Talk Elections

San Francisco is not a particularly nice place. If any more proof is needed, one only has to look at the Facebook postings of the startup techies who think they're God's gift to the world because twenty people have downloaded their app from the iTunes store.

Greg Gopman's rant (http://valleywag.gawker.com/happy-holidays-startup-ceo-complains-sf-is-full-of-hum-1481067192) went something like this...




Remind me again how much better 90% of what Silicon Valley has done has made my life or anyone else's better. These are people who use other people's money to make "apps" that no one wants to use, that generate no revenue, and that produce no returns for shareholders. Find me a tech company that has actually had positive earnings per share over the past year. Find me a tech company that has paid a dime of earnings to their shareholders. Explain why anyone outside of the Bay Area should give a crap that you coded an app that lets people arrange for helicopters to take them to work because the icky, unwashed BART workers are on strike since your presence in the city has made living there unaffordable for them.

The media loves to demonize the real economy - oil, coal, natural resources, retail - things that provide tangible goods and services to people and create jobs for everyone from the rich to the poor. Maybe instead of protesting McDonald's and Wal-Mart for not paying their poor, unskilled workers as much as you'd like, or protesting oil companies that provide entry to the middle class for thousands of people who never set foot in college, liberals ought to protest the tech industry that creates zero jobs for anyone who didn't go to Stanford or major in computer science, produces zero shareholder value, provides no beneficial products or services to the economy as a whole, and that literally wishes poor people didn't exist.

Interesting complaint to make on an internet forum.


Sure, no one uses technology from silicon valley...


Apple is either number one or two in profits in the world.

Jesus, these yuppies ought to try to walk in downtown Atlanta and see what a homeless problem really looks like. I remember being quite impressed by the mannerisms and overall attitudes of the homeless in SF (maybe because they receive stipends and have shreds of human dignity remaining). Plus, SF is basically perfect for homeless people, considering its reliable climate.

"The real economy" as a phrase should be taken out back and shot. Or alternatively learn something, anything, about the most basic economics and why tech companies making a lot of money is a good thing.

People mad that they can't get $30/hour to do unskilled labor these days; take it out on those who got an education and applied it.

If you're not welding steel you're yuppie trash.

Digital tech development tends to be overhyped imo, but it's not like it doesn't add value.  And this is the comment of one dude we are talking about right? I'm sure there are others in SF with those views but at least it's not like other cities that are actually trying to ban homeless people from large sections of the city.

Is it though? Structural change is a hard sell when we have a political economy that allows the prosperity that flows from productivity gains to be monopolized by a few while the harm caused by such structural change is allowed to be severe without any attempt to provide a public remedy.

ITT: neoliberal circlejerk

It's hard to have much sympathy for the tech industry when I've been bombarded with the idea that they're saviors for ages. Filth like this doesn't help:
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Did you not read my post? They DON'T make a lot of money. Zynga isn't making a profit. Neither is Twitter. Neither are 90% of the BS apps that these guys are duping angel investors and VC into forking over money for. I'm not talking about Apple and companies that actually make sh!t and do sh!t. I'm talking about the joke world that is the typical Valley start-up.

To add to what Indy said, the tech sector is having ridiculously overvalued companies even when the firms are making money. Yeah, Microsoft, Apple and Intel have transitioned to normal valuations, but then most places aren't like that. Amazon's P/E ratio is something like 1200 :o

Again, Amazon is not what I am talking about. To those who didn't bother reading the article (apparently everyone ITT), I will elaborate on what this guy actually does.

He is the founder of AngelHack (http://angelhack.com/#) which organizes "Hackathons" for web developers. What have these hackathons produced?

Something called Blurpi (https://angel.co/blurpi), which basically amounts to "a fun way to express your spirit for events, passion for causes, and love for brands. Snap a picture and make it instantly unique with a logo of your choice." Because taking a picture of something and then adding a logo to the picture is so totally hard you guys! If not for Blurpi, we would have no way of doing this! They basically invented the ability to add a logo to a photograph! They are masters of the universe!

