Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan’s War on San Francisco Politics Has Only Just Begun
sfstandard.com
sfstandard.com
This won't win elections, so it wont happen (easily at least).
Truly I'm in awe of both the American republican party and the American democratic party.
When the corrective mechanism is nearly impossible to invoke, it doesnt really matter who wants what.
A good example is how 30 years ago the Democratic party was solidly identified as the champion of the "little guy." But since then, the working class has felt abandoned by the Democratic party and now somehow they look to the GOP and Trump for help. It would have been inconceivable in the mid-80s that a state like West Virginia would become a Republican stronghold.
E.g. I am a moderate on housing policy (except the finite resource of public open space), I am generally progressive on transportation policy (we need to dedicate at least 25% of streets explicitly to prioritize non-automobile traffic if we have any change at growing or even fighting climate change). I am moderate on public anti-social behavior (when you don't get punished for breaking into a random person's car, you suddenly create a pipeline to organized crime, we see by bippers dumping tourists luggage a block away after taking the items they can fence). I am a progressive on criminal justice reform (I am convinced by the data that our prisons are crimongenic, however, I think the focus should be on prison reform).
It's entirely plausible to have a nuanced view on all theses issues, but most people don't want to think too hard about things, and politics as team-sports is a much easier and instinctual concept when it comes to the principal-agent problem.
Is it good that we have to play "my team/your team" with politics? No, but it becomes a simple prisoner's dilemma. One team plays "always defect" and the other team... insists that not defecting is the right thing to do, and thus loses repeatedly.
https://theweek.com/speed-reads/1015258/the-pied-piper-strat...
The smart example is crossover voters helping Georgia's Brad Raffensberger win over his Trump-backed primary opponent.
And, I'm left feeling like there are so many "smart" people who feel that the best way to fix things is to rage on Twitter. Tan isn't doing just that: he is donating money, and fundraising, and getting involved in conversations. Why not run for office? The people he is criticizing are putting their asses on the line, and he isn't really risking much other than his reputation.
I thought this quote summarized an important insight for founders. It echoes a model from Amar Bhide's "Origin and Evolution of New Business" that startups have to hunt for situations where the probability of high value cash flows is uncertain because the situations with low uncertainty will be dominated by existing firms who can make substantially larger investments of money and effort.
Do you think people shouldn’t go to jail for being homeless? Ok left extremist.
Do you feel uncomfortable with outdoor drug use? Ok right extremist.
So as a result, you get people arguing about what a centrist policy is rather than just evaluating the policy for what it is.
Would SF be better if we had a large indoor space for safe drug use (like the armory)? Maybe maybe not - but let’s talk about that rather than dividing ourselves into teams based on imagined identity.
Their state's GOP would have to offer a political platform that appealed to the state's urban voters. That's it, it is not a mystery.
I'm American, and my politics lean slightly conservative. So you might assume I'd typically vote Republican, but I don't.
The reason is that IMO, the Republican party has gone insane in recent years. Their support for Donald Trump is an extreme but telling example.
Nowadays I typically vote independent. (This year I registered as a Republican so I can hopefully prevent Trump from winning the Republican primaries.)
Is this a reference to SFUSD's experiment to not allow any student to take algebra 1 before 9th grade? If so, it's not so much about changing curriculum, but preventing students from learning.
We promise, say VC's, that if you just get rid of one more $PERSON_GARRY_TAN_DOESNT_LIKE, everything will magically get better, despite no fruit coming from that tree so far.
I, the millionaire tech investor, am the real scrappy working class person, not like those supervisors, I really care about you. Also go SFPD.
I'm with you on the silliness of putting "effective" into all sorts of places where it should already be implicit.
But I do like the awareness among engineers and other practical people that any idea can be executed badly, many flawed ideas can be executed well, many good ideas resist successful execution for a long time, and many good-seeming ideas resist successful execution indefinitely. It's an everyday reality for some people, but to others it's a bizarre, suspicious-sounding line of reasoning, most likely invented to avoid doing the <all caps> obviously right thing </all caps>.
There's endless articles about how they've allowed criminality, they're too progressive, and so on, but I've had a tough time finding the actual specific policies that they've voted for.
The environmental impact report for the downzoning, written by and from the point of view of the proponents, states that the purpose of the action was to "stem the out-migration of current residents without attracting large numbers of new residents." So if you ever feel like SF's policies exist to enrich heirs while irritating newcomers, you're right.
