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PayPal shuttering its San Francisco office

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52 pointsnimbius69 comments

I think cities might be in for a huge reckoning. Most downtowns I have visited in the last year have been dire. Nothing's open, homeless everywhere, graffiti and smashed windows.

So many urban cores relied on a daily influx of white collar workers - not just their money, but even their physical presence. Places that used to be packed with rush hour commuters now have tent sites. Public transit have lost their critical mass of people that make you feel comfortable taking public transit. And it's hard to imagine there is a post-covid switch that someone will flip that will make cities "cool" again.

Head down south. Knoxville is lovely, Nashville is booming. Atlanta is... Atlanta.

True, this could specifically be a West coast thing.

I'm east coast for life, and the West Coast confuses me. If you do move to one of the lovely cities in Dixie, please don't vote or push for cultural changes until you're integrated.

Or do vote how you want. Your culture is as valid as the inhabitants. Act like Americans do and drive out the locals. Be the pilgrims.

Would you make this same argument for Americans moving en masse to a small country with a rich heritage, and promptly trying to erase it? It happened in the past, doesn't make it right.

My comment was a bit tongue in check, where no people shouldn’t act like Americans did. BUT you shouldn’t have to integrate with “Dixie” culture, and bringing your culture with you (and exercising your right to vote) is not wrong. Americans didn’t just “bring their culture”, of course, they slaughtered locals and enslaved them and destroyed their lives. Voting against gun violence or against Christian-centric moral laws is NOT doing the same thing to “Dixie” as American colonists did to the earlier inhabitants, and is -i would say- still respectful.

> bringing your culture with you [...] is not wrong.

Is if it sucks, and has demonstrably ruined other cities.

Demonstrably, American south was already pretty ruined by that metric. Lots of people don’t feel safe being in most of those places alone, lots of them feel their voice isnt heard or respected, and there’s rampant discrimination.

But seriously, “demonstrably ruined” is a very one note take and not really useful. People deserve to have their culture respected and it’s totally fine to take it with you. That’s the whole point of American individualism. It wasn’t supposed to be about guns and group think it was supposed to be self determination and the freedom to make your own path. People come to America for freedom, not because they want to conform. When’d we lose that?

> Lots of people don’t feel safe being in most of those places alone, lots of them feel their voice isnt heard or respected, and there’s rampant discrimination.

That sounds like most cities.

Go ahead and demonstrate it.

This idea that people voted for what the West Coast became makes no sense. There were always many issues in flux and various camps involved. Ronald Reagan lay the foundation for what is there today. And many of the disgusting wash outs that accumulate in the gutters fled from conservative parts of the South and Midwest when the mills and small manufacturing got outsourced. Take some responsibility for your refugees mister careful with cultural changes integration master.

> Head down south. Knoxville is lovely, Nashville is booming. Atlanta is... Atlanta.

I personally wish people wouldn't say stuff like this. The reason urban places are terrible is because of the people and attitudes there. As soon as they move somewhere else, they're just going to ruin that place with regressive policies and idealistic goals too.

I'm moving near Knoxville for family reasons, and I'll be voting properly, to not ruin the area. I also fully intend to buy the most annoying truck possible, doing my part to keep Cali refugees from finding it desirable. I do know people who moved to the area from California, but they fit in wonderfully and think it's great when the 8-year-old grabs the Henry to go squirrel hunting.

Edit: By keeping busibodies who can't mind their own business out of the area, I will be adding value. I'll still take the Tesla on road trips, don't worry.

Willing to bet that the kind of person who holds views like the commenter above also harbors racist views

> I do know people who moved to the area from California, but they fit in wonderfully

ie, white?

No, actually. I'm talking about people who move to an area wanting to change it, in my experience typically (but not always) rich, white, never gone hunting, that sort.

This is completely ideological, not racial. If you want to correlate those two, that's on you.

Knoxville is still nice, Nashville is already ruined by progressive policies.

Homeless pissing on the sidewalk in broad daylight, hassling people as you walk out of buildings, etc.

I wish people that moved to places like Nashville and Austin would rethink who and what they vote for.

>progressive policies.

What are progressive policies?

Cash free bail, hard drugs being decriminalized, anti-gun/anti-personal-protection laws.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

So those problems didn't exist during the "tough-on-crime" era?

Other countries have decriminalized hard drugs without drastic increases in crime, haven't they?

What anti-gun/anti-personal-protection laws are you referring to?

Other countries have very different problems than the US. I don't think that's controversial.

