The Rise of Remote, and Demise of San Francisco

SF native. Would be happy to see this sort of "tech" start departing. Most of these companies are marketing-driven and provide low or negative social value in the process of moving money from distant lands into their pockets while lobbying the city for "startup" tax breaks. Their disengagement with the community is shown in the guarded policies they adopt. The city is and should not be a giant AirBNB for workers to "frictionlessly" transplant into and out of, but that is an experience I often hear of. San Francisco does, in fact, have children and schools and public institutions that are not Dolores Park. It has an enormous city budget, far more per capita than most of the US. The problem is in the system we've arranged, not how much money flows through it.

There is no arguing that there is a public disturbance problem. But as a group, these folks are not the threatening ones. I would be much more concerned about energetic, apparently normal people who have an objectively criminal business plan: To break into vehicles, commit petty theft, or to perform their own victimization for the purpose of panhandling. These are people who profit off the chaos in small ways, with an immediate impact on public life. People who profit in larger ways run organizations that pump up their reputation but avoid lasting solutions, preserving a status quo of open wounds. The ill folks are screaming, in large part, because the conditions are getting to them, too, and they can't take it anymore.

I welcome companies and entrepreneurs that will struggle with these problems directly, engage with the political landscape and make the calls necessary to build a healthy coalition instead of blustering that someone else should arrange things for their benefit.

> How do I tell my employees who are suffering from PTSD from being attacked by crack-zombies right outside our office that they need to keep coming in?

Putting that line right before a couple hundred words about the increasing viability of remote work is, uh, something.

Wow that's a grim picture. I thought this issue was contained to a few distant areas.

This article is interesting, but not for the the reason the author thinks it's interesting. This fellow puts Alexandra Petri to shame.

Let us shed a tear for the humble bitcoin enthusiast entrepreneur, traumatized by "crack-zombies" lurking just outside his Tenderknob co-working space...