SF Supervisors Move to Ban Workplace Cafeterias | Hacker News Reader

SF Supervisors Move to Ban Workplace Cafeterias

sfexaminer.com

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Maybe office workers prefer not to have to run the gauntlet of feces and hypodermic needles, just to buy a sandwich.

"San Francisco Man Steps on Hydodermic Needle, Demands Action"

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/on-air/as-seen-on/SF-Businesses-W...

"Junkies Take Over Corridors Of San Francisco Civic Center BART Station"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gT5NULvRSk

"SF Crime, Squalor Scares Away $40 Million Medical Convention"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLcoOIDJBsc

SF Mayor: 'There's More Feces ... Than I've Ever Seen'

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/SF-Mayor-Theres-more-f...

Maybe those things will get addressed once people have to run a gauntlet to buy a sandwich. It's much harder to ignore in an ivory tower.

Maybe the city should directly address those things instead of hoping that a bought-out law crafted for special interests will magically fix it for them.

Replace "people" with "politicians" and I'll give you an upvote.

At the risk of nit-picking the humor out of your comment, I'd say the city's politicians already do run that gauntlet. City Hall is adjacent to the open-air drug market known as the Tenderloin, and many members of the city's transient population frequent the park in front of City Hall. Also, the closest BART stop (Civic Center station) is arguably the stop in SF with the most persistent hygiene issues.

Yeah and you can bet your ass those politicians are hopping in an Uber and sailing right by it behind tinted windows...

Unless you live and work in the same building, there is no ignoring this stuff in SF.

I don't see in FIDI. Not sure how SOMA is

The board of supervisors doesn't have a cafeteria and yet they have no problem ignoring it

I don’t think Breed is okay with this display of overbearing government. This outlsndish and hope it wakes people up to the misalignment between govt and the needs of the population at large.

Breed comes from the moderate wing, like most of SF's real leadership.

Aaron Peskin and his allies like Safai and Kim... I don't know what to call them. They style themselves progressive but really all they do is pander to various constituencies across the spectrum of SF politics. Their policies are inconsistent and altogether ridiculous. They're a reflection of our absurd national politics--reactionary, pseudo-intellectual, anything but pragmatic and results oriented.

Kakistocracy seems to sum them up

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy

I think you're right. I hope the citizenry prove her right and re-elect her in 18 months. But I can already Imagine Peskin and Kim conspiring against her. Those two are not there to serve "the people" they only serve very narrow interests and derail the city from consistent policies to better it for everyone.

The city government here is terrible. We’ve gone well past the point of of tolerance here. There are tons of violent, aggressive, tweakers and thieves the city does nothing about. I feel for the mentally ill and they deserve help. But there are even more that are just crackheads and tweakers who just don’t want to live in society and prefer living on the street. We have got to start enforcing the law and driving those criminal types out of the city or put them in jail. I can’t even go to the Safeway down the street without feeling unsafe. I have to walk my wife to her car every day because there have been so many creeps and weirdos in our garage.... cops refuse to do jackshit about trespassing. Why is such a shithole so expensive? Can’t we pay a little more and just solve this problem? The status quo cannot be allowed to continue.

To the extent that discouraging this practice is useful, a tax seems more sensible than a zoning ban; a zoning ban, by effectively grandfathering incumbents, is basically a barrier to new entrants competing (if on-site cafeterias didn't have a business function, firms wouldn't spend money on them) with incumbents (whether for talent, or on productivity if food in-house contributes to that.) A tax can internalize whatever negative externalities are seen from the practice in a manner which neither prohibits use of existing investments nor creates an unfair preference for incumbents.

It's Peskin. Zoning is his weapon of choice.

The entire point of the law is to extract economic rents for incumbents at the expense of newcomers. It's been the modus operandi for the Bay Area for a long time. Adding a tax to incumbents doesn't do that. Besides which, I doubt that the legislators involved even know what deadweight losses are, let alone why they're an important part of the argument for Pigovian taxes.

> The entire point of the law is to extract economic rents for incumbents at the expense of newcomers.

While I don't (as indicated in my other comments in this thread) disagree with the idea that that is a probable ulterior motive, the overt purpose is to deal with negative externalities imposed by in-office cafeterias. I'm pointing out that, to the extent that the overt purpose is a real issue, there are much better ways to address this.

Instead of quibbling about the choice of means in social engineering, maybe the first question to consider is whether such interference is a legitimate power of government.

It is a legitimate power if the people who form the government consented to give the government the power to write zoning laws. The real question is — when did we consent to be governed by these dopes?