Try getting a gun legally in NYC. It's next to impossible. I can carry in downtown Nashville, no problem. You'd be a lot less likely to carjack someone if you thought they might have a gun, right?

Carjackings are up in cities in multiple states including Chicago, New Orleans, Kansas City, Mo, Louisville, Ky, and DC to name some of them.

Even the cities in the list above where it is easy to get a weapon are showing drastic increases.

Nashville does have some of the problematic population, but thankfully it's balanced by the rest of the state. It's also far better than my mid-size Western NY city.

> ruined by progressive policies.

I mean, I get it. SF's bad policies certainly encourage ne'er-do-wells. But if the other side of the spectrum is "run homeless people out of town and make them some other cities' problem" then color me unimpressed.

It's certainly not a prison of those two ideas.

As another user mentioned: cash free bail, decriminalizing drugs, those things have little to do with homelessness but do wreck the safety of a city.

Yes cities have homelessness, Nashville always had some, but it wasn't that bad, it's gotten much worse.

But from my perspective, the main problem is these people are now tweaked out in broad daylight, or shooting up, needles everywhere in the park.

These progressive policies incentivize people to act like this, which churns out more people on the street.

Focusing on jobs, mental illness, and rehab programs would be the best thing you could do for homelessness, not encouraging the behavior and building shanty towns.

Sure, but too many people take political credit for burying their crap in other's yards.

> As another user mentioned: cash free bail, decriminalizing drugs, those things have little to do with homelessness but do wreck the safety of a city.

It's worth pointing out that even in Western cities plagued by homelessness that crime rates are still pretty low. The crime per capita in Seattle or Portland is still only half that of Nashville. So I don't necessarily see a strong link between being tough on drugs/crime and managing homelessness. I still feel pretty safe in Seattle, but that doesn't change the downtown sucks now.

There's clearly an intersection here between zoning policy, availability of services, and leniency towards crime.

Is it really? If you report a crime in a major western city more than likely the police won't file a report. Also "crime per capita" is a very gross and broad statement.

> The crime per capita in Seattle or Portland is still only half that of Nashville

I want to see a source. The 80th time you see drug addicts with their genitalia hanging out, do you call the cops or do you ignore it?

Personally, I don't think that'd be something worthy of calling the cops on the 1st or the 100th time. Nobody's harmed by it.

If you meant you'd call the cops because you were worried about them, not to punish them, that's a bit more reasonable. Then, it's just that it's unfortunate that the cops are the only service that you can feasibly call when you're worried about someone in that way considering how their response would often be inappropriate.

This kind of sloppy thinking is why politics is such a sewer and problems endure. To start there are lots of different types of homeless. One of the biggest groups are long time working people who went bankrupt and can no longer work because of medical reasons or advanced age or both. Homeless populations are not generated by idleness or political movements but appear every time there is a major economic shock. This most recent boost to the homeless population are no longer dominated by young men but are the oldest and sickest group ever seen showing up in rescue centers. As long as the response is extreme simplification and criminalization of the problem then it will continue to escalate and ultimately we are all responsible regardless of how righteous our political stances have remained all through.

Actually I think your comment better represents sloppy political thinking and is part of the reason as to why we have these problems.

You ignore the no cash bail, drug decriminalization, and lax policing policies which don't just increase problems from the homeless, but others as well. Progressive policies incentivize criminal behavior, period.

Most homeless people have mental illness or drug problems. They don't need cheaper housing or to be ignored and stepped over, they need mental illness programs and rehab programs.

End no cash bail, end decriminalization (making it legal is fine), enforce public decency (no needles in the park, no shitting/pissing in the streets, no flashing people).

These things weren't problems in Nashville before progressive policies and relaxed enforcement.

Homelessness existed before then, it's not caused by homelessness, it's caused by leftists.

Be an adult and enforce the existing rules or we can't live in a society.

Where is the statistical evidence of this phenomenon?

Yes I've heard the talk points that Joe Rogan has said. But where is the evidence that these policies have led to these issues? Places like Texas have a high homeless population too, and many southern states have huge drug problems.

Do you need a study that being lax on crime will incentivize more crime?

It's a well known effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

Continue to vote for policies that make your city a hell hole.

I don't really care anymore, I don't live there.

The "criticism" section is on that article and has many objections. It is not accepted fact.

