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Comment by mmanfrin | Hacker News Reader

I can generally empathize with most movements, even if I disagree -- one can take a look at the goal and see the reason, no matter how misguided. This is not one of those times. I sincerely don't get how Google/Tech are the targets of hate. I can understand people upset over them using muni stops, but breaking windows of busses in west Oakland, and getting mad at ferries?

Can someone explain this to me? Why is the anger directed at tech?

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The logic as I understand it is quite straightforward. Google could have it employees use public transit to serve the mass transit need. This is what is done in NYC and DC, for the most part. An interesting exception being DoD shuttle buses that run from e.g. the Pentagon metro stop to nearby other military offices (this despite the Arlington bus transit system being arguably superior).

I'm assuming Google's problem with that is that the public transit sucks over there, but it will never get fixed by building out an entirely separate mass transit system. On the other hand I'm not sure how you magically fix their mass transit just by wanting to be on those buses. Even if Google funds it I'm not sure how it's guaranteed those funds go toward fixing mass transit quickly (and sustainably).

TL;DR: They're mad because public transit would be better for everybody if Mr. Moneybags would actually have his cadre of Baby Moneybagses ride the public transit too. They're not Luddites though, they'd be fine with tech if it wasn't making a caste system.

This is clearly not the real problem. It's supposedly a symbol of the real problem, but I don't understand what that is. Supposedly something to do with entitlement and income disparity.

I was most able to understand this on an emotional level in this article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/12/17/251992...

Perhaps. I'd have to dive waaaay deeper than I have time to to sort our rhetoric from the underlying issues of contention. I'd be interested as to why they fixate on Google in particular for income disparity but it wouldn't surprise me either.

Tech employees are the San Francisco equivalent of investment bankers.

Perhaps a group or an individual fanning the anger towards Google is hinting at a payoff.

Large donations to certain charities or contracting certain builders for building projects "to help the poor" should do.

Protection money from the socialist mafia?

"Nice little team of programmers you have here ... be a pity if anything unfortunate happened to them, huh? Or to the nice buses they ride? How about a donation to the San Francisco Benevolent Society and we make sure that they're all ... safe."

Well, like the article says - Google Bus just became the physical target for their anger. What they're upset about is tech workers' wealth raising the cost of living in SF. Google is a big name even outside of tech, so Google's buses in SF are the "low hanging fruit" to vent anger towards.

For the record, I do agree that tech salaries are very high and the fact that most of them like to live in SF displaces everyone before them. I don't know how to fix this problem or even exactly who's at fault, but I definitely see how difficult this would be if I was not in tech trying to live in SF and watching landlords raising rent all around me and my current landlord trying to find ways to get me to leave. I think this problem is worth talking about and a solution should be pursued. I can't help but think a lot of this could be eased by having better public-transportation in the bay-area for everyone, maybe tech companies should all get together and help fund & extend BART faster into areas that may help techies not feel like they have to live in SF. I live in the East Bay because BART is less than 20mins away from my house. So a quick drive, ride on the train while watching Anime on my kindle then suddenly I'm on market-street. Good enough for me. Outside of commute hours, SF is about 45mins away from me by car. Close enough for anything I'd want to do in SF without actually living there.

BART stops at Palo Alto, Mountain View, Redwood/FosterCity, Danville, Milpitas, San Ramon and San Jose might help people spread out more instead of concentrating into SF.

Is that hyperloop project still planned?

Palo Alto and Mountain View would need to 1. Want those BART stops. If they're anything like the suburbs of Boston, however, you will get a ton of pushback from "higher-class" suburbanites not wanting the "riff-raff" from the city, who can't even afford cars, able to easily/cheaply get to their cities. 2. Allow re-development such that they have enough density/low-cost housing to support the number of BART riders needed to justify those new stops. Without this, there won't be any new housing for people to spread out to. 3. Have a consistent enough transit system from the BART stops, so that you can actually access the areas more than a 30 min. walk from the BART stops 4. Build up paths to allow people to walk to and around the BART stops. I've noticed in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, there often aren't sidewalks: if you want to walk on a major East-West route, you'll be doing it in the same lane as cars going 45.

yes, #1 is exactly the reason why BART didn't go very far down the peninsula when it was originally built. the extension to Millbrae and SFO was added decades later and at a huge cost.

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