San Francisco Bubble • Hacker News Board

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#161

Post by davidw » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #115

mbesto wrote: post #62

This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…

> This is why the free market is so great. I feel like I should just make this my email/social media signature since I say it so often: A perfect requires these things: - Perfect market information - No participant with market power to set prices - Non intervention by governments - No barriers to entry or exit - Equal access to factors of production - Profit maximization - No externalities The less you have those, th…

I'm not in the "plug my ears and yell FREE MARKETS" camp, but markets do tend to be a pretty robust solution to many problems even in the face of some imperfections. That's the key point: you never deal with a perfect world, with either markets, or some kind of government intervention.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#162

Post by ruok0101 » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

So its a bubble. What do you do about it? Move?

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#163

Post by bischofs » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

I would rather have too many startups then not enough - I am from Detroit and we would love a more entrepreneurial environment and more investment capital.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#164

Post by sampo » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #62

This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…

> This is why the free market is so great.

I don't disagree with the points you made. But there is nothing free market about the housing market in San Francisco.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#165

Post by popmystack » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #62

This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…

What an extreme simplification and absurd push-under-the-rug statements.

I'm glad we could stand by free-market narratives while we waste untold amounts of capital on nothing.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#166

Post by whybroke » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #62

This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…

This is the archetype of magical thinking. You could just as well have said god will do those things with the amount of support you offered.

But it seems there is such an unquestioning faith in "the invisible hand" that the mere suggestion that misrembered high school economics may be an oversimplification, let alone in error, is viewed as unspeakable blasphemy.

Particularly ludicrous is:

>4. Bad engineers? Yup, I've met some of them. They'll eventually leave too when the system weeds them out.

But I'd ask the prophet of the invisible hand these questions:

Isn't the current state necessarily exactly correct given the panglossian invisble hand?

How is it other's using the same hand waving also claim the bay area economy is a permanent feature? Heretics I presume?

If the invisible hand is going to correct the situation, when will it happen? Next week? A hundred years? Or "soon, my son, soon"

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#167

Post by FussyZeus » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #62

This is why the free market is so great. 1. Everything too expensive? Good, don't live here, eventually enough people will leave to drive all of the costs back to other market norms. 2. Dumb startups? Good, they will fail, people won't be able to afford to live here and they'll leave. 3. People are spoiled? Uber is cheaper and more convenient in some cases than taking the local transportation. When people stop taking…

I agree with everything you said but this:

> then it will force government organizations to re-think their planning.

Made me lol. As if any Government has ever changed it's offerings based on the market. They'll just keep paying public workers absurd wages to continue to suck because status quo is way more important than customer satisfaction when it comes to public entities.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#168

Post by devsquid » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

LOL, you can tell this article touches on something sensitive from the reaction to it on HackerNews. Its a pretty accurate description of SF, I just doubt NY is any different.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#169

Post by robbyking » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

A couple quick notes from a longtime (20 year) San Franciscan:

Everything is too expensive

Things are expensive, yes, but more so in neighborhoods with high concentrations of new residents, namely SOMA and most of the Mission. You can get an IPA at nearly any of the bars in my neighborhood for $4, and coffee for $2.

There are thousands of dumb startups

I agree 100%. I've had the (figurative) banana hammock recruiter call me, too, and it's shocking to me how many people are repeating the mistakes of the 90's boom.

People are spoiled

Don't confuse a small yet vocal minority with the City as a whole. There are still plenty of starving artists, passionate musicians and dedicated activists; they just live in different neighborhoods than they did 5 or 10 years ago.

There cannot be these many quality engineers

Again, I agree 100%. During the 90's dotcom boom I worked with a web developer who literally didn't know how to write HTML; all his code was copied from other parts of the project. It's not surprising that it's happening again this time around, but as mbesto wrote, they'll eventually leave too when the system weeds them out.

All in all, most of these are things long-time San Franciscans dislike about our city, too. What's left to be seen is whether or not enough of the people who made San Francisco a desirable place to live can afford to live here once the tech market cools off.

Re: San Francisco Bubble

#170

Post by ryanSrich » Fri, Jan 29, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

ejcx wrote: post #41

> Everything is too expensive. I’m from New York... I take issue with this one. It's entirely possible to live frugally while living IN San Francisco. I moved here about 7 months ago and expected it to be incredibly expensive but it hasn't been the case (beyond rent). The author mentions $15 crappy local IPAs but I've actually never found a beer for this price. There is no shortage of $7 craft beers you can buy at a…

$7 for craft beer FROM the brewery is madness. $3-$5 is typical here in Portland and we have some of the best beer in the world.