And then there's Tennis Buddy (https://angel.co/tennis-buddy-app-1), which allows you to "find a stranger to to play tennis with you in your area." Because no one has ever been able to find a tennis partner before the invention of Tennis Buddy. Joining a league at the country club didn't exist. Asking a friend to play tennis with you didn't exist. We owe these people our eternal gratitude for making the world a far greater place than it would have been without Tennis Buddy. How dare those disgusting poor people in San Francisco dirty up the place when they can't ever hope to make as vital a contribution to the world as the people who invented Tennis Buddy.

These people think what they're doing matters and it doesn't. They think they're "innovators" when all they are doing is creating redundant apps that fulfill no need that isn't already being met by something someone else already did. I pity the fools whose money is paying for these people to pretend to be doing something productive.

Obviously, this is an unproductive complaint about the homeless problem in San Francisco and this guy is a monster.  But, the solution isn't scapegoating the annoying rich people. 

But, let me remind you residents of Mt. Pious, homelessness does actually create social problems that annoy people.  It's annoying to have a homeless man stink up your subway car.  It's annoying to have people panhandling on the streets.  It's annoying to get mugged or stolen from.  Those are legitimate annoyances and I think that's what the guy is responding to.  If you went to downtown San Francisco or Portland, Oregon most of you would be annoyed too. 

The solution though is not to banish these people.  What we ought to do is provide mental healthcare, drug treatment and a better quality of life for poor people.

Also - shouldn't the headline read "San Francisco tech nerd"? I'm not sure why you're taking your apparent hatred of an entire industry and assuming this one guy is representative.

(And yes, homeless people can be annoying, I don't think anyone's disputing that. No-one likes getting bothered by some crackhead looking for money. Not that that makes the guy's rant any less gross).

His San Francisco tech nerd friends are as hateful and contemptuous as he is. (http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/11/greg_gopman_facebook_post_homeless_ruining_san_francisco_should_be_segregated.html)


And I don't have hatred for an entire industry. I'm just circumspect enough to see how ludicrously overvalued it is financially, how nonsensical a lot of the ventures that money is being spent on are, and how absurdly inflated the egos of these people are when most of them have about as much positive impact on their city and the world as the homeless people they hate so much.

Actually it should read "San Francisco tech CEO".

Many things from music to books and art can be made 'virtual'. Housing, furniture, fuel, clothing, plumbing, and food cannot be made 'virtual'. It may be possible to have a bay window in an apartment in Kansas City having a virtual view of San Francisco Bay (or for that matter the rings of Saturn) -- but there is no making a 'virtual' loaf of bread.
 
The 'old economy' still has its necessity, and the virtual economy can be devalued with any new obsolescence. Tech nerds take note: you can't eat terabytes of information.  The world still needs loggers and ranch hands.

In about forty years the world will have many "Baby Doe" types, deluded into believing that their former wealth from high technology of their best days, is no longer relevant -- and the money that they got from it is no more. Some will be cold and hungry. 

And anyways, something needs to be done about homeless people. Those people usually need support, a job, social housing, help, mental healthcare or a combinaison of some of those things.

It wouldn't be intellectually honest to pretend than homelessness doesn't cause problems. In my city, most buildings in the downtown had to strenghten their door because drunk homeless people were breaking into buildings and storages to help under a roof (they were refused by the shelter because they were drunk).

Someone is an asshole because they're ignorant about poverty and happen to work in one sector of the economy transitions into the idea that everyone who works in that sector is an asshole and their entire sector is useless? What the hell kind of logic is that?

Now breathe. Look around you. You either typed that OP on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone all thanks to the tech industry you're decrying. You did so on the internet (tech sector) on a forum (tech sector). Hardware and software are everywhere. You are bathing in an ocean and cursing the water.

Sure, this guy's a twat waffle. Don't let it rub off on you. He lacks empathy and reasoning. He's privileged. Hate him and his words. His industry, though, benefits us all whether we like it or not, and there are plenty of good people there.