> It has also been argued that rates of major crimes also dropped in many other US cities during the 1990s, both those that had adopted broken windows policing and those that had not.[41] In the winter 2006 edition of the University of Chicago Law Review, Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig looked at the later Department of Housing and Urban Development program that rehoused inner-city project tenants in New York into more-orderly neighborhoods.[25] The broken windows theory would suggest that these tenants would commit less crime once moved because of the more stable conditions on the streets. However, Harcourt and Ludwig found that the tenants continued to commit crime at the same rate.

Still waiting on real evidence of causation.

Alright, people are all good, incentives don't exist, and there's no reason to enforce laws.

Have fun on the streets in your shithole city! Just remember it's made possible by voters like you!

Remember to step over the shit and broken glass, but don't worry the next person won't dare to shit in the same spot!

I don't really care if you believe broken window theory, I don't live around your policies.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"When the debate is lost slander becomes the tool of the loser"

Did I slander him? I criticized the policies he votes for and his thought process.

I did not slander him as a person, I criticized his way of thinking.

I did insult his hypothetical city, but we're discussing the cause as to why cities are shitholes, it's not slander when it's true.

He wants proof that being lax on crime perpetuates crime, yet ignores decades of basic criminology due to a wikipedia criticism section with no substance.

Words have specific definitions, not what you want to stretch them to to make your snarky point.

Or you could do what we used to: put them in mental institutions. But it's considered better these days to just have them on heroin and living in the middle of the street

I get it, Ronnie Reagan, that bastion of liberal woke culture... wasn't he the one who defunded most of those institutions?

Yes, he single-handedly did that. Amazing how he had the time.

High home prices are the leading cause of homelessness. Everything mentioned here are marginal at best, extremely counterproductive at worst. Lock up more people? What happens when they get out of jail, it's harder for them to find a job and a place to live. Where do they end up, back on the streets. Unless the solution is indefinite detention of people, I'm not sure how criminalization solves homelessness.

My hometown is as conservative as it gets, yet there are agressive panhandlers and homeless everywhere. Cities are not ruined by politics, or politicians, but by the people who live there. There is no 'greater force', or 'them' to blame.

Living in Knoxville and loving it! Chattanooga is also great!

* Great Smoky Mountains National Park nearby

* Municipal internet being worked on in Knoxville, already running in Chattanooga

* University of Tennessee

* Oak Ridge National Lab - 2nd fastest supercomputer

* Elixir, Golang, Rust, Clojure if you know where to look

https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/centur...

https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_(supercomputer)

I think this comes in waves. Cities create tension between different classes of people. Rich and poor, eventually the grind becomes enough that flight occurs, to the suburbs. Then after a period of time, the urban gets a revitalization and those same people who left move back in. It goes back-and-forth.

I'm not sure if this is the same thing. The move to the suburbs still largely tied people to jobs in downtown. If work from home becomes the new normal, what happens if major cities lose the entirely of their middle class?

Then it becomes cheaper, and the middle class can afford to come back.

People like living in dense areas near other people. Walkability, a multitude of restaurants and cultural institutions, etc. Unfortunately there is a limited amount of it so the rich take it, and the middle class struggle, and it becomes undesirable, and cheap then the middle class can move back. Repeat.

> I think cities might be in for a huge reckoning. Most downtowns I have visited in the last year have been dire. Nothing's open, homeless everywhere, graffiti and smashed windows.

Austin, Nashville, and Miami are booming.

Absolutely true.

I worked and lived in the SF Bay Area for nearly 30 years and I grew up in Marin. I left in 2016 and now own land in a rural area back East. I'm building my dream/retirement/Jeff Tracey Thunderbirds house and will never return to California. I still have most of my family in the SF Bay Area but they are going to end up "holding the bag" and lose out if they wait too long. My brother who has a house in Noe Valley worries me the most but I can't save him from himself.

I realized about a decade ago I could never retire in California due to the costs regardless of retirement investment. I also realized that what made Silicon Valley work politically, economically and intellectually is now 100% gone thanks to Woke.

I actually like urban cities. But I've lived in cities that ACTUALLY WORK - Taipei, Singapore, Tokyo, etc. And NO CITY in the USA will ever attain even 1/10th of what these cities achieve in terms of livability and cost - we don't have the cultural or national stamina to do what it would take (and NO green energy is not the answer). I've had hope in the past but clearly it's never going to happen.

And that won't change in my remaining lifetime (based on my grandparents' lifespans, I've got as much as 30 more years). If you've ever lived in "real cities" like these in Asia or Europe, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you need to travel and experience it. Honestly it's a lot like meeting woman overseas - you discover what you thought was normal absolutely is NOT nor remotely necessary.

