The Street Kids of San Francisco
blog.priceonomics.com
The Street Kids of San Francisco
1–10 of 210 posts
Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco
#2This is actually pretty fascinating - I would have never thought to ask. Thanks!
Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco
#3Sounds like fun for about 1-2 weeks, and then it would be a sucky life. Gotta have mental stimulation sometime.
Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco
#4Thanks Rohin! Your blog is one of my favorite things to read. Quite a change from the normal hacker news articles.
Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco
#5Does anyone else find this really sad? It's not abject poverty, but it's a loss of talent to the world, and I'm old and honest enough to know that it's the world's fault.
I liked one of the signs. "You don't have to fuck people over to survive." That's what our positive-sum technocracy is supposed to represent: a world in which you can focus on getting work done and making society better. That's what it actually is if you have a degree of freedom, autonomy, and comfort that is (alas) very rare. Yet most of these "street kids" face a world of soulless, zero-sum, corporate status-grubbing where they do have to make that choice, and they're making the less approved but perhaps morally nicer one.
Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco
#6I would like to know what you can get in the Haight for $1500 / month. Not much I'll bet.
Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco
#7The legalization of marijuana will utterly destroy this community. From the article, it sounds like weed facilitates a significant part of the economy as both a trade good and a consumable while LSD is a luxury item and hard drugs are not tolerated. Cheap weed will probably induce a net loss of value (that being the value of knowing how to procure it, and trading that value).
Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco
#8Sounds like fun for about 1-2 weeks, and then it would be a sucky life. Gotta have mental stimulation sometime.
We're a biased set, in that most of us have, at least, the option for mentally stimulating work. As fucked as the software industry is, it's better than most other places.
Most of them are choosing one (purportedly, although I think I'm right that neither of us has tried it) brain-dead lifestyle over another one.
That's why I get irked when people talk about housewives becoming "braindead" from being outside of the economy. What makes the typical mind-numbing office life superior to a (supposedly) mind-numbing domestic existence?
Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco
#9Does anyone else find this really sad? It's not abject poverty, but it's a loss of talent to the world, and I'm old and honest enough to know that it's the world's fault. I liked one of the signs. "You don't have to fuck people over to survive." That's what our positive-sum technocracy is supposed to represent: a world in which you can focus on getting work done and making society better. That's what it actually is i…
s/talent/a worker bee/
it's not the world's fault there exists free-will.
Re: The Street Kids of San Francisco
#10Wondering many make the move from GG park to Market Street... Where the homeless are a whole different breed.