Joseph Malchow: Those Nonsensical 'Google Bus' Attacks
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
This being said, why does paying collectively $14.5B in taxes mean that you are exempt from attack if you commit a societal wrong? I think this is extremely backward logic, that perhaps Mr. Malchow by which feels threatened -- the belief of "why would there be a world where you can't pay your way out of being a good member of society?" This being said, I do not believe that Googlers and the like are necessarily perpetrating some great societal misdeed, but Malchow's argument is highly problematic.
These people buy homes, shop in the local economy, they are doing what our country was meant to be like. But they are apparently an easy target, because real targets are too hard to get to.
Then I spent six weeks abroad with people from all over North and South America. They knew about the protests and thought that the point was raising awareness about growing income inequality. They were totally right. Upon returning home and making an effort to meet some of the organizations that are involved with the protests they explained that while some media outlets and groups who have co-opted their movements are hateful towards new comers, the initial point was to raise awareness about issues.
While this is technically true, I think it's worth pointing out that WhatsApp doesn't work without those telcoms and all their regulatory, pricing and spectrum advantage. Frankly, WhatsApp did the easiest part of sending a message. That's not to say what they did was easy or trivial, but it's not as hard or expensive or labor intensive as installing and maintaining a wireless network.
WhatsApp did do something pretty useful though: they've shown everyone how overpriced SMSes are.
They always forget to mention how so many people like myself have had to totally cut off contact with their family, watch friends and family die(gang and drug related murders, overdosing, suicide), how often we struggle with depression because we can't figure out what made us anymore deserving than the people we left behind, and have issues dealing with money in general- luckily I'm on the "save every dime" side of that spectrum.
If hard work is all you need then I know a couple hundred people who should be living in mansions.
The worst thing about the wsj article was that it didn't even examine why the piñata people were annoyed.
It's perfectly rational to be ticked off at the people who are making your rent go up 200%. Even though breaking bus windows and having whack a piñata parties doesn't seem like a very helpful solution to your problem.
But since it's the WSJ, we got mindless liberal bashing instead.
If they wished, they are free to continue renting at the same rates as always, and in fact are the ones "making the rent go up", so I'm not sure how they're managing to escape similar criticism here.