> The result is San Francisco, the most innovative city in a generation, proposing a Office of Emerging Technology to require any technology that uses public space, scooters for example, to get prior permission from the city
That sounds totally reasonable, lest your city become clogged with broken-ass scooters after the n-th scooter startup goes on their "incredible journey" to the stars.
Perhaps if you're going to litter the streets with scooters you should be required to post up cash in escrow for unlittering said scooters if/when you disappear.
no offense but from someone coming from a place where oublic transportation was lobbied into non existance, that board sounds exactly like the kind of thing that becomes an umbrella and fucks up every kind of innovation. Are the scooters even a problem?
I don't actually understand your statement here - are scooter's public transportation? I thought they were owned by private companies. How is this board going to fuck up every kind of innovation in relation to public transportation.
They're littering the streets. Beyond being just annoying, it creates a life-threatening hazard for the blind people. On top of that, they're used - as intended to be used - on the sidewalks, instead of the streets where they belong. This already killed many people around the world.
One idiot on a Bird copycat almost killed my then-9-months-pregnant wife, as he carelessly rode the sidewalk at high speed and didn't see passengers exiting the bus.
Cities have various policies towards innovation; some entangle everyone in red tape, others wave new ideas through. But the common thread of the famous SV startups in city space, and their copycats around the world, is building a business that dumps a lot of externalities on society, treating city councils as enemies, and then being surprised when said councils don't cooperate. If they want more friendly regulators, then perhaps they should be respectful towards said regulators (and people they represent).
You have it backwards. The scooters are not, and have never been, a problem. The real problem is feces and needles. The real truth here is the SF gov is greedy, and rabidly anti-tech. I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up.
Have you lived in SF? Because this comment reads like an outsider looking in.
> I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up
The thing you are complaining about Are The Consequences of gentrification. They are the output of the process. The system you advocate for produces that which you are complaining about.
It's not going to be "cleaned up". This is what that process yields. Gentrification creates more "cracks to fall through" and so more people "fall through the cracks" through the financial consequences. These issues are the consequence of it - that's why it happens everywhere things are gentrifying.
These stratifications produce slums, favelas, cantegrils, gecekondus, barrios, karton siti, paraggoupoli, zopadpatti, baraccopoli, putri, perkampungan kumuh... there's words in almost every language for this phenomena. Policies are machines. They produce things.
This is the outcome of the process, globally, for centuries. You can not possibly get to your goal through that method. It does not work.
I know how alluring the logic is, but like counterintuitive math and science, the obvious solution does not work and we need to stop pretending otherwise. Reality doesn't give a damn about personal belief and stubbornness in systems that don't work. You can't will a wrong answer into being right.
> I cannot wait until this whole place is gentrified and cleaned up.
This is a colonial mindset and regards the eviction, impoverishment, and exile of other human beings as nothing compared to one's own desires. Yes they'll be replaced. That's what colonization is.
> There is an emerging political consciousness in Silicon Valley. Technologists are advancing a new way of understanding the challenges facing America and how to solve them that do not split neatly along the traditional left right axis. However, to implement change along those new lines, there must be a will.
Really? Technologists are offering real solutions to the challenges of poverty and inequality in America? Looking around at the bay area, you certainly could've fooled me.
Few would dispute that the U.S. is in a bad way. But judging from Silicon Valley's major successes of the past decade, at least some skepticism seems in order.
There is a town in Mexico where the locals chased away the loggers, gangsters and much of politicians. They do a lot of things themselves which normally you'd expect a government to do.
That is an extreme example (maybe necessary in gang infested areas of Mexico), but I wonder if it is time for communities to help themselves as much as they can, before looking to governments, institutions and billionaires. It sucks to be in this position though.
You'd have to have communities, though. From what I can tell, cities in the West don't have the kind of communities you're looking for. The kind consisting of people living and working in the same area, so that they know each other and have some level of personal relationship to each other, who own enough of the area they live in that they can meaningfully self-govern. In a modern Western town, people living in the same area work all across the town, never see each other, and most of them only rents the places they live in.
I once had a relationship with someone with depression. As someone who is naturally quite happy[1], the thing that suprised me most at the start of the relationship is the amount of time she spent strategising how to be happy, rather than just getting on with being happy. In her case, it's understandable because depression is completely irrational[2]
But nations do have the capacity to act rationally, so when I these posts and wonder if the world really needs more strategies. Do we need to spend more time strategizing, rather than getting on-board with the solutions that already have steam (as imperfect as they might be)?