In the US zoning laws are an early-20th-century creation, initially ruled unconstitutional but eventually unleashed by the Supreme Court in 1926 under the cover of police power. [1] However police power was not conceived so broadly at the time the first 13 States consented to the US Constitution (zoning regulation would have been seen as covertly taking one's property without compensation).

As for elections, they are not unusual; the crux is what kind of powers are properly delegated by the electoral body to people in this local/city government? unlimited use of zoning laws for any purpose?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_of_Euclid_v._Ambler_Re....

Vote in local elections. If you want your voice heard, you have to take the time to speak.

The question “is this a good way of serving the overt goal” is easier to answer without running into clashes of first principles than “is it a proper role of government to internalize externalities”.

It may be the case that “do in office kitchens produce a net negative externality” may be as easy to answer as the first question, but it at least seems to me that the answer is less obvious.

False alternative.

Maybe it is none of the city government's business whether a corporation provides on-premise food to their employees, regardless of what you may imagine consequences might or might not be to the aspirations of other people and corporations.

However, if the standard is "internalize externalities" then anything goes. There would be no limits to interference by local government.

I think you just illustrated my point that it is much easier to answer the question “is the proposed policy a reasonable way of acheiving the stated goal” without running into clashes of moral first principles than it is to answer “is the proposed policy a legitimate function or government”.

Which answers your upthread question about why answer the former question without first addressing the latter question.

> However, if the standard is "internalize externalities"

I'm not saying that is the standard, I am saying that this policy can readily be rejected without even reaching that question.

You're providing a textbook example of pragmatism -- the rejection of principles in the name of arguing about minutiae and acting on the range of the moment, refusing to consider first principles in the name of expediency.

When Trump idiotically threatens tariffs on Canada and Germany, it should not be an opportunity to debate how much, on what products, or if there are easier ways to destroy free trade -- the proper question is: is that a legitimate power of the executive? (hint: it is not)

> You're providing a textbook example of pragmatism

Thank you.

> the rejection of principles

Pragmatism does not in general, or here in particular, involve rejection of principles. It may reject arguing about abstract principles when there is a simpler and less divisive means of addressing an issue.

> When Trump idiotically threatens tariffs on Canada and Germany, it should not be an opportunity to debate how much, on what products, or if there are easier ways to destroy free trade -- the proper question is: is that a legitimate power of the executive? (hint: it is not)

We could argue all day about whether you are right or whether it is, despite not being a legitimate independent power of the executive under the Constitution, nevertheless a statutory power of the Executive under laws duly passed by Congress under unquestioned commerce clause power—this isn't regulating intrastate transactions that might distant impact interstate or foreign trade, but directly regulating foreign trade—and, as such, a legitimate executive power.

Or we could just agree that it's an idiotic counterproductive policy regardless of whether or not it's within the President's legitimate scope of legal power.

Natch.

SF should ban private cars, because it deprives public and commercial transportation of customers.

SF should ban owning your own apartment, because it deprives landlords of rent.

SF should ban e-commerce purchases, because it deprives local retail stores of sales.

SF should ban cleaning your own home, because cleaning companies need more business.

The first three would create a pretty interesting urban space.

Banning home ownership so that landlords benefit is not interesting, it's extremely regressive and morally wrong.

There are other cities around the world that do 99-year leases or where the state owns the land and it seems to work okay.

Huge difference between landlords and the state.

In virtually every case those leases are “customary” only and can and are extended and renewed often on a rolling basis often without even charge.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

It seems that ultimately this just subsidizes the commercial real-estate owners.

1) Force companies to not have free cafeterias

2) Workers have to buy lunch from local businesses

3) Restaurant Location becomes more valuable given the large number of workers forced to find lunch and buy it.

4) Raise rents on restaurants because space is now more valuable, since it is basically subsidized by nearby tech companies.

5) Restaurants pay higher rent, landlords make more $$, due to California Property Tax policy, landlords do not have to pay proportional additional property tax on their now more valuable property.

The reason something like this is considered speaks to the power of commercial real estate to shape policy for their own benefit.

Regulations almost always cause some sort of rent seeking behavior. Sometimes they are negligible in comparison to the greater good gained from the regulation. I don't think this is the case here.

There would never be rent seeking behavior without regulations. The natural state of mankind is perfect harmonious cooperation without the spectre of rules agreed upon by communities.

> If Princes and Monarchs could but preserve this simplicity, every creature in the world would submit itself to them; Heaven and Earth would be in mutual accord, and shower down sweet dew; the people would need no laws, but live in harmony of themselves.

since it is basically subsidized by nearby tech companies

Well, those tech companies are subsidized by their own customers and investors. Although this is the first time I've heard the act of people paying for goods and services described as a subsidy. I guess I subsidise the supermarket every time I buy some milk.