As I have already made a point to clarify in this thread, I am not damning every single enterprise that involves semiconductors. The neighborhood of the tech industry that this guy and others like him operate in has nothing to do with the companies that make the devices we are having this discussion on. And are you seriously going to compare the scientists and engineers who "invented" the Internet to the self-important tools who made this thing (https://angel.co/tennis-buddy-app-1)?

The difference between the two is like the difference between a bank lending money to a company to expand its operations, and a bank using that money to move derivatives around that do nothing to manage market risk and exist solely to generate fees and commissions for the bank itself. The first one creates economic value; the second one doesn't. When you criticize the second one, you're not implicitly criticizing the first one or "finance" in general.

When companies like Apple and IBM make a lot of money, it is by providing goods and services to customers that indisputably benefit them. The people of Blurpi and other similar firms have done nothing more than amassed absurd amounts of venture capital by assigning completely unrealistic valuations to their firms, generating no profits, and doing all of this by convincing themselves and others that "someday" they're going to create value. These people haven't even accomplished anything and the level of arrogance they conduct themselves with is completely unjustified.

So when the Randian techie I grew up with who now makes apps for a living and blithely suggests that somehow unemployment will vanish forever if everyone just "learns to code" brags on Facebook and Twitter about how wonderful his new app is - it's video calling - I want to tear my hair out and scream, "YOU DOUCHEBAG, WE ALREADY HAVE THAT! IT'S CALLING F@#$ING FACETIME! IT'S CALLED F@#$ING SKYPE! ARE YOU SERIOUSLY GETTING PAID FOR THIS S#!@!"

Wow what a worthless thread who cares?

To be fair, I'm not sure what I was expecting when I clicked the title.

What's wrong with that?

It's counterproductive. It brings nothing to the unskilled workers, but being hated by the rest of the population, which doesn't help to receive help. Also, it's splitting the working and middle classes, so they don't focus on their common enemy, which is the real enemy. Upper finance.

Disgusting. That's certainly not the San Francisco I've known.

Sure this Greg Gopman is a douche, but maybe it's not out of elitist bigotry, but out of fear--he fears his future competition.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/leo-the-homeless-coder-finished-his-app--and-you-can-download-it-right-now-195026043.html

See, once angel investors realize they don't have to shower people like Gopman with cash and fancy office space to create new product, instead giving the homeless cheap coding lessons to do it, then Gopman will be on the street with them--just another commodity. 

For a slightly different perspective on the homeless coder:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/leo-the-homeless-coder-finished-his-app--and-you-can-download-it-right-now-195026043.html

I rarely get annoyed at the homeless in Portland...

If these people didn't think what they did made them superior human beings they'd lose all motivation to work 150 hours a week.

Hell, I was robbed by a homeless person, and even I don't mind them. I'm sure this d-bag has held plenty of fundraisers for Nancy Pelosi too ::).

The homeless coder strikes me as yet another glaring example of the extent to which our childhoods determine who and what we become. Some people would like to assume that man is homeless because he's lazy or isn't smart and therefore doesn't deserve things like a roof over his head. And what happens when someone actually gives a sh!t about him and gives time and money towards helping him develop intellectually? He proves Edmund Burke's assertion that the most basic human sentiment that we all share is curiosity.

Compare the homeless coder to Bill Gates. When Bill Gates was growing up in his well-to-do suburban family, the parents at his middle school purchased a computer for the students to use - in the 1960s when this was no small financial task. Young Bill discovered that programming BASIC  and Fortran was actually pretty fun. But what if Gates' parents and his friends' parents weren't wealthy professionals who could afford such a lavish investment in their kids' futures? In all likelihood, if Bill Gates had instead been born to an assembly line worker at a Boeing plant, Bill Gates would today be a 58 year old aerospace factory worker worried that his job his going to get moved to South Carolina and that his union pension is in jeopardy. Someone else would have created something more or less like Microsoft and Bill Gates would be just another schmuck.

