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Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

theguardian.com

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Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#61

Post by wastedhours »

seszett wrote: post #47
snowAbstraction wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two comments: 1. Something between taxis and buses could theoretically be viable. 2. Many cities already have rush hour fees on public transportation (or equivalently discounts for off-peak passes) so some price differentiation in bus lines seems possible.

> 2. Many cities already have rush hour fees on public transportation (or equivalently discounts for off-peak passes) so some price differentiation in bus lines seems possible. I have never seen that anywhere in Europe or Canada, does that mean there are two different tickets with different prices, and you have to have both if don't know exactly when you're going to take your bus? Also, I wonder how it works with a m…

I've seen it in a few places, and it's common on the London Underground where you have a peak/off-peak fare - you're charged for pay as you go and it's your responsibility to know which fare you're going to be charged for the journey.

It's also common on the trains, where most have a peak price (usually only in the morning).

For season tickets (monthly, yearly), all fares are usually included (i.e. your pass allows you to travel any time, very rare to find an "off peak only" seasonal pass, although some people, like OAPs have them).

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#62

Post by bmj »

chrisseaton wrote: post #8

I think the author is being deliberately uncharitable. I think what these co-living spaces are proposing is more similar to an officers' mess, if people here have experienced that, than roommates, in that it's sort of like a private permanent hotel with private rooms, dining areas, kitchens, libraries, and staff waiting on you. As a young person it's a really fantastic way to live, very efficient, and it fosters comm…

Plenty of people have done "communal" living before "co-living" was a thing. These sorts of arrangements were commonly associated with hippies or punks, but plenty of "normal" people do it, too.

You are correct, however, that the author is being deliberately uncharitable, which, I believe, Silicon Valley calls "snark."

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#63

Post by baybal2 »

dtech wrote: post #7
humanrebar wrote: post #4

> By “convenient” they mean anonymous people on minimum wage clean up after you. Hey, let's not stigmatize the upper middle class actually hiring people to do worthwhile work. That's how jobs, small businesses, and economic growth happen. > As was quickly pointed out by numerous people this is basically a “bus”. Just, you know, without the poor people. Likewise, this is a good idea. People sharing rides in smaller bu…

> Public bus systems should really be exploring a smaller vehicle model more I asked someone from my local bus service once. Their answer was that it's not economically viable for the public bus service, as the only major saving was fuel cost and the extra services don't provide enough revenue to offset the employee cost (otherwise they could service it with the large normal busses). So basically this becomes viable…

Uber for buses anyone?

Back in early nineties in Russia, when the public transport system ceased to exist in almost all second tier cities and below. People were relying in people driving on mini-van taxis that were driving "approximate routes" where the driver was changing his route at will to get more passengers.

You was signalling to the driver by hand to be picked up, telling where you go, and he will tell if his current route passes by that place.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#64

Post by chrisseaton »

bmj wrote: post #62
chrisseaton wrote: post #8

I think the author is being deliberately uncharitable. I think what these co-living spaces are proposing is more similar to an officers' mess, if people here have experienced that, than roommates, in that it's sort of like a private permanent hotel with private rooms, dining areas, kitchens, libraries, and staff waiting on you. As a young person it's a really fantastic way to live, very efficient, and it fosters comm…

Plenty of people have done "communal" living before "co-living" was a thing. These sorts of arrangements were commonly associated with hippies or punks, but plenty of "normal" people do it, too. You are correct, however, that the author is being deliberately uncharitable, which, I believe, Silicon Valley calls "snark."

That's why I brought up the analogy to the officers' mess, which is a very middle class and establishment thing, and shows that communal living is not just a hippy or punk thing.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#65

Post by Viliam1234 »

cisanti wrote: post #45
humanrebar wrote: post #4

> By “convenient” they mean anonymous people on minimum wage clean up after you. Hey, let's not stigmatize the upper middle class actually hiring people to do worthwhile work. That's how jobs, small businesses, and economic growth happen. > As was quickly pointed out by numerous people this is basically a “bus”. Just, you know, without the poor people. Likewise, this is a good idea. People sharing rides in smaller bu…

The guardian is notoriously left wing newspaper and it will always find a reason to blame all the problems in society for people who are better off.

I could forgive the political bias, if the news would try to describe reality and only... you know, focus on certain aspects of reality more, and certain other aspects less. That is, if they would let politics influence their priorities, but not their facts. (Having such newspapers is still suboptimal, but as long as no one is lying, you could at least try to get a more nuanced vision of the world by buying multiple newspapers with competing points of view.) However, Guardian already goes beyond that.