[1] happy/positive, whatever word you want without derailing the point of the comment
[2] for anyone with depression, please read this with positive intent. Depression is horrific and I wouldn't wish it on my enemies
There is a book by some political scientists have the opposite starting point: Why Nations Fail. For the record, they've also got other material which I think is some of the most brilliant research we've got on why politics/societies are the way they are. Very obvious but conceptually simple, with multiple case studies of countries like your post, but (no offense) with a lot more data backing up their claims. Check it out!
RE: depression. Being someone that's dealt with it, I'm sensitive to it being characterized as irrational - there is more than a little research that suggests that depression is perfectly rational, that it reflects reality. I know personally that what I find irrational is individuals/orgs/societies that are driven by the abuse of others, by obsession with material wealth and status by people that have done nothing other than be social climbers, to be part of a species that after thousands of years of history makes the same mistakes (see above discussion).
Just saying. Have a little understanding for where your friend is coming from. For you to call it irrational may only lead them further into it, were you to say as much.
This is actually the inspiration for my blog title. And I agree, it has a lot more data and is more thorough than what I've written so it's hard to be offended by pointing that out.
> I'm sensitive to it being characterized as irrational
My bad. This is the language that she came up with as a way of describing her behaviour to me (i'm probably a bit too far on the rational side and less on the empathy side). But we definitely agree with the causes you point out - her idea of a peaceful life is escaping society altogether
If you don’t know how to do something you can’t just get on with it. You have to strategize. I myself have a tendency towards depression and don’t really know how it is to just to be happy. Especially after failing a few times you either give up or you start strategizing how to do it. It s a crazy cycle.
Those that don't know what it is like to not be naturally happy in many cases may not understand how easy it is to get intoa bad headspace, and how vitally important it is to take the correct steps to prevent it. It is life-threatening stuff and even when it is not, it is disabling, hence the strategy.
I hope I made it clear in my comment that I understand this. Perhaps I shouldn't have used the analogy so that my main point wasn't lost. For those with depression, please strategize and do whatever you need to.
As someone who suffers from depression due to previous drug abuse I can't even begin to imagine what you mean by just get on with being happy, I have a loving wife, good job and I guess what most people would call a happy life but I'm never more than two steps away from just opting out, I have been through therapy and various anti-depressants but they leave me feeling the emptiness even more profoundly.
My brain chemistry is irreversibly fucked for lack of a better word, a little strategising might just give me a little hope, although false, hope is better than the clear and obvious solution to my woes.
I believe that even shitty decisions made by governments (or presidents, or companies, or individuals) are made completely rationally - but only from their perspective.
I mean take right-wing arguments (given that HN and a lot of the internet is mostly left leaning), to them, blaming immigrants for a lack of jobs and keeping them out to preserve jobs is completely rational. Cause and effect, obvious solution, etc. Anti-vaxxers and other pseudoscience movements that have sprung up recently also feel perfectly rational about the BS they're sprouting. I mean from what I can see from here the earth is flat, that's a rational observation to make.
It is remarkable that in this soaring call to "build" institutions, the author does not cite a single example of institutional capacity he would like to build up, rather than tear down.
He cites some obviously real examples of institutional dysfunction (hi, San Francisco zoning!). But these examples are all (or are all portrayed as) institutions "hindering", "stifling" or "limiting" otherwise beneficial processes. This implies a worldview in which the only thing institutions do is get in the way of "the freedom to build", and the only implied remedy is to get them out of the way.
This is counterproductive, because it takes us straight back to the "government is [bad/good]" argument. These arguments haven't got us anywhere so far, even - indeed, especially - in Silicon Valley, which features one of the world's highest concentrations of libertarians.
(My amateur hypothesis: If you approach institutional reform with an agenda of dismantling those institutions, that's a recipe for scorched-earth resistance from anyone who believes in that institution's goals - however well or poorly that institution is currently functioning. This leads to the worst of both worlds: dysfunctional institutions, held in stasis by the tug-of-war going on around them.)
If you really believe in institution-building, you should be able to cite some examples of what they should be able to do more or better. Otherwise, you're just advocating old-school deregulation and calling it "building".
Tyler Cowen's summary of "state capacity libertarianism", which this article cites, is much preferable on this score: It is explicit about what Cowen believes institutions should do (and do well), as well as what they should not: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/wh...
> Apple has committed $2.5 billion to housing in the Bay Area. Google committed $1 billion. Mark Zuckerberg committed another $500 million. Microsoft committed $500 million to housing in the Seattle region... In other words, the tech giants find it easier to spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars than to reform city and local land use policies. A politically effective movement would hire a bunch of lobbyists and change zoning and land use for a fraction of the cost.
