations (by selling the naming rights).

I'm sure we'll soon be naming mayorships, as occupants of governments from the smallest city to the federal government continue to be elected by cutting budgets and then cry because there's no money to provide basic services.

They'll be called smart public-private partnerships.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#49

Post by pdkl95 »

skore wrote: post #39
pdkl95 wrote: post #33

Add this data point to Facebook setting up their own dorm/apartment project[1] and their efforts prevent employees from having any free time outside of work[2] so they can undo the last century or so of social progress that gave us stuff like "(classic) feminism" and "unions"[3]. Facebook is trying to set up their own Company Town . Usually, the response to this interpretation is to dismiss the possibility, with the…

Having read Snow Crash... I'm getting used to appreciate Neal Stephensons rather heavy handed (if only at first glance) use of Sci-Fi tropes as very dry pragmatism. Yes, this is feudalism, plain and simple. They're simply abusing basic democratic institutions to obfuscate the fact.

It's worth observing that Feudalism is not the worst way of running a society. It can be relatively hands-off at times, and is certainly far better than the various forms of totalitarianism.

Still not worth losing our Constitutional Republic over.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#50

Post by cbr »

harlanlewis wrote: post #29
zaroth wrote: post #16

This was in one of the comments; > Get the gang activity under control, and it actually would be > quite nice. The irony is, if it became safe, it probably would > gentrify rapidly, housing prices would go up, and the poor people > who rent would have to find somewhere else to live. Is it just me who thinks it's terribly sad there are people apologizing for decreasing crime and therefore increasing property value? Th…

I absolutely agree with the sentiment, but density housing on high value property tends to result in high rise luxury units rather than affordable apartments. There are worse things, but it doesn't really address the problem.

When you can only build a small number of apartments you make the most money building luxury ones. But:

(1) If we allow more building we end up with as many luxury apartments as there's demand for and developers switch to building more affordable ones.

(2) When a rich person moves from wherever they're living now into a luxury apartment that opens up their previous apartment somewhere else.

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