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'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

theguardian.com

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Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#111

Post by dang »

majewsky wrote: post #24
mschuster91 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not just send your kids to the schools your taxes are paying for? Because thanks to massive underfunding US public education is ... not exactly what one can expect from a first world country. In some areas children actually only have four days of school because of underfunding ( http://www.ladbible.com/news/news-school-switches-to-four-da... ).

> US public education is ... not exactly what one can expect from a first world country. As a European, I slowly wonder if there's any public service in the US that meets the "first-world country" standard. Not education. Certainly not healthcare. Infrastructure is also crumbling from what I hear.

Please don't take HN threads on generic tangents. It leads to generic and therefore lower-quality discussion.

(Especially please avoid generic tangents on flamewar topics like the superiority or inferiority of nations.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#112

Post by smsm42 »

brokenkebab wrote: post #13

It's hilarious to read all these militaristic wordings about techies waging "battles", and "conquering" the city, as if it's about barbarian hordes which came down on peaceful SF, pillaged, raped, and burnt everything to the ground. Sure, why scritinize California's, or the city's political theater, why questioning law enforcement inefficiency. Can it be somehow related to drugs, prostitution, and theft? No, it's all…

Well, in a way it's their fault too. Somebody votes for the city government that thinks the way to handle the problem is allocate budgets to yet another NGO that makes the money disappear and produces a nice report, without actually solving anything. Somebody votes for the government that makes naked people running in the middle of the street the new normal (I am not kidding even a little bit, seen that in SF several times with my own eyes), camping out and excreting right on the city's main street pavements the routine and perpetuates the whole sorry state of affairs for many years. SF is not a poor city, judging by amount of megacorps in there and shiny towers already built and being built. I can not believe making the city not look like a wasteland is a problem of no resources. It is a problem of mismanagement. And this management did not come from Mars and conquer the city. Somebody elected them and keeps electing them.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#113

Post by bubblewrap »

zorked wrote: post #88
bubblewrap wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik the best health care in the world is only available in the US? Meaning the type of treatments you can get. Whether you can afford them is another question.

Great if you are in the 0.001%.

It's great if some treatments are available at all, that you can get nowhere else in the world.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#114

Post by bubblewrap »

smsm42 wrote: post #112
brokenkebab wrote: post #13

It's hilarious to read all these militaristic wordings about techies waging "battles", and "conquering" the city, as if it's about barbarian hordes which came down on peaceful SF, pillaged, raped, and burnt everything to the ground. Sure, why scritinize California's, or the city's political theater, why questioning law enforcement inefficiency. Can it be somehow related to drugs, prostitution, and theft? No, it's all…

Well, in a way it's their fault too. Somebody votes for the city government that thinks the way to handle the problem is allocate budgets to yet another NGO that makes the money disappear and produces a nice report, without actually solving anything. Somebody votes for the government that makes naked people running in the middle of the street the new normal (I am not kidding even a little bit, seen that in SF several…

So inhabitants of SF hate tech workers because they vote Democrats?

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#115

Post by CalRobert »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #107
CalRobert wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure there is, really. Having moved to Europe I do miss the libraries in the US, but that was in pretty wealthy areas (Santa Monica, San Diego, etc.) But the private services can be top notch if you've got the cash.

Try the library in Downtown LA, you may change your opinion :) Sorry, don't mean to be snarky, I also now live in Europe and miss my hometown library but many of the public ones in cities are glorified homeless shelters now

Well, there were plenty of homeless by the library in downtown San Diego, but it was a really nice library all the same. I went to a wedding there (it's an awesome venue too). And hey, homeless people can enjoy the library too.

Re: LA - I experienced that with the buses. I got a bus from Vegas to LA after Defcon, and then bus 20 (local version of the 720) from DTLA to Santa Monica about 1 AM, and it was mostly full of people sleeping rough. Kind of ridiculous, really - the city pays for a bus, fuel, maintenance, insurance, a driver, etc. and gets a pisspoor homeless shelter, when they could just pay for housing.

Though yet again that's a failure of housing policy... which is exactly what this article is getting at.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#116

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mschuster91 wrote: post #106
jfnixon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underfunding? The US spends more than the OECD average on a per pupil basis. Why do you think the education system is underfunded rather than extremely inefficient? "The United States spent $12,800 per FTE student at the elementary/secondary level, which was 35 percent higher than the average3 of $9,500 for OECD member countries reporting data." https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

When there is not enough funding to provide kids with a 5-day school week and teachers have to buy supplies for the kids with their OWN money, then the system is underfunded. I'd be interested if that figure included funding for competitive sports teams.

No, it can still be inefficient. It could have plenty of money, and just waste it.

If that's the case, throwing more money at it is not guaranteed to fix the problem. It may just increase the inefficiency.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#117

Post by kaybe »

bubblewrap wrote: post #113
zorked wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great if you are in the 0.001%.

It's great if some treatments are available at all, that you can get nowhere else in the world.

At that level of money state borders mean nothing since the additional cost for travel is not significant.

The situation would not change a lot for people if the only place the treatment was available was eg India.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#118

Post by bubblewrap »

kaybe wrote: post #117
bubblewrap wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great if some treatments are available at all, that you can get nowhere else in the world.

At that level of money state borders mean nothing since the additional cost for travel is not significant. The situation would not change a lot for people if the only place the treatment was available was eg India.

Yeah but it isn't, it is available in the US. The claim was that health care in the US sucks. It presumably doesn't. Only the insurance situation sucks (I guess - I am not in the US). The service itself is good.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#119

Post by flukus »

jfnixon wrote: post #62
sundvor wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't suck in countries such as Australia and Norway.

Whatever could the difference be??

State level funding is a big one, poor areas get the same funding for local schools as wealthy areas. I don't understand why "progressives" in the US don't support a more egalitarian funding model, it seems like a very achievable goal and compensates for quite a few privileges.

Re: 'We all suffer': why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed

#120

Post by smsm42 »

bubblewrap wrote: post #114
smsm42 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in a way it's their fault too. Somebody votes for the city government that thinks the way to handle the problem is allocate budgets to yet another NGO that makes the money disappear and produces a nice report, without actually solving anything. Somebody votes for the government that makes naked people running in the middle of the street the new normal (I am not kidding even a little bit, seen that in SF several…

So inhabitants of SF hate tech workers because they vote Democrats?

No, I did not make this claim. What I claimed instead is that tech workers, along with other inhabitants of SF, share the blame for the sorry state the city is in as much as they voted for the people who put it into that sorry state and who are unable to fix it, despite being the city with excellent climate, lots of thriving industry and extremely affluent (by the standards of any other place) population.
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