I think this is a good question, why do tech companies spend so little money on YIMBY lobbying? (At most a few million, AFAIK.)
Exactly! Instead of hoarding wealth and occasionally setting up a foundation to cure all disease or whatever, these people actually invested in their areas and built things. I feel like tech wealthy just doesn't get it. Or maybe it's cultural. It could be due to their wealth being incubated in the tech bubble too, and just not having any real appreciation for the culture beyond the narrow confines of the tech world. VCs on twitter would bear this out. They all think of themselves as paragons of knowledge, and then spend all day demonstrating how little they know.
It seems easier to bankroll museums and concert halls (especially when Carnegie lived) than change the kind of legislation that gets passed. This article is more about the second impact.
The reconstructed Globe Theatre in London ran into a problem while it was being designed: thatched roofs had been illegal for hundreds of years. So, they had to go through the process of certifying a fire suppression system, getting everything approved, and then demonstrating that it was safe before opening.
It wasn't just about museums - he also set up and gave money to educational institutions and gave tons of money to libraries. This had a huge impact long term.
I think the motivation behind this is right. In my experience many in Silicon Valley don't understand the mechanics of long-term institutional change. In part, that's simply because — much like entrepreneurship — expertise comes from practical experience. Tacit, not-easily-transferrable knowledge dominates.
I find Ezra Klein's recent line here useful:
"[W]hatever the recommendations, the same thing is needed: A sustained and concerted movement that cares about institutional reform. But people get much more excited about building something, anything, than about reforming existing institutions. Meta-building isn’t a popular pastime, and the patient, focused work it requires is particularly frustrating, in my experience, to entrepreneurial personalities." [1]
I confess that I myself find it incredibly frustrating. See a government program that's incredibly difficult to deal with, friction-laden up and down, with reams of paperwork with legalese?
One can build a layer on top that eliminates most or all of the friction. But it will always be limited by the resource models that can sustain it. And many problems simply have no workable models other than state financing and operation (market failure, in other words).
Instead, doing the work to make that program much better institutionally involves long-term (frustrating) strategies like:
- Think tanks / white papers: influencing the epistemic landscape among policymakers
- Organizing: shifting the Overton Window to make the change you want to see broadly accepted
- Coalition-building: working with allies with overlapping agendas to get more muscle behind your own priorities
And even... waiting. You often have to wait — years! decades! — for a window to come where you can get a big thing done. People worked on big healthcare reform for 3 decades of effectively zero progress — and then in a year they passed Obamacare.
That work is long, hard, much more probabilistic than product work, and much less directly-controllable by a given person.
BUT there are playbooks to get it done. And I do wish technologists looked to those tools more to make the institutional changes we need to make it so the opportunities (individual and societal) of entrepreneurship were more widely accessible.
One concrete example: I've long thought that a basic source of friction in public services is because user experience isn't well-monitored, and therefore not well-considered in public policy decisions.
Technologists are great at measuring friction. It is a craft well-honed in an environment where conversion is a live-or-die metric. But translating that craft into institutional change requires something like a think tank, and/or an organized movement with an agenda.
I think we'll get there, but it will take some risk-takers who understand that long game and financial backers who aren't as well-versed in it, but who have the risk tolerance of SV and the savvy to see that playbook does work, and point it at a problem with significant leverage.
Or it could be that in tech entrepreneurship, goals are quarterly instead of long-term, they're measured in dollars instead of happiness and welfare, and completely failing, folding, and starting anew is admired and encouraged. This approach seems incompatible with the public good.
In tech entrepreneurship, goals are growth metrics that indicate the chance of for the business to have "an exit" in a year or two.
A startup that dies quickly after proving itself non-viable is a good thing, because it doesn't take money or attention from investors anymore. And if the founders were any good, they've learned things that will be useful on their next venture.
A startup that shows large exponential growth is the best, because the investors can sell the hot potato to a bigger fool before it implodes or gets gutted by the buyer. This kind of company is the whole reason behind tech investment.
The worst is the sustainable, slowly growing business. Such company isn't going to bring home 10x return for the investors. And it stubbornly refuses to die. The people running such company are more proven than random first-time founders, so it would be better, from investor POV, if they just killed their company and get back to the startup game.
Hence failing, folding and starting anew is admired and encouraged. Because it's better for the investors than succeeding, but not succeeding big.
If we did not have patents, we wouldn't have to build in the current cities, would we? I mean to earn our living. But since we do have patents, we cannot escape the extractive system that corrupts public sector in order to secure rent and we have to build on our land lords land. Funny.
