San Francisco Techie Says "Lower Part of Society" Should Be Segregated
slate.com
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He has a job, an education, isn't addicted to drugs, isn't violent and is generally a well-adjusted and contributing (more or less) member of society. All of that takes a lot of work, and merits some appreciation. How is that not "being better" than drug addicts, drug dealers, muggers or single moms on welfare, or even people who just watch reality TV all day? Many normal people put in a lot of work into being self-sufficient and productive, instead of relying on free money from others.
If you took the time to talk to "those people" you would likely find that more often than not they are victims of circumstance out of their control, plain and simple.
Just as much as the supposed "wizards" of new tech startups are in reality about 90% lucky and 10% self determined.
I have talked to "those people" (I'm from a far less privileged background than you think) and, while I do admit there are some good people who drew the short stick, I have also seen a lot of assholes. Not everyone who is poor is that way because they're "unfortunate", many of them actually have bad habits and work ethic.
Single mothers are, in many cases, that way because of making bad life choices. When you're poor and in a bad relationship (or in some cases not even in a relationship), kids aren't such a good idea (or at least that's how it seems to me). No one forces them to have kids (unless they've been raped, in which case I'm more sympathetic to them; how often is that the case?)
I'd be very interested to see a citation for this. You seem to be very knowledgeable on the topic, could you provide one?
Could you give some good examples of why a woman would have kids then wind up on welfare? IMHO the only 2 reasonable examples are raped women and widows.
Maybe people being stuck in shitty situations is a consequence of things beyond their control more often than your willingness to apportion blame is willing to admit.
One possible alternative is to deny them welfare, thus endangering the health of the children they care for, thus forcing the state to take the children into custody.
Financially that puts a burden on the state that now has to employ someone to take care of the children, whereas it was getting that for 'free' via the mother.
Also, being a better person should be a moral judgment not a judgement on their financial state.
EDIT: My point is that there are people from crappy families who still manage to get very far in life. There is such a thing as individual responsibility.
My point is that in between those two extremes exists the majority of homeless people who are mentally ill and who got to that place because of circumstances beyond their control. If you believe that the majority of homeless people fall into the lazy asshole category, then I'm sorry but you're delusional. We as a society should expend energy and resources fixing this problem at its root, and not just brushing it away into a new neighbourhood each time it becomes gentrified.
This raises an interesting question: what is the root (I'm genuinely asking)? It seems like a hard question along the lines of "what makes people mentally ill?". While I'm against permanent welfare, I wouldn't mind if my taxes went to curing these people and making sure they become functioning, productive members of society. I don't really know how or if we can do that.
There ought to be some basic ground rules that are enforced in public spaces, even if it takes horrible Guiliani-style police state tactics. Whether you're homeless or a well-off tech dweeb, you shouldn't be allowed to poop on the street, run around screaming at people, obstruct traffic, openly deal drugs or stolen goods. If you're doing any of these things, you should be instantly and forcefully removed, regardless of your circumstances. You can be pro-civility without being anti-homeless.
None of which requires police-state tactics to bring into check. But the fact that so many people from well-to-do half of the city seem ready to clamour for such tactics says, well, lots of things.
Aside from that, if we're supposed to condone people in our public places making them unsafe and unsanitary, what's the point of having them/paying for them at all?
> Guiliani should run for mayor of SF
You don't mean this because you don't know what it means to have the police force we have here. Also, we have street people too. So it turns out, 'your problems' doesn't just magically disappear when you get different mayor in office.
That some in the tech aristocracy in SF might consider him a viable candidate wouldn't surprise me in the least. And if you can enough people to join you at the polls, well, you more than deserve to have him.
He moved to SF in 2011 and maybe has a few million dollars from a founding few startups. That sure seems like a lot to people below him. That is peanuts to the people above him who run the city.
The simplistic two tier breakdown is a hindrance to understanding unless it is understood as the divisive control structure it is.
The homeless problem? Spot on, again. Perhaps - just maybe - the city of San Francisco should dedicate some of that time it spends trying to pass inane legislation (circumcision ban, I'm looking at you!) to trying to REALISTICALLY address the homeless problem. This might blow most of your minds, I know - but I've lived in Chicago, DC, NYC, and LA - and there are more homeless people here than those cities combined.
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And about why there are so many homeless… first of all, who cares, because having such destitution in the streets only serves to bring down the mood of the place… but if you must, have you ever considered that the explosion of homeless in SF resulted to the city’s expansion of homeless programs and shelters? In other words, your getting the cause and effect confused. The city attracted, and created by way of its hippy drug happy culture, a slew of schizo drugged out homeless people… and all the soup kitchens are just a responsive measure to all that.
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San Francisco. If there were an official city scent, it would be hobo piss. That's because hobos are everywhere, and piss is what they do for a living. Well, not just piss, obviously. They also drop so much excrement on the escalators in the city's train stations that they're sometimes rendered inoperable from the sheer volume of poo gumming up the works. How bad can it be, you ask? Well, the city had to call in a hazmat team to clean up one recent mess. There was just that much poop. On the escalator. The public escalator.
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[1] EG, "Tech Founder Complains About the Shithole City He's Forced to Make His Millions In". I won't link to it out of principle, but google will send you there. That was a different person, though. Surprise surprise.
The comments in the original FB post that trigged this whole thread were of a rather different sort than you are quoting above:
The difference is in other cosmopolitan cities, the lower part of society keep to themselves. They sell small trinkets, beg coyly, stay quiet, and generally stay out of your way. They realize it's a privilege to be in the civilized part of town and view themselves as guests. And that's okay. …
You can preach compassion, equality, and be the biggest lover in the world, but there is an area of town for degenerates and an area of town for the working class. There is nothing positive gained from having them so close to us. It's a burden and a liability having them so close to us. Believe me, if they added the smallest iota of value I'd consider thinking different …
Random guy posts unoriginal comment on intractable problem
Just reads like a article from The Onion.
Which is to say: who the speaker is, who he works for and what his position is matters, as does the venue in which his original rant was posted.
I've seen it written that a great many successful business leaders have sociopathic tendencies; I find it very hard to relate to the kind of person who would say such a thing from their position.
I can imagine the thinking behind someone who has nothing or very little and wants someone to blame, but this coming from someone who has so much? What could possibly be the motive?
It is sickening.
It's a valid question. If there were crazy homeless drug dealing drop-out trash hanging out in front of my office building, begging for money every time I passed by on they way to my car, it'd be unsettling.
Asking about why a given location is the correct place to put them is not a valid question. Unless of course you're a sociopath who doesn't actually care about the well being of anyone other than yourself...
This is a rather standard gentrification wedge issue rhetoric being regurgitated without understanding the background. At least the PR people got to him this morning to start working on fixing the damage.
He should have seen 5th/6th and mission in the 90s! Not to mentioned the tenderloin during the same period.
The same luck that, flipped the other way, probably accounts for a great many of the homeless people that they bitch about.
To me a discussion about the homeless doesn't entail a discussion about the "working class" or vice versa.
Just a little confused here...
I guess your confusion stems from the fact that working class typically means manual labourers rather than intellectual labourers in common parlance. In this vein, one would see software developers as middle class, due to their relatively high income. However, this income is more a function of a temporary shortage of developers, rather than anything intrinsic about software developers.
I think he is right to use the term working class, but completely wrong in everything else he says.
It may not be glamorous, but it puts them firmly in the middle class.
Developers are upper middle class like doctors and lawyers, and hiring shows the same tendencies to networking: wherein its not what you know, but who you know to get work. Look at all the people on HN who brag that they don't apply for jobs.
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/cape-cbd-is-honey-pot...