This, in essence, is what it all boils down to. Thinking everybody is equal is good and all, but when it comes down to it, its actually a fairly dismal and disconcerting viewpoint.

Well yes. We should all delude ourselves into thinking that superiority rests in whatever will get us running hardest against the hamster wheel.

Another topic on which partisan IDs break down! This is great.

Some context on this issue: it's amusing that this Floridian tech kid is referring to San Francisco as  "our city," since Silicon Valley people like him are also suspect among residents for driving up house prices. (http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2013/10/15/it-another-tech-bubble) And it's silly to demonize homeless people like this, since the problem is precisely how their situation and methods to cope with it creates a vicious spiral.

OP is also not talking about Facebook, Amazon and the big companies that have IPOs. The ones he and the bloggers ridicule are the ones seemingly picked at random by venture capitalists, so flush off of the return on a good investment that they can take risks. The problem is that the market is saturated, which hurts especially if the one stream of revenue is advertising. The result is companies bleeding money on publicity and other trivialities without any signs of a userbase.

I wouldn't think calling Silicon Valley people ”yuppies" is a stretch: they have their certain worldview, they are fixed to certain areas (to catch that venture capital) and they're paid very well based on ambiguous indicators of human capital. The result is social instability. If Atlas cares about instability in Latvia and Ghana, I don't see why it should ignore U.S. cases.

Thank goodness this guy was brave enough to speak the truth about this filthy freakshow city that I live in.

The headline in this post is a bit misleading, he wasn't talking about "the poor" -- I can go to poor communities in West Virginia and Mississippi and actually feel safe walking down the street. I DON'T feel safe walking down the street here in this 3rd world cesspool, because the so-called homeless here are aggressive and mentally ill.

I think you're going to see more of this as tech people continue to move into the Bay Area.  They're coming from normal places, and they are shocked to see what a 3rd world this place has become. I want to move.

I love how it's somehow a NEWSFLASH to people in this town that yes, most people don't like walking down the street and having to see freaks everywhere.

You all have to live here to see what this guy is talking about. All he's doing is observing his surroundings, and the communist "majority" is trashing him because of it.  Yes, the guy's probably a lib himself...

Wow, you are a terrible person.

I'm sorry you feel that way.  But, the broader point I'm trying to make is, he wasn't trashing the "poor." He was talking about the mentally ill majority here in the city. This city finds normalcy to be OFFENSIVE, and it's discouraged to act and blend in with the rest of society east of the bay bridge.

Try being a conservative in the most "Tolerant" city in America. Try it for a day.

Zioneer is a liberal from Utah; he might know a thing or two about that.

We get it.  You're another persecuted conservative, scared of the world, with a chip on his shoulder.  Dime a dozen.

If you don't like the place... move.  Preferably to West Virginia or Mississippi.

No sorry, there's a difference when people like this (and Peter Shih from before) speak out and it makes the front page.  Liberals are all about shaming people in public. That's an Alinsky tactic. 

Think about it, some dude makes a comment about the tech industry, and it made the front pages across the city. What sane society would consider someone's opinion on where they live to be major news?

You do know that, contrary to what you think, not everyone who is homeless is a mentally ill deviant. In fact, a great deal of them are normal people who have been lost their homes due to unfortunate circumstances that hit them, and if anything, helping them get back on their feet and reintegrate, rather then driving them away, will only contribute to the economy and help the city sustain itself.

Oh, and about your second part, try being a liberal in Provo. Or in Cedar City, where a local businessman fired a couple of his employees solely because they voted for Obama. This works both ways.

I made that point in my post, that that's why saying that Gopman made comments about the "poor" is deceptive.  Sorry, but I actually live here, and the majority of people on the streets here particularly in the downtown area on Market St are mentally ill.  I don't even think a lot of them are homeless, just loud and they have like a gang-sta type attitude or something. It frightens me to walk down the street sometimes.
Well, as a fan of Utah County, I think you should feel very lucky to live in one of the cleanest, safest, most highest quality of life places in this country.

