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What's the Matter with San Francisco?

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Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#91

Post by eecsninja »

diogen wrote: post #64
throw_away_555 wrote: post #43

For those who haven't studied economics: When you restrict the supply of something scarce or the demand for it goes up, the price increases. In this case the "something" is housing. It's essentially illegal to build anything in the bay area which means the supply isn't changing much. But the demand is skyrocketing. Therefore the price is skyrocketing. This would all be fixed very quickly if it was legal to buy some l…

"San Francisco would look like Manhattan within two years." A crowded, hyper-expensive, tourist trap with limited housing that most locals avoid? Good goals. "This would all be fixed very quickly if it was legal to buy some land, demolish what's on there, and build a skyscraper instead." "Economics concerns itself with what actually happens when you incent people though, not what we intend by those incentives." Simpl…

> A crowded, hyper-expensive, tourist trap with limited housing

You just described SF.

Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#92

Post by nemo44x »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #85
x0x0 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a big piece of it is sf getting fucked by the nimbyism elsewhere. viz Mountain View: they just authorized something like 3.4 million ft2 of office space between LinkedIn, Google, etc while supposedly they're giong to add 1.5k to 5k housing units. In the future. Where are the other, say, 15 to 20 thousand people going to live? Mountain View doesn't give a shit, but a bunch of them are going to have to life in sf,…

How about just having the state use eminent domain to seize half of Atherton, hook it back up to CalTrain, and build dense urban housing there, with easy commuting to Mountain View and Redwood City? I jest... partially. Atherton is horrible for the whole area.

Honestly, that would be a great place to start. Build lots of streets with high rises with light rail and commercial and residential stacked.

With a location near Palo Alto/Stanford and the region I would bet it becomes unbelievably high in demand.

Obviously this could never happen there!

Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#93

Post by tptacek »

devalier wrote: post #47
encoderer wrote: post #5

The problem to me is that people want an amazing city with a booming economy and gorgeous landscapes to be "affordable" for the man on the street. I think our progressive politics IS to blame: for deluding San Franciscans into believing such a thing is possible.

I think our progressive politics IS to blame: for deluding San Franciscans into believing such a thing is possible. Actually it is possible. But the irony is that the person who came up with best idea that would have fixed/prevented this problem, has now been ostracized as a "fascist" by the left-wing tech community: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali... If circa 2007, San Francisco itself h…

He's been ostracized for more complicated reasons than "fascism" --- I'm not sure what that word means. I think it's a little misleading to suggest that this is a case of hair-trigger political correctness.

The irony of the "fascism" dig on this thread is that the source you've provided appears to be this person literally arguing for privatization in order to create a corporatist autocracy. By that way: that's the solution to San Francisco's problems you find promising? Or am I misunderstanding you?

I think the author's "practical" political ideas are comical and worthy of ridicule, but that they alone don't make the author problematic. The virulent strain of scientific crypto-racism that seems to run through their writing though; that's a problem for me.

Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#94

Post by crzwdjk »

devalier wrote: post #47
encoderer wrote: post #5

The problem to me is that people want an amazing city with a booming economy and gorgeous landscapes to be "affordable" for the man on the street. I think our progressive politics IS to blame: for deluding San Franciscans into believing such a thing is possible.

I think our progressive politics IS to blame: for deluding San Franciscans into believing such a thing is possible. Actually it is possible. But the irony is that the person who came up with best idea that would have fixed/prevented this problem, has now been ostracized as a "fascist" by the left-wing tech community: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali... If circa 2007, San Francisco itself h…

Isn't the basic problem that existing residents already get rich (or at least, don't get any worse off) as the city gets richer, because they have the power to extract rents from new residents? Current owners have every incentive to prevent construction of new housing, because it makes their own assets more valuable. Renters protected by rent control have no inventive to care either way, since their rent isn't going up. The only people who do care are newcomers who didn't get the benefit of rent control, and all the people who aren't moving to SF and contributing to its economy because they're priced out, but they don't get a vote in either case.

Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#95

Post by devalier »

tptacek wrote: post #93
devalier wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think our progressive politics IS to blame: for deluding San Franciscans into believing such a thing is possible. Actually it is possible. But the irony is that the person who came up with best idea that would have fixed/prevented this problem, has now been ostracized as a "fascist" by the left-wing tech community: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali... If circa 2007, San Francisco itself h…

He's been ostracized for more complicated reasons than "fascism" --- I'm not sure what that word means. I think it's a little misleading to suggest that this is a case of hair-trigger political correctness. The irony of the "fascism" dig on this thread is that the source you've provided appears to be this person literally arguing for privatization in order to create a corporatist autocracy. By that way: that's the so…

"the source you've provided appears to be this person literally arguing for privatization in order to create a corporatist autocracy. By that way: that's the solution to San Francisco's problems you find promising"

The joint-stock form of government works extremely well for companies that make software operating systems, so I would like to see it tried for companies making physical operating systems (a city being an operating system for people). I don't go as far as moldbug's proposal (and I'm not sure if Moldbug goes as far as Moldbug's proposal, he always likes to frame the debate by making the most extreme argument in one direction). I don't want the corporation to operate the courts or to run the army. There should be an independent court system and the city government would have to follow rule-of-law. But in general, I think formalizing ownership over the city would lead to more pareto optimal solutions, and I think that would be good for the existing residents.

Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#96

Post by devalier »

crzwdjk wrote: post #94
devalier wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think our progressive politics IS to blame: for deluding San Franciscans into believing such a thing is possible. Actually it is possible. But the irony is that the person who came up with best idea that would have fixed/prevented this problem, has now been ostracized as a "fascist" by the left-wing tech community: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/04/formali... If circa 2007, San Francisco itself h…

Isn't the basic problem that existing residents already get rich (or at least, don't get any worse off) as the city gets richer, because they have the power to extract rents from new residents? Current owners have every incentive to prevent construction of new housing, because it makes their own assets more valuable. Renters protected by rent control have no inventive to care either way, since their rent isn't going…

With the current system, home owners have every incentive to block new housing. New housing makes their own asset less scarce, and thus less valuable. The home-owner receives zero benefit from the new construction.

With a shareholder system, home owners also have a dividend paying share in the city government. The government pays dividends out of the profits of property taxes. New construction increases property taxes, since new high rises pay a lot more tax than old row homes or vacant blocks. Thus, the owner-shareholder will also gain money from new construction. Conceivably, the city could charge a supplementary "new construction" tax to make the numbers balance out so that home owners would always net gain from new construction. This might not be perfect, the surcharge would discourage building to some extent, but it would be a lot better than the state of affairs right now.

Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#97

Post by ytpete »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #41
coldcode wrote: post #14

It's very difficult to build a city to serve two populations, one rich and one poor (or at least average). I would love to work in SF but have zero desire to live there because it's too expensive for everyone but the IPO crowd.

There is another way to look at this. The city serves two populations: people who currently live in a city, and people who would like to immigrate to the city. As a resident of a growing city, I find it somewhat puzzling and inconvenient that it's taken as an article of faith that large city growth is a good thing. Growth is good, but it's also bad: it brings congestion, filth, and higher housing prices. Even with th…

> why should I not vote to block and prevent this growth?

Because all you can vote to block is the growth in housing - you can't block the influx of people. So then demand continues to rise while supply stagnates... and prices keep skyrocketing as a result. And that doesn't freeze the city into being exactly what it's like now - as more low-to-mid income people are priced out, the city WILL change in character and in culture. Discouraging high-density housing gives you higher prices AND a much less diverse city.

Either way you cut it, there's no way to freeze San Francisco like a time capsule. It's going to change, the question is how do we maximize how much of that change is for the better?

(Btw, I think wanting the city to stay exactly how it is currently is fundamentally a NIMBY / selfish attitude - 'I got here first, but no one should be allowed to come after me and change things any further').

Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#98

Post by ytpete »

SeoxyS wrote: post #48

> It invented new models of delivering affordable housing and health care. It invested deeply in public space, from parks to bike lanes. It adopted a transit-first policy Is that really true? San Francisco, as much as I love it, never struck me as a particularly forward-thinking place when it comes to public transportation, bike-friendliness, healthcare, or housing policies. Compare it to any European city (e.g. bike…

Forward-thinking for a US city might be a fair description though. That's still no small thing.

(Though I'd certainly quibble with the article's notion that SF's transit-first policy has been a shining success story so far).

Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#99

Post by ytpete »

jmspring wrote: post #31

San Francisco is basically 7 miles by 7 miles. How much of what is there are you going to tear down to accommodate the influx of tech? Since gold rush times San Francisco has seen ebb and flow of populations and boom and bust periods. There is continual change, that said if it allows continual teardown of existing buildings and building of high rises, might as well be in Manhattan.

Does anyone have stats on what percentage of newcomers to SF actually work in tech? I'd be very curious: is it the vast majority, or are tons of other people coming here too because the local economy's doing well in general, or because SF just is a culturally trendier place to live than it used to be?

Re: What's the Matter with San Francisco?

#100

Post by fapjacks »

ectoplasm wrote: post #74
fapjacks wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't confuse the frat boys with business degrees with the hackers who have strong roots in hippie culture.

Don't worry, I took some discrete math, and I know that A is a subset of C and B is a subset of C does not imply A intersects B.

Your response reads like you're saying that the frat boys in tech management are somehow a subset of or descended from hippie culture. I know better than to think you're actually saying that, though, because that is insane.
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