Comment by riccardomc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by riccardomc | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's because I am Italian, but I am honestly shocked by the lack of empathy and blatant superficiality of some of the comments, especially given the usual insightfulness of HN.

There's the guy who's been to Venice "multiple times" who's explaining why it would be better if it sank. Another one had a conversation at a "dinner party about vacation homes" and how are a bad investment. The other: "Venice is Atlantis of the 21th century", and finally "they shouldn't have built Venice on 118 islands in the first place".

Venice is a real city, home to thousands of people that are currently struggling with the damage that all of this caused. Their businesses are threatened. An entire city and region is on its knees. It is a site of undescribable historical and artistic beauty, a treasure that belongs to all mankind.

Seriously, some of you might have been too deep into your ARR and TSLA and lost the ability to empathize.

Maybe this news doesn't belong on HN at all.

Anyone who think Venice shouldn't have been built on islands in the first place is ignorant of history. Since it was built on islands in the centuries after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, it had protection that other cities didn't have. People migrated to those islands to be able to live in peace and not be bothered. People criticizing that decision don't understand the circumstances under which it happened.

Those islands protected Venice from roaming armies looking to sack something and its separation from the mainland and reliance on a trading network also eventually led to it becoming a maritime trading power.

Even if they had somehow been able to foresee that the city would slowly be sinking a thousand or more years in the future, they still would have chosen the protection and eventual trade wealth that the location of Venice brought. They wouldn't have lived to see the sinking of the city anyway.

It makes me sad that such a city is slowly dying and I hope to visit before it is too late.

Sorry, no, Venice isn't what I'd call a real city. It's a tourist trap. AFAICT, the only people who sleep there are tourists. The "locals" who service the place commute from outside of the town.

When I went there I was at first enchanted by it, but as I did what I normally and go looking the social differences I didn't find it for a while - it is all shops, restaurants and hotels. So I kept walking. It was only one I was well out of the older parts, and well away from the tourists did I see the sorts of things I visit foreign places to experience. Things like a coffin being lifted down from a house window using a motorised ladder, a grocer in a largish boat overflowing with produce, stopping every so often to let the local women on.

I have no idea how these real places are fairing, but I suspect much better because the walls of the canals were higher.

As for the tourist trap that is the heart of Venice - this will just add to it's reputation. Parts of St Marks are under water every day. Walking through a church, a very well maintained and elegant church at that, and sitting on a pew wait the salt water lapping an inch or so below your bum is a novel experience. I heartily recommend it to everyone.

But once crass the commercialism of the place begins to grate take a walk to the real Venice, where the locals are born, marry and die. It's gritty, real and nowhere near as pretty, but I remember my walk through there far better than I remember Venice itself. I do hope the people who live there are OK.

> Sorry, no, Venice isn't what I'd call a real city. It's a tourist trap. AFAICT, the only people who sleep there are tourists. The "locals" who service the place commute from outside of the town.

Sorry but no. The entirety of my mother's family still lives there, in the "city" city. A lot of people still live and work in the inner Venezia. There are some commuters especially from Mestre, but that is what you expect with any medium sized center with satellite smaller towns around.

Also "Venice" is quite misleading because aside the usual tourist destinations, the city has quite a large horizontal development inland. You contraddict yourself stating first that Venice is only a tourist trap with no locals and then stating that you saw local women buy groceries, and inviting people to visit the "real" Venice, which of course you saw, which of course has a resident population.

Your vacation-long experience might not necessarily reflect the truth.

> The "locals" who service the place commute from outside of the town.

Fascinating.

> It was only one I was well out of the older parts, and well away from the tourists did I see the sorts of things I visit foreign places to experience.

Fascinating, you walked out of historical Venice (famously surrounded by lagoon) that has been mostly the same for centuries? Must have been a wet walk...

>I have no idea how these real places are fairing, but I suspect much better because the walls of the canals were higher.

Fascinating, you were carrying around an altimeter and doing measurements on the height of the water. Was it high tide? Spring tide? Do you even know what a spring tide is?

>It's gritty, real and nowhere near as pretty, but I remember my walk through there far better than I remember Venice itself.

So really, you walked out of St Marks and ended up in "real" Venice? It's the most famous city surrounded by water on Earth, did you think you were going to come on HN and make up lame bullshit?

This is literally just your opinion of a several centuries old city based on a day trip. The epitome of superficiality.

Even if your unfounded assumption that "the only people who sleep there are tourists" was true, you don't let a symbol of western civilization sink. Do we let the Colosseum fall? Does someone live in there? What was your reaction when Notre-Dame was burning? Should we care at all about preserving memory? Are these just stones?

While I must admit that is hard to see beyond fake Carnevale masks and other trinkets, I am afraid that in your trip you failed to perceive the greatness of the place you were visiting.

American here, and we say this about our own cities, an example of which is New Orleans. While I understand your emotional plea, the vast majority of people who do not own homes on a disaster zone do not wish to subsidize those who do. Not everyone is keen to throw endless money down a golden toilet.

I disagree, that might be true for USA, but there are many other examples where the vast majority of the population does in fact subsidize intervention in less fortunate areas. Take the Netherlands for example, the struggle against water has been a collective, charitable effort for centuries, and finally harmonized at the state level: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directorate-General_for_Publ...

Not everything needs to be done in the name of individual profit.

As a side note, using the term "golden toilet" for New Orleans, or Venice, or pretty much any other City in a difficult situation, doesn't certainly convey empathy as my initial comment wanted to point out.

So to each his own I guess.

You don’t live in a disaster zone until you do. I’m sure you think you would have had the foresight to see that this was coming a decade ago, but I sincerely doubt you did. Hindsight is 20/20.

Many people probably don't know that people fled to Venice to escape the Goths. Since then its charm has been open to all, even those without charm. (We call them trogs.) Many of us understand your loss, and hope that MOSE will bring relief from these miseries.

It's not about empathy, it's about realism and cost/benefit.

I, for one, am not against assistance to those that are loosing their home, but that assistance needs to be the most efficient one. Remember, any efforts and resources being spent assisting this particular situation will be taken from some other issue yah needs them. At what point does one say it's not worth it?

Venice is a beautiful city full of art and culture, but at this point it's fall seems inevitable. It's sad, but it's the way of the world, things rise, flourish and eventually fall.

But it's YOUR city, why aren't YOU saving it? It's been known for ages that Venice will sink unless "something is done about it" but nothing has ever been done about it. As a tourist I've seen lots of amazing art and artifacts everywhere in Italy but a lot of it is left to wither. No one seem to be interested in taking care of it.

You could say the same about climate change. It's a collective mistake, everybody knows about it, yet we can't fix it.

It's YOUR planet, why aren't YOU saving it? As an earthling I've seen a lot of amazing nature everywhere on earth but a lot of it is left to wither. No one seem to be interested in taking care of it.

We are hopeless in long term thinking.

The Earth is a progressively changing place ever since its formation it's been changing how long are we supposed to try to hold Earth at "normal" "correct" levels? Climate change is most probably natural at maximum accelerated a slight amount it was always going to happen.

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." — Mahatma Gandhi

Fighting climate change requires global coordination. Saving Venice requires national coordination and therefore should be far easier to achieve.

"Italy has also invested billions of euros in a flood-protection system known by the acronym MOSE, but its offshore underwater dams have yet to be completed."

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