First part: Do you have any proof to support either of those statements? If they're not really homeless, what possible reason would they have to pretend to be?

Second part: First, I don't live in Utah County - I live in Salt Lake County - specifically Salt Lake City. It has all of the benefits you mentioned and more stuff to do than in Utah County and I can openly support democratic candidates. All of the positives, and none of the negatives.

Miles tries to communicate that the person to whom you're talking might have some sympathy for how you feel; you reject this sympathy and substitute an irrelevant and more or less content-free tangent where you manage to bring up noted Pacem in Terris Award laureate and interlocutor of almost-Cardinal Maritain Saul Alinsky as a sort of demonic bugbear. Lovely.

I see. Well, you had said "Try being a liberal in Provo" so I assumed that's where you lived. It certainly seems like you're brushing off the fact that there are lunatics in the streets around here. Face it, you don't have that problem in the real Utah,, which is one of the greatest and safest states in the nation as you're probably aware. Yes, SLC area is more sympathetic to some aspects of liberal leftism, but it's nothing compared to around here. This place is on its own planet, and I actually live here, and I observe the things Gopman has observed. It's a dirty city that can't even clean the roads!

Again, do you have proof that the homeless people of San Francisco are mentally ill or "faking" besides anecdotal evidence?

And what's this about the "real" Utah? Are you implying that SLC shouldn't be part of the state because it doesn't conform to the rest of the state politically? If so, then by that logic, all the conservative parts of California should be thrown out of the state for not being part of the "real" California.

SLC's status as a Pro-America city (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/palin-clarifies-what-part_n_135641.html) may be questionable.

Why don't you get the hell out of SF then? It's pretty clear this city is far too awesome for a sad, pathetic little piece of sh*t like you.

Yes, I am overwhelmingly surprised with the recent tone taken by this IndyTx guy.  I'm actually starting to like this guy.

Then why on earth don't you leave SF? If you hate it's people and quirkiness so much, why don't you leave it?

Like SLValleyMan and Miles said, I live in Utah, and in a conservative city (West Jordan, a very conservative suburb of SLC). I dislike it here, there's nothing to do, it's generic to a fault, you can't get anywhere unless you drive (I can't), it's very conservative, and a bit stifling. Yet I love my state, if not my city. I like the people here, even if they're culturally and politically conservative. I would not consider West Jordanians or Utahns as a whole "freaks".

And I would consider all parts of Utah to be the "real Utah"; Provo, SLC, whatever. And it seems like you're implying that because SLC is diverse and politically liberal, it is not "real Utah". That's false. SLC has always been a part of "real Utah", and it's been diverse and relatively liberal since the 1860s. Working at a thrift store in West Jordan, I got people from SLC coming in all the time, counter-culture types, refugees from dozens of different countries, etc. I consider them all part of "real Utah".

So knock it off with your smug, self-righteous superiority.

Isn't this supposed to be a city of "tolerance" and "diversity"? Or is a different opinion not welcome?

"Tolerance" does not mean being accepting of bigotry and racism, sorry.

You know, I noticed that Ernest edited out the part of your first comment which implied that part of your reason for disliking San Francisco is that gay people live there. Between this and your comment suggesting that the homeless are either mentally ill or "faking", if this is the way that you present yourself to your fellow San Francisco residents, then I can't say I blame them for being less than friendly towards you.

Oh, it's welcome, it's just that people have the right to speak out against you, and there's a lot more of them in SF than you.

Also, what SLValleyMan said.

You can't oppose "the gays, homeless people, and mentally ill taking over SF," then complain that your ideas are not welcome because you are being criticized for trying other's ideas. It doesn't work that way.

Someone who is promoting communist symbols is not going to lecture me on either of these topics.  Name one bigoted thing or racist thing that I said. Revolting.

The fact that your post was edited by a mod is somewhat telling...

Also, your entire rant about a "filthy freakshow of a city" is pretty bigoted, because we all know who you're referring to.

People who work in sales?

this thread...

Nah, it's mostly just CountryClassSF.