That said, it confuses me how everyone talks as if issues like open drug use, the exploding homeless population, and property crime are recent issues in the city when I know the same problems existed during my time there. I saw people smoking and injecting drugs on the street and homeless people struggling with mental illness sleeping or relieving themselves anywhere. I had friends get mugged, my girlfriend's car window got smashed twice, and my roommate's Subaru got hot-wired, stolen, stripped and then dumped in Oakland.
I agree those problems and how common they are need to be addressed and that the government is doing a terrible job doing so, but it feels like they are framed as new and on the rise when I don't think they are. A year or so ago I looked at crime stats for the city currently compared to when I was there and they didn't seem hugely different in either direction.
On the specific topic you mentioned, I agree the comment was tone deaf and unhelpful, but its not particularly unusual or unexpected or only "recent", its one of the most common pieces of advice I'd hear about car break-ins. When I first moved to SF people were saying never leave valuables in your car, there were news reports and PSAs giving the advice. People already victim-blamed anyone that accidentally forgot a backpack or purse in the back seat.
I don't understand why the same brain-dead, empty platitude is getting discussed now as some new low or blunder. Yes its worthless advice from someone who should be trying to improve things, but the city has been saying the same things and being bad at their jobs in the same way for decades.
Am I missing discussion that includes the city's history with these issues and an inability to solve them? Are there better news or communities I should be following?
Does SF's largely transient population mean most current residents moved in recently while previous ones familiar with that history have left? Am I being a hackneyed "back in my day" hipster focusing on how a discussion "feels" instead of the topic being discussed?
Am I just wrong and SF is actually way worse off now than it was when I was there?
I once learned a lot about helping people with alcohol addition for a family friend. A few of the things I learned were: 1) labeling the person as an alcoholic will make them drink more 2) yelling at them and forcing them to defend themselves will make them drink more 3) any kind of aggressive intervention will make them drink more.
Unfortunately, attacking people generally serves to make them feel defensive and want to defend themselves. When we defend ourselves, that generally makes us dig in further.
I'll note that I hope that SF shifts in the direction of Garry's vision, and I'm in favor of the end outcome.
If Garry's goal is attention ("if you want to get an audience, start a fight") then attacks are a good method. If his goal is to change minds, I'd note that he may be more successful if he picks up a few books on helping people who have addictions, and borrows some of the methods from them (in short: make them first feel understood by you, and understand their hesitations and what makes them tick).
He could kind of treat it like he's doing customer development for a startup. Find people who've gone from one side to the other, talk to them about their journey, and so on.
The main point I'm hoping to emphasize is that attacking the other side like this to win may result in victory, but it won't result in peace.
I had quite the opposite experience. We held an intervention for my father, sent him to rehab, and he hasn't drank again in 25 years.
The bottom line is, there are prerequisites for maintaining a functional, prosperous society. Preventing crime, enforcing laws, and ensuring order and decorum in public spaces are among them. Several of the board of supervisors, through what is most generously described as extreme naïveté, have done their best to undermine these things.
Garry and other prominent people have taken it upon themselves to try to intervene. It appears to me that he is trying to draw attention to how SF has been degraded by its board of supervisors' disastrous policies. My anecdotal experience is that things have gotten so bad that even SF's leftist core is waking up to how calamitous their voting choices have been.
> it won't result in peace
You may be right. But what choice do we have? This is not a fight over which statues to erect. This is a civic emergency. People are dying on the streets and SF is spiraling into a doom loop. Drastic action is needed.
Throwing money at police has zero success stories.
In the real world, there are numerous examples that refute your suggestion as the best/only alternative to the current mess. For example, drug dealing and possession:
Singapore executes drug dealers. Tokyo sentences drug dealers to long stretches of imprisonment and large fines. Stockholm practices zero tolerance towards drug dealing and possession. Calgary imposes jail sentences for drug possession. The list goes on and on.
Otherwise, maybe try understanding WHAT people are saying and not just focus on HOW they say it.
How is that peace and understanding coming along in dealing with that street drugs/addiction problem?
How is that non-confrontation approach to politics on getting things done/getting effective decisions made?
Just Devil's Advocate, but in DC we have a confrontational approach and we still get nothing done. Nor do we get any effective decisions made.
My suspicion is that anyone doing anything other than collaborating with each other, is probably not getting anything real done.
I guess I'm just not sure any of what you said is unique to San Fran. Or even if the opposite of what you just said would yield any better results in San Fran. In fact, I'm positive that it won't, because that's not really a San Fran problem. That's the public discourse problem that we've been having in the US nationally for 30 plus years now.
Rather than continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results.