> While food replacement beverages have been around for a while in the guise of things like Ensure or Slimfast, they’ve traditionally been targeted at older people and women, that is, people who are basically irrelevant to “tech bros”. Soylent, on the other hand, was made by and designed for young men in tech and had cool branding.

Did this scribbler even read the web pages of Slimfast and Soylent? I mean, in the age of internet and google, it should not be that hard to get the most basic information at least approximately right. Unless one is not even trying, and instead optimizes for outrage...

The essential difference between Slimfast and Soylent is not that the former is "old women's food" and the latter is "evil white cishet tech bro food". The difference is the former is advertised as something that makes you slim, fast. It's in the very name, how can you miss that, Guardian journalist? And if you look at the box, it says "lose weight, clinically proven". So, you just have to be slightly smarter than the average Guardian journalist to find out that Slimfast is supposed to make you lose weight.

Meanwhile Soylent tries to be "a complete blend of everything the body needs", a "complete nutrition" with "zero preparation". This is not a well-guarded secret, I am just reading information from their title web page I found using google. So, the point is that these two products try to achieve a completely different goal. It's not about tech bros refusing to eat food for women, as Guardian suggests.

If a newspaper cannot get even this basic information right, the only reason to read it is to get your daily dose of fresh outrage. No thanks.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#66

Post by ben_w »

monort wrote: post #46
lotsofpulp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anywhere to compare the wages, credentialing, and insurance of those drivers to those of a city's bus system? It's easy to earn a profit when you don't pay taxes or have to worry about liability insurance.

There are dollar vans in NY, that supposedly regulated and still profitable. It's really weird how developed world mostly ignores third-world model of private mini-buses.

I’ve been on a third-world minibus. In comparison to developed nation public transport, it was overcrowded by a factor of two, it only set off when it was full and not to any timetable, and (from what my partner told me after living there for years back when she was a teenager), most of the drivers constantly consume stimulants so they can work for 15-hour days.

(I would also describe the minibus as poorly maintained, but that’s by European standards — I was really surprised by the poor condition of American vehicles on each of my three visits, and it didn’t seem significantly worse than an American vehicle).

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#67

Post by thriftwy »

barrkel wrote: post #55
thriftwy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "credentials and insurance" I hear "red tape and rent-seeking". UPD: But yes, they do have some paperwork. Its relevance is open to the debate. However, same applies to any paper coming out of public bus system.

You say "red tape and rent-seeking", and I hear "fly-by-night operators, fraudsters and scammers".

How bad your police should be before you can be profitably scammed by a bus?

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#68

Post by baybal2 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #8

I think the author is being deliberately uncharitable. I think what these co-living spaces are proposing is more similar to an officers' mess, if people here have experienced that, than roommates, in that it's sort of like a private permanent hotel with private rooms, dining areas, kitchens, libraries, and staff waiting on you. As a young person it's a really fantastic way to live, very efficient, and it fosters comm…

>I think what these co-living spaces are proposing is more similar to an officers' mess,

This is how a huge portion of Chinese youth lives.

Those places are called ant colonies in urban slang. Your experience there can range from good to horrid if you rent in such places.

Landlords of such places can be anybody from random uncle Liao, to proper property companies.

The company in the article "the Collective" has almost certainly copied the approach of bigger Chinese property companies.

Re: Silicon Valley thinks it invented roommates. They call it 'co-living'

#70

Post by mrighele »

rayiner wrote: post #15
humanrebar wrote: post #4

> By “convenient” they mean anonymous people on minimum wage clean up after you. Hey, let's not stigmatize the upper middle class actually hiring people to do worthwhile work. That's how jobs, small businesses, and economic growth happen. > As was quickly pointed out by numerous people this is basically a “bus”. Just, you know, without the poor people. Likewise, this is a good idea. People sharing rides in smaller bu…

> Hey, let's not stigmatize the upper middle class actually hiring people to do worthwhile work. That's how jobs, small businesses, and economic growth happen. It should be at least a little stigmatized. Having upper middle class people be able to afford lots of labor intensive services is a sign of an unhealthy society with too large an income gap.

Not having a middle class that can afford lots of labor intensive services is in my opinion even more a sign of a income gap, since it means that either you're very rich, or too poor to afford such services.
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