Silicon Valley’s Youth Problem

The topic was if there are any arguments where "a carpooling system that gets dozens of cars off the road and allows each passenger to reclaim ten working hours a week [can be] classified as frivolous."

I listed three that I considered to be reasonable in that context. They have come up in various discussions I've read about the situation.

I fully realize that my view of "reasonable" is not universally shared. For one, I'm one of those people who think that commuting is a waste of my life, even with on-board wifi. My 10 minute drive from Mt. View to Palo Alto was about the limit of what I wanted to do. (My next job was a joy, at 6 minutes. It then became a horrid 20 minutes, until I complained enough to get my own parking garage space, saving 6 minutes of walking from the city lot.)

Then again, your objection to perceived protester-chic smell is also not universally shared.

Anyway, could you explain your objection to #2? I was objecting to the premise. If the goal is to "get dozens of cars off the road and allow each passenger to reclaim ten working hours as week", then the full analysis would need to look at the people who would have lived there had there not been the private buses. Hypothetically speaking, their commutes could have been shorter and using city buses, bicycles, or walking. Thus, long-distance private buses in that situation does not achieve the purported goal.

I have not done this analysis, nor do I know if one exists, but it's not clearly unreasonable, and thus is a valid reason to classify the private bus system as "frivolous."

I mostly agree with you on #3. That is, after all, my point. If the goal is to "get dozens of cars ...", then funding a private bus system, which is an expensive technical fix to a political problem, is "frivolous" to someone who wants to address the actual underlying social problem, which is the opposition to change away from traditional suburban zoning for those cities. In that case, the inability to push back politically expresses itself as protest.

In this view, it's the fault of Google's for not pushing for more medium density housing in Mountain View and its immediate neighbor cities. For business reasons, I can understand why they want to stay on the good side of the city council, who are in turn guided by their constituents, who mostly have single family detached housing and want to keep their neighborhoods unchanged. In this view, Google is doing the politically expedient thing, not the socially correct thing.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, there are systemic problems with governments contracting out software.

The substance/cool chasm is real (find my other post in this thread) and vicious.

Almost! People of course have wildly different views. Some people believe that new roads and parking spots are not good things.

Consider, for example, the thesis behind "The High Cost of Free Parking." Here's a summary of the book: https://server1.tepper.cmu.edu/CMUPark/The-High-Cost-of-Free... but in short, there is an "oversupply of free parking" and "parking requirements increase the cost of housing, as well as goods and services."

Someone who believes that thesis is correct is likely to believe that the stated argument for long-distance buses from SF to Mt. View for Google is "frivolous" because it doesn't affect the underlying infrastructure issues. There aren't that many of these people, but they don't agree that it's "proving too much."

However, that thesis is not an objection to letting more people move in. Parking spaces take up space. They are required to exist because of zoning laws, so they can't be replaced by housing. Someone who is against abundant free or subsidized parking in urban areas can still be for more population. It's just that the new residents don't have the economic disincentives to walk, bike, rollerblade, etc. or take mass transit.

Who wants socialized central planning for parking - let the free market decide! ;)

Maybe we're just interested in solving the problems we have. We're mostly young and getting sex or sharing photos is something that is socially rewarding and fun. We're not dying of cancer yet, that's you guys. You guys are the ones running those companies and generally we don't like how you guys run companies. We want very flexible hours, self direction, relaxing lighting, productive work time and a near absence of meetings. The people I know that are in their twenties and trying to fix cancer are being met with the horrible baby boomer mentality about everything.

This way of thinking about it is interesting. For many people, me included, entrepreneurship is first and foremost a existential choice.

Do you have some examples of what this middle path might look like? For the entrepreneurial-minded, is it different from what is commonly viewed as "lifestyle business" or bootstrapped revenue-first side-project (that might later turn into a solid small-scale business)?