The bit about local restaurants losing business seems like a pretty thin fig leaf over a law that's really about taking tech employees down a peg.

I don't live in the bay area, so maybe someone can fill me in. How is it supposedly so gentrified that nobody but software engineers can survive, yet local politicians feel comfortable doing things like this? Who actually lives in the city?

Rent control has bifurcated housing costs. Those who have lived in the same spot for 15+ years and/or who own their property have housing costs much lower than people who have moved this decade. A new lease on a 1 bedroom probably costs $3500 now, but could be <$1000 if you've been here for a while.

"Progressive" SF politicians like Aaron Peskin pander to low-income renters and kowtow to NIMBY homeowners who don't want new housing built, while vilifying newcomers. "These evil techies are gentrifying your neighborhood - elect me to stop them."

(Of course, the cost of living isn't just housing, but it's also the biggest factor in your assumption that "nobody but software engineers can survive.")

The area people are talking about is mainly Civic Center / Tenderloin. It’s the only are left in the city with real public housing, and it’s in the middle of the city. As a result of the zoning, it’s hard to gentrify. So what the city had been doing is giving huge tax cuts to companies to move into the area. But they move in and create a ivory tower that no one ever leaves. You see extreme poverty next to extreme wealth. The streets are filled with drifters, day hookers and an open air drug market and the people in the towers get chauffeured to and from work.

Banning workplace cafeterias is a good start, but really the solution they should be discussing is banning workplaces.

The workers at tech companies like Twitter and AirBNB are known to have access to working in their own buildings, which deprives nearby cafes of the dollars they could be spending buying a single espresso and then working for 9 hours.

Don't joke. Local politicians can decide to take private land and buildings. See Kelo v. City of New London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

Further reading at that Wikipedia link leads to the fact that California has outlawed such takings covered in the Kelo v. City of New London case.

> tech companies like Twitter and Airbnb, which are widely known to have access to dining in their own buildings, depriving nearby restaurants of the dollars usually spent by nearby worker

Only in Soviet Russia... and Silicon Valley can you see nonsense like that.

> Peskin said, it’s a hope to mitigate the “app culture” of workers who [...] dine in their places of employment [...] depriving them the pleasure of mingling with the rest of The City.

Uh, thanks, I guess.

It's funny, but sad, watching people trying to kill the golden goose by a thousand cuts.

This is the thing. If they succeed in fixing the "problem" of tech workers, SF will end up like it did in the 1970's where people were more people moved out than moved in.

For the record, in Russia a company is actually required to have a workplace cafeteria once they have more than N workers employed.

"Things that happen in Silicon Valley and also the Soviet Union": https://twitter.com/atroyn/status/1014974099930714115?s=21

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17471324

Won’t this make it harder for newer businesses to compete for hires? Ie ones that haven’t already built kitchens in the office? It’s a nice benefit to be able to grab a free lunch (saving thousands a year) or take a to-go box home.

Wouldn't be surprised to find if you dig deep enough you'll find this motivation behind the scenes promoting the proposal (though it probably originates in the restaurant industry.)

Isn't this the same as the Broken Window Fallacy?

They want to force people to use economically inefficient services, small restaurants versus large cafeteria, to create more economic "activity". Which would be analogous to celebrating the waste of breaking a perfectly good window, because fixing/replacing the window generates economic activity. Is that fair?

This is under the (I think reasonable) assumption that a cafeteria designed for 500-1000 people is probably more efficient than the dozens of smaller scale restaurants needed to match that supply.

I trust that I have access to higher quality, healthier food at work than I would if I had to buy lunch at a restaurant. Employers have a stronger incentive to prioritize long-term health in conjunction with short term satisfaction. Restaurants have an incentive to overuse unhealthy but addictive/inexpensive ingredients like salt/sugar/fat to maximize short term pleasure.

Get Aaron Peskin voted out in 2020, and half of this city's problems will go away.

https://sfbos.org/sites/default/files/FileCenter/Documents/3...

If you live or work in that district, you should actively support whoever his opponent is.

I'm very much looking forward to his departure, but isn't he term-limited again anyway?

Will they also ban ziplock bags, to prevent workers from bringing their own lunch?

It is plastic waste, after all.

So, can a company buy/open a restaurant nearby and provide free food for employees while also being technically open to the public?..

Do they think that workplace cafeterias summon fully-prepared meals from the aether? Those places employ cooks and purchase wholesale food just like restaurants do. FFS, San Francisco.