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That sounds totally reasonable, lest your city become clogged with broken-ass scooters after the n-th scooter startup goes on their "incredible journey" to the stars.
Perhaps if you're going to litter the streets with scooters you should be required to post up cash in escrow for unlittering said scooters if/when you disappear.
Yes.
They're littering the streets. Beyond being just annoying, it creates a life-threatening hazard for the blind people. On top of that, they're used - as intended to be used - on the sidewalks, instead of the streets where they belong. This already killed many people around the world.
One idiot on a Bird copycat almost killed my then-9-months-pregnant wife, as he carelessly rode the sidewalk at high speed and didn't see passengers exiting the bus.
Cities have various policies towards innovation; some entangle everyone in red tape, others wave new ideas through. But the common thread of the famous SV startups in city space, and their copycats around the world, is building a business that dumps a lot of externalities on society, treating city councils as enemies, and then being surprised when said councils don't cooperate. If they want more friendly regulators, then perhaps they should be respectful towards said regulators (and people they represent).
Have you lived in SF? Because this comment reads like an outsider looking in.
The thing you are complaining about Are The Consequences of gentrification. They are the output of the process. The system you advocate for produces that which you are complaining about.
It's not going to be "cleaned up". This is what that process yields. Gentrification creates more "cracks to fall through" and so more people "fall through the cracks" through the financial consequences. These issues are the consequence of it - that's why it happens everywhere things are gentrifying.
These stratifications produce slums, favelas, cantegrils, gecekondus, barrios, karton siti, paraggoupoli, zopadpatti, baraccopoli, putri, perkampungan kumuh... there's words in almost every language for this phenomena. Policies are machines. They produce things.
This is the outcome of the process, globally, for centuries. You can not possibly get to your goal through that method. It does not work.
I know how alluring the logic is, but like counterintuitive math and science, the obvious solution does not work and we need to stop pretending otherwise. Reality doesn't give a damn about personal belief and stubbornness in systems that don't work. You can't will a wrong answer into being right.
It's the material reality.
This is a colonial mindset and regards the eviction, impoverishment, and exile of other human beings as nothing compared to one's own desires. Yes they'll be replaced. That's what colonization is.
Because the rents are still too affordable.
Really? Technologists are offering real solutions to the challenges of poverty and inequality in America? Looking around at the bay area, you certainly could've fooled me.
Few would dispute that the U.S. is in a bad way. But judging from Silicon Valley's major successes of the past decade, at least some skepticism seems in order.
That is an extreme example (maybe necessary in gang infested areas of Mexico), but I wonder if it is time for communities to help themselves as much as they can, before looking to governments, institutions and billionaires. It sucks to be in this position though.
But nations do have the capacity to act rationally, so when I these posts and wonder if the world really needs more strategies. Do we need to spend more time strategizing, rather than getting on-board with the solutions that already have steam (as imperfect as they might be)?
Anyway, here is my contribution to the noise: https://paul.copplest.one/blog/why-nations-succeed.html
RE: depression. Being someone that's dealt with it, I'm sensitive to it being characterized as irrational - there is more than a little research that suggests that depression is perfectly rational, that it reflects reality. I know personally that what I find irrational is individuals/orgs/societies that are driven by the abuse of others, by obsession with material wealth and status by people that have done nothing other than be social climbers, to be part of a species that after thousands of years of history makes the same mistakes (see above discussion).
Just saying. Have a little understanding for where your friend is coming from. For you to call it irrational may only lead them further into it, were you to say as much.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail
https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Origins-Dictatorship-Democra...
Thank you for your post, though.
This is actually the inspiration for my blog title. And I agree, it has a lot more data and is more thorough than what I've written so it's hard to be offended by pointing that out.
> I'm sensitive to it being characterized as irrational
My bad. This is the language that she came up with as a way of describing her behaviour to me (i'm probably a bit too far on the rational side and less on the empathy side). But we definitely agree with the causes you point out - her idea of a peaceful life is escaping society altogether
My brain chemistry is irreversibly fucked for lack of a better word, a little strategising might just give me a little hope, although false, hope is better than the clear and obvious solution to my woes.
>My brain chemistry is irreversibly fucked for lack of a better word
Are you sure it's completely irreversible?
I wouldn't be so sure about that.
I mean take right-wing arguments (given that HN and a lot of the internet is mostly left leaning), to them, blaming immigrants for a lack of jobs and keeping them out to preserve jobs is completely rational. Cause and effect, obvious solution, etc. Anti-vaxxers and other pseudoscience movements that have sprung up recently also feel perfectly rational about the BS they're sprouting. I mean from what I can see from here the earth is flat, that's a rational observation to make.