Doesn't he have something better to do with his time as the CEO of YCombinator?
Edit: To be clear, I don't care about the content of the tweets, I'm not taking a position on Tan's politics. I just can't fathom him spending time on this stuff.
Politics is important, and personally I think everyone up and down the significance spectrum should be allowed to participate without the kind of shaming you’ve just partaken in.
But I'm not saying ban it. I'm saying I expect people to exercise judgment about whether it's worth their time. Virtue in this case would be having the ability to do this, and choosing not to, in favor of more substantive contributions to the world.
Far left would mean you literally wouldn't exist. SF's problem is hyper-liberalism, not "far left". All of the actions being taken are band aids, while also maintaining the extreme levels on inequality that has put the city in the state that it is in.
Reducing policing and criminalization is always a good thing, but for it to be successful it has to be followed up with all the other (argubly much harder) tasks. Rent is skyrocketing, NIMBYism is alive and well, lack of social and housing support is still there. The war on drugs is alive and well.
SF can't decide if it wants to care about the 99% or the 1%. And until it makes that decision, it's going to continue being shit.
Also, a single (rich) city is not going to be able to counter the hyper-capitalist mentality of the country. These changes need to come from every level of government & not just a city.
May the painted ladies be demolished and replaced with supertall skyscrapers jam-packed with cheap apartments, maker spaces, and startup incubators!
(I say this with no sarcasm. SF should look like Manhattan; allow a few historic houses but most gotta go.)
Without value judgement: Manhattan doesn't look like this. The parts you're thinking of (midtown and downtown) are full of luxury skyscrapers; the majority of the "cheap" (by relative standards) housing is in the north of the borough in 6-10 story apartment buildings.
This guy clearly doesn't know Manhattan real estate. A skyscraper full of cheap apartments in Manhattan? Only in the fever dreams of the relative peasants with 6 figure salaries.
Besides, geotechnical engineering is your friend. A landscape of supertalls may not be the best way to go for San Fran's geography.
Paris has a height limit of 12 stories for most parts of the city https://www.archdaily.com/1002165/paris-reimposes-the-ban-on...
Hopefully the San Francisco BoS does their part and approves reasonable housing so it's not purely up to developers with SB 35/423.
Sure, we should have higher density apartments in more areas, but they'll probably still all cost the same, the demand is pretty unlikely to be met and landlords will continue to charge insane rents no matter what. They'll probably all be luxury apartments as everyone is looking to maximize their profits.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-allowing-hundreds-of-...
It's weird to me that the concept of induced demand is pretty common knowledge when it comes to road traffic, but mostly ignored in housing discussions.
Well yes, because we have decades of undersupply to correct! Of course a small step in the right direction doesn't magically fix everything. We need to build WAAAAYYY more, like to a vast overabundance, which capitalism unaided can never do because a builder will never start building a hundred rooms if that makes the market go down because that would ruin their profits elsewhere.
I would be surprised if, after there is enough supply, there is an "induced demand" effect for housing. Humans take like 20 years to go from born to needing a house, and most people don't choose to have children when they otherwise wouldn't because of cheap housing.
As a thought experiment, what if we treated immigrants to the country in the same manner... "What if existing US residents don't want to turn it into Mexico by allowing Mexicans into the country. Why can't the Mexicans go to Canada or Guatemala".
Allowing more housing to be built is key to allowing more opportunity in a vibrant and active community. Allowing more housing to be built reduces housing costs which lets people flourish. Dense urban areas obviate the need for a car, reducing greenhouse gasses and isolation. All of these are good things.
Instead of punishing residents by doubling their population density (more traffic, more crowded schools, etc), the mega-companies (the "great opportunity") should start hiring elsewhere. And of course we're already seeing that happening post-pandemic.
These companies need an endless supply of engineers, sales, and support staff to build out their ad-revenue engines, so that the execs can continue receiving their multi-million RSUs every year... and somehow the residents are cruel for not wanting their city and neighborhoods to change to accommodate them?
> Taipei 101 is designed to withstand typhoon winds and earthquake tremors that are common in the area in the east of Taiwan. Evergreen Consulting Engineering, the structural engineer, designed Taipei 101 to withstand gale winds of 60 meters per second (197 ft/s), (216 km/h or 134 mph), as well as the strongest earthquakes in a 2,500-year cycle.
> During construction, on 31 March 2002, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Taipei; two construction cranes from the 56th floor, the highest floor at the time, toppled. Five people died in the accident, but an inspection showed no structural damage to the building, and construction soon resumed