Fist they came for the plastic straws and I said nothing because I don’t use straws...

also an effort to fuck catering companies or contingent workers who work in these large cafeterias. what an idiotic and arbitrary restriction of the fundamental human right to eat where/what we want

Who cares about them when we can vigorously virtue-signal by shitting on tech workers?

Maybe San Francisco should consider banning restaurants to protect the jobs of cafeteria workers.

This reminds me of the recent op-ed where the guy suggested replacing libraries with Amazon. Just a really dumb idea that is needlessly protectionist.

I really wish someone challenges this all the way to the Supreme Court. Current composition of the court gives me hope that such stupid laws are struck down.

Because if this ban is allowed to stand, what is to stop the government from banning other perks - gyms, shuttles, massages etc.

Sounds like a great way to drive businesses away from your city. Penny wise, pound foolish.

I never understood the point of an on-site cafeteria in a centrally located urban office anyway. It makes loads of sense in the spread-out suburban 20m to the nearest Chili's hellscape that is the ever pleasant south bay, but you really don't need it in SF. I feel like a lot of it was a sort of "us too" copying of Google/Oracle without fully understanding why it was done in the first place.

This is an awful idea. This will just hurt blue collar workers employed in those cafeterias. Why is our city government so ineffective and asinine?

I wonder if they'll be allowed to order a pizza.

What if I make my own lunch and bring it to work?

They should just tax employees like any other benefit, most countries do that if you have subsidized meals you pay the value of the meal in tax.

E.G. if you ate $400 worth of meals in a month and you have an income tax of 25% you pay $100 in additional income tax. It shouldn’t be any different than getting a company car or any other material benefit.

Soon there won't be any housing here for restaurant employees anyway, so it won't matter. We've kind of already crossed that point with most folks commuting huge distances.

When city's crab mentality meets corporate crab mentality...

Hey! I've been trying to get in touch with you (I'm doing some research on Retail). Can you drop me an email? My email: jimmyliu@berkeley.edu, thanks!

Can't wait until they want to build a new hospital and they are barred from adding a cafeteria.

from what I understand, there is a similar measure underway in Mountain View as well

Slightly different. MV measure bans cafeterias from being free, not from existing, They are just limited to subsidizing food cost to 50%. SF just outright bans cafeterias.

Seems absurd - Can I still bring my own lunch?

Peskin is indirectly blaming "techies" for the fall of Retail.

This proposal reminds me of nationalism, in the way he talked about, "...the rest of us[.]"

We're seeing Trump trying to use protectionism, smothered with a thick gravy of nationalism, to solve the macroeconomic woes of the US industrial sector. Trump's foolish effort is failing.

Peskin also clearly does not have a viable solution. Someone needs to help him, and the City, get a grip on reality.

WTF, I hope Breed nixes this nonsense. What next, ban me from bringing in my home cooked meal because it deprives some hole in the wall which uses subpar ingredients from making a living?

Ban buses, it deprives Uber and taxi drivers a job.

This is utter socialist nonsense.

What are the effective limits on these local tyrants?

I've heard many people watch movies at home instead of going to the theaters. Surely these home screens could be eliminated with some clever zoning restrictions.

You're totally right. All of those movie theaters that were heavily subsidized by billions in public money or tax cuts based on the promise of providing foot traffic and value to adjoining businesses should have their day!

Incredible... a meaningful risk of doing business in SF is the exposure to socialist / progressive extremists in the city government.

Not an SF only phenomenon. Things equally disruptive of property rights happen all around US. America actually scores less on property rights than most hardcore "socialist" countries.

Many Chinese coming to USA are astonished to see a "capitalist" nation being so dirigistic and dismissive of property rights.

Mountain View is doing the same.

The responses to this are genuinely some of the funniest posts I've seen on this website. The amount of gymnastics people are doing to avoid mentioning that these large companies have gotten millions/billions of handouts from the state and city and are therefore in a different class/category of business than your average brick and mortar shop.

So I'll clarify 90% of the detractors comments here: "To the people of San Francisco: Fuck you, got mine. The fact that i lied about the nature and value of our economic contribution to the community and you bought it puts you at fault. I won my ivory tower through any means necessary, and therefore it's immoral to suggest that I in any demonstrable way cooperate to improve anything outside if it. Again. Fuck you. Got mine. "

You can skip all the comments now! :)

But London Breed is amazing... right, .. guys?

Safai and Peskin are members of the "Progressive" faction, not Breed's "Moderate" faction. This proposal is classic Prog posturing. I doubt Breed is on board with it.

What does London Breed have to do with this? It's like if in 2009, forty Republican senators proposed something and you blamed Obama for it.

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