He cites some obviously real examples of institutional dysfunction (hi, San Francisco zoning!). But these examples are all (or are all portrayed as) institutions "hindering", "stifling" or "limiting" otherwise beneficial processes. This implies a worldview in which the only thing institutions do is get in the way of "the freedom to build", and the only implied remedy is to get them out of the way.
This is counterproductive, because it takes us straight back to the "government is [bad/good]" argument. These arguments haven't got us anywhere so far, even - indeed, especially - in Silicon Valley, which features one of the world's highest concentrations of libertarians.
(My amateur hypothesis: If you approach institutional reform with an agenda of dismantling those institutions, that's a recipe for scorched-earth resistance from anyone who believes in that institution's goals - however well or poorly that institution is currently functioning. This leads to the worst of both worlds: dysfunctional institutions, held in stasis by the tug-of-war going on around them.)
If you really believe in institution-building, you should be able to cite some examples of what they should be able to do more or better. Otherwise, you're just advocating old-school deregulation and calling it "building".
Tyler Cowen's summary of "state capacity libertarianism", which this article cites, is much preferable on this score: It is explicit about what Cowen believes institutions should do (and do well), as well as what they should not: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/wh...
I think this is a good question, why do tech companies spend so little money on YIMBY lobbying? (At most a few million, AFAIK.)
Andrew Carnegie was a robber baron bastard, but it was him actually cutting checks that gave us museums and concert halls that persist to this day.
The Silicon Valley "elite" like to bitch, but they want everyone else to cut the check.
The reconstructed Globe Theatre in London ran into a problem while it was being designed: thatched roofs had been illegal for hundreds of years. So, they had to go through the process of certifying a fire suppression system, getting everything approved, and then demonstrating that it was safe before opening.
Sam Wanamaker was the person who persisted and cut checks--even in the face of LOTS of government resistance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Wanamaker
I find Ezra Klein's recent line here useful:
"[W]hatever the recommendations, the same thing is needed: A sustained and concerted movement that cares about institutional reform. But people get much more excited about building something, anything, than about reforming existing institutions. Meta-building isn’t a popular pastime, and the patient, focused work it requires is particularly frustrating, in my experience, to entrepreneurial personalities." [1]
I confess that I myself find it incredibly frustrating. See a government program that's incredibly difficult to deal with, friction-laden up and down, with reams of paperwork with legalese?
One can build a layer on top that eliminates most or all of the friction. But it will always be limited by the resource models that can sustain it. And many problems simply have no workable models other than state financing and operation (market failure, in other words).
Instead, doing the work to make that program much better institutionally involves long-term (frustrating) strategies like:
- Think tanks / white papers: influencing the epistemic landscape among policymakers
- Organizing: shifting the Overton Window to make the change you want to see broadly accepted
- Coalition-building: working with allies with overlapping agendas to get more muscle behind your own priorities
And even... waiting. You often have to wait — years! decades! — for a window to come where you can get a big thing done. People worked on big healthcare reform for 3 decades of effectively zero progress — and then in a year they passed Obamacare.
That work is long, hard, much more probabilistic than product work, and much less directly-controllable by a given person.
BUT there are playbooks to get it done. And I do wish technologists looked to those tools more to make the institutional changes we need to make it so the opportunities (individual and societal) of entrepreneurship were more widely accessible.
One concrete example: I've long thought that a basic source of friction in public services is because user experience isn't well-monitored, and therefore not well-considered in public policy decisions.
Technologists are great at measuring friction. It is a craft well-honed in an environment where conversion is a live-or-die metric. But translating that craft into institutional change requires something like a think tank, and/or an organized movement with an agenda.
I think we'll get there, but it will take some risk-takers who understand that long game and financial backers who aren't as well-versed in it, but who have the risk tolerance of SV and the savvy to see that playbook does work, and point it at a problem with significant leverage.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/4/22/21228469/marc-andreessen-build...
A startup that dies quickly after proving itself non-viable is a good thing, because it doesn't take money or attention from investors anymore. And if the founders were any good, they've learned things that will be useful on their next venture.
A startup that shows large exponential growth is the best, because the investors can sell the hot potato to a bigger fool before it implodes or gets gutted by the buyer. This kind of company is the whole reason behind tech investment.
The worst is the sustainable, slowly growing business. Such company isn't going to bring home 10x return for the investors. And it stubbornly refuses to die. The people running such company are more proven than random first-time founders, so it would be better, from investor POV, if they just killed their company and get back to the startup game.
Hence failing, folding and starting anew is admired and encouraged. Because it's better for the investors than succeeding, but not succeeding big.