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San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

sfchronicle.com

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Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#111

Post by Der_Einzige »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #101
Der_Einzige wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The resentment happening from society towards us is spiraling out of control, and I say this as someone who was also at that meetup event yesterday. Pretty sad but we should expect it given how fast AI is going to hurt a lot of these people. The world is finding that they want to always treat us nerds how they treated us in our formative years...

It turns out the arrogant shitting on the rest of the planet by authoritarian techies in the Bay Area has some mild consequences about a dozen orders of magnitude less than the shit it has sprayed on everyone else. If "Flyover Country" has ever been in your vocabulary for a nanosecond, you deserve all that's being heaped on you and 1,000,000x more. You can't abuse humanity, tell them it's for their own good, and then…

1. I was born in "flyover country", I know what the great plains looks like and understand their economic struggles.

2. Again, huggingface open source meetup was the OPPOSITE of authoritarian tech bros. It's literally the people trying to democratize and keep this stuff available to the masses.

This post here is the resentment I'm talking about. The reality is that the average HF event attendee has done far more to help "flyover states" than most SF tech workers. They should be treated as such, not scorned like they're part of a "techno authoritarian future". The techno authoritarians are OpenAI and their cronies.

If nuance isn't possible from non tech bros who resent tech bros, maybe there is a reason why the world is leaving them behind.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#112

Post by asah »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

New York of the 1970s [1] is a better analogy than 9/11. San Francisco is going broke. Not because of terrorism, but due to its own devices. It will need to be bailed out. When that happens, the state will take over and face the realities its voters choose to ignore. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-night-new-york-...

Weird part is that the state has big surpluses...

https://www.google.com/search?q=california+budget+surplus+20...

I wonder if it'll end like NYC where the state takes permanent control of various municipal services, e.g. NYC subway it's controlled by the state.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#113

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

rcarr wrote: post #98
mgarfias wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just “into the 80s”. A friend of mine was murdered there in 94.

I can’t even imagine what it feels like to get downvoted for telling people about your friend’s murder. Mgarfias, I have given you my upvote as a counter. To Hacker news, you need to sort yourself the fuck out and get some empathy.

I didn't downvote (I try to never do that). But responding to a statistical observation about crime levels in NYC that were particularly bad in the 70s and 80s with a single personal ancedote about their friend's murder in 1994 just seems ... totally not relevant. People were murdered in NYC in every decade since it was founded, and will continue to be so, as they will in every other significantly sized city. Noting that a friend was killed after some specific period is content-free with respect to crime rates, even if we can all understand that it must have personally traumatic and horrifying.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#114

Post by jeffbee »

dragonwriter wrote: post #104
dangrover wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech money should be flexed in politics more. We’re paying taxes too, right?

There has literally never been a time in the history of capitalistm when capitalist wealth from any industry wasn’t being flexed in politics for the interests of the particular capitalists (and, as a natural collateral effect, the industry) involved.

These parties are labor parties.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#115

Post by te_chris »

Just spent a few days there and man, talk about living off past beauty. It sure is one of the most beautiful urban environments in the world: the geography, the variety of the architecture, but fuck me, so expensive and just weirdly hostile rules. And I live in London so no stranger to shit costing a lot.

Was there with my wife and child and tried to go to a cool wine bar at like 5pm, told we weren’t allowed in due to licensing laws as the baby was a minor. Nowhere in Europe would even raise an eyebrow at 5pm in a half full bar, it’s not like I was trying to take him to Berghain. Saw barely any parents with kids out, but I guess that makes sense when you look at the rents.

It could be so much more, I hope there can be some sort of will to change.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#116

Post by dehrmann »

asah wrote: post #112
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

New York of the 1970s [1] is a better analogy than 9/11. San Francisco is going broke. Not because of terrorism, but due to its own devices. It will need to be bailed out. When that happens, the state will take over and face the realities its voters choose to ignore. [1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-night-new-york-...

Weird part is that the state has big surpluses... https://www.google.com/search?q=california+budget+surplus+20... I wonder if it'll end like NYC where the state takes permanent control of various municipal services, e.g. NYC subway it's controlled by the state.

Probably the more important story:

https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/02/budget-deficit-may...

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#117

Post by dehrmann »

dragonwriter wrote: post #104
dangrover wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech money should be flexed in politics more. We’re paying taxes too, right?

There has literally never been a time in the history of capitalistm when capitalist wealth from any industry wasn’t being flexed in politics for the interests of the particular capitalists (and, as a natural collateral effect, the industry) involved.

Because of SF's structure with its board of supervisors, I don't think tech had much influence in SF outside FiDi/SoMa/Mission Bay.

After this (SFUSD's delay of algebra 1 has created a nightmare of workarounds)

https://www.sfexaminer.com/forum/put-algebra-1-back-in-eight...

It's pretty clear tech isn't making the rules.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#118

Post by agentofoblivion »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #95
agentofoblivion wrote: post #89

One question that’s always top of mind when I hear about the insanity of SF: why on Earth are people with radical, proven ineffective policies voted in time and time again? Whenever I hear from tech people, they think it’s crazy. So if tech has overrun SF, why haven’t the politics become more moderate? At least one of my assumptions must be wrong.

What is there in SF politics that you consider "radical"? I mean, I can't disagree that the evidence supports the idea that recent policies there have been ineffective in addressing many of that city's most pressing issues. But "radical" ?

Are you being serious? SF is as much, or more, known for radical left wing politics than it is tech. They basically give homeless people free money, make it legally hard to clear camps, and don’t enforce laws of open, hard drug use and petty theft, leading to the obvious consequences. Basically they make it easy to be a drug addict on the street, and hard to be a police officer, and then wonder why crime and homelessness flourish.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#119

Post by ghaff »

carapace wrote: post #92
ravenstine wrote: post #9

Let it burn. The only way out is to let competition thrive and thereby create pressure to revert the cost of living insanity.

Someone went and collected data going back to 1948. > Today's outrageous prices are exactly in line with the 6.6% trend that began 60 years ago. https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme...

I passed on a tech job in the Bay Area in the 90s in part because of cost of living. This was also a time when tech salaries in general were much lower than today. It would have been generally a quality of life downgrade to have moved west.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#120

Post by UIUC_06 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #62
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should expect it given how fast AI is going to hurt a lot of these people It has nothing to do with tangible harm and a lot with the attitude of techno public figures, as well as, in San Francisco, the civic detachment of its tech workers.

Why should we expect "civic attachment" when nerds are literally hardcore bullied from the beginning in our media, in our schools, and now, they're starting getting bullied for being cerebral nerds by the bars of the one city that's supposed to be theirs. I don't blame them tbh. Frankly, society should be very happy uniquely for the "nerds at the HF event" since those nerds are working very hard on open source and de…

> the one city that's supposed to be theirs

LOL. Since when?

SF existed in the 1850's. There was no such thing as a tech bro then.

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