The lower cost of where I live now has enabled me to make all the capital investments for my next companies (I've cofounded 4 since 2000 - all SW & HW based). Having the R&D "done/validated" before we talk to money means we keep far more ownership and are closer to release to market with time-to-market advantages.

This is completely impossible in California or NYC now. Doing this is pretty marginal in AZ or TX or OR or WA but sometimes doable in certain niches fields. It's a slam dunk if you have far lower operating and living costs.

Everything is changing - all the places you could MINDLESSLY assume would be good never will be again. A very useful historical analogy: between 1920 and 1960, the "electronics industry" (including the 1920s Radio Boom which was analogous in growth to all the booms in Silicon Valley over the last 50 years) were all centered in the NYC tristate area.

And then it was all gone - when it all moved to Silicon Valley and other western states. Nothing is permanent. And this type of migration is currently in progress right now. Again. But California is the "overpriced, antibusiness" location everyone is fleeing from. Just as in the 1950s-1960s, it wasn't necessarily clear where the new "hotspot(s)" would be. A lot of people were also sure that NYC would remain the center of electronics just as many people think California will always be the place for "Tech". They were wrong. The weather is not enough to keep people!

Question to tech workers who move out of SF, will you continue voting the same way you did before, which presumably led to the state SF is in?

Who knows what the new hotspots will be in a 50-100 years. I'd say Florida is going to be one of them. Business-friendly, amazing weather, accumulated wealth from all over NA (snowbirds).

Miami is going to be underwater in 50 years. I wouldn’t bet on south Florida.

I've lived more time in Taipei than any other city throughout my life and I love it.

That said, California's weather is amazing and while I can see some businesses "fleeing" in the near term, it will still be California and it's hard to imagine it not being a hot spot to some degree. People will always be drawn to good weather, mountains and coastlines.

> Most downtowns

... on the west coast.

I did a cross-country road trip a few months ago (the longest way possible, down the coast and across the south and then back up) from Seattle to Chicago.

Seattle is a total mess as you described. SF too. As I headed east everything seemed pretty normal. St Louis seemed the same as it's ever been. Chicago too.

>... on the west coast.

Yeah, because the homeless in the east turn into hypothermia cases.

You don't have to look far in Washington, DC, to see tents set up by the homeless.

You don't even have to go that far.

Seattle continues to be dead just about every night of the week, compared to the before times. Head north 15 miles to Lynnwood in the next county over however, and things have continued to remain really vibrant and busy. I'm talking about the difference of a restaurant having a few tables seated, vs being full and having to wait.

Several differences in policy stand out to me: vax passes, antifa, and the homeless.

We’ve had all three in NYC (depending on what you mean by antifa since outside of Seattle it’s mostly a non-existant scarecrow of right wing talking heads) and things are booming. Homelessness is pretty bad and crime has climbed, but we’re very far from the 80’s and 90’s, and the city is very alive with restaurants thriving. That said the changes due to work from home are far more devastating than anything else to specific Manhattan neighborhoods that relied on large workday populations that have yet to return, so I wouldn’t say it’s all roses.

Convert office buildings into mixed-use residential and retail. Cities are still a lot cooler than the suburbs.

This is only going to happen in the longer term if at all because the construction standards and rents for commercial buildings are so much higher. Most likely is that alternative commercial concerns find uses for these spaces at least in the short to medium term. It is also the case that a lot of manufacturing, light industry, fashion, and other such got pushed out by tech over time and could potentially move back in.

Retail's not in great shape, either.

London has done this by converting (in some cases, knocking down) industrial buildings into lofts, boutique hotels and co-working/co-living places.

New York is doing pretty solid, IMO. SF seems uniquely bad.

> An individual who commented on a post on the topic on the anonymous professional network, Blind, speculated that the reason behind the move could be San Francisco’s Prop C, which levied a tax upon any San Francisco business that earns more than $50 million in gross receipts.

That's lazy journalism. Given that this was the office space of a company they acquired, it could just as easily be that they're consolidating operations, or that the workers there preferred working remotely during the pandemic.

Reporting on anonymous speculation doesn't make it any less speculative.

This makes it look like TechCrunch has more of a political desire to attack taxes than to report on verifiable facts.

It's not attacking "taxes". It's specifically pointing out the flaws in a gross receipts tax system.

It affects companies with large receipts but low margins (mostly fintech companies, which is why Stripe and Square also leaving).

Taxing revenue? Yikes. Way to kill off a startup hub.

People can fo math. No one will take the pay cut it means to commute every day to an office if remote jobs are available. No one cares about the investors real estate depreciation.

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