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Protesters Show Up At the Doorstep of Google Self-driving Car Engineer
mpicpp sends this report from Ars Technica:
"Protests against tech giants and their impact on the San Francisco Bay Area economy just got personal. According to an anonymous submission on local news site Indybay, an unknown group of protesters targeted a Google engineer best known for helping to develop the company's self-driving car. ... The protest against Levandowski came the same day that the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authority (SFMTA) voted for the first time to take action regulating Google, Facebook, Apple, and a number of other large tech companies that shuttle workers in private, Wi-Fi-enabled buses from the Bay Area to points south in Silicon Valley."
Being a Luddite is fashionable?
So they're being too eco-friendly with the bus rides? Or everyone's jealous about the benefits? Or public transportation isn't crowded enough? I don't get it but I have the sneaking suspicion that these people are morons.
Levandowski should claim that the protesters are motivated by anti-semitism. Checkmate!
I didn't see anything in the article about unions. Stop being an asshole.
This is a very good example of people who like to call them selves "Liberal" not being very liberal. Technology will advance and apparently some people don't like it in the same way some other people don't like gay marriage or pot smoking.
It all starts at 0
Part of their flyer says:
There are men and women in the Congo, slaving away in giant pits in order to extract gold and other precious metals from the earth. This gold will go into phones and tablets made by companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft
Unless they all walked there and are wearing homemade clothes from home grown cotton weaved by hand into fabric, and "printed" their flyers by hand by writing them using sustainably harvested carbon pencils on home made papyrus, and organized the protest through word of mouth (which was probably aided by the fact that they all live in the same cave) rather than using email and iPhones, they are being disingenuous by protesting against resources used for technology that they themselves use and enjoy.
Ah, but then they become a common carrier, just like city buses, and competing with city buses.
We can't have any private industry competing with City mass transit in the race to the bottom.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Wow. I think you would fit into Putin's (or Stalin's) Russia just fine.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
That's all well and good when the jobs are still there, they're just changing. That candlestick maker, he can retrain to work on robots ! But when jobs are shed and not replaced, this will eventually lead to big problems. Shaming the unemployed is not so effective when there are no jobs.
Easy solution: These companies should open major offices in downtown San Francisco. Build a skyscraper (vertical campus!) that is walking distance from a BART subway stop. They already have one (very small) office in the downtown SF area (opened in 2007). Same with Yahoo (though they can't afford a skyscraper), who recently bought the old SF Chronicle building.
Build a skyscraper!? You really don't know anything about SF, do you?
If Google, Apple, and Facebook are not welcome in the San Francisco, I'm sure there are a lot of other places that would welcome them.
For instance, taxes and cost of living are much lower in Ohio. Plus we have all this lovely snow.
[Insert pithy quote here]
At the risk of drifting to one side or the other -- I think you're oversimplifying. While gentrification is not a new phenomenon, this is one of the first times I've ever heard of people reacting so viscerally to it. I think the reason this stings so badly for existing non-Google employee residents is because it's not happening due to a new employer opening their doors nearby. If that were the case, existing residents could potentially get jobs there and afford the new normal.
In this particular instance, you have an employer that is NOT nearby making the fact that this location is not nearby a non-issue for its employees and causing gentrification in a way that mostly leaves current residents out of the loop since it's not likely the average resident could get a job at Google. The results can be devastating situation depending. Some residents might only be getting by or barely getting ahead. Having to relocate could completely upset their financial balance in a way that they can't rectify.
At a minimum, people's lives are being upended due to no fault of their own and it's quite clear where they should direct their energy.
this is not as eco-friendly as you might think.
It easily beats having those people all driving themselves.
It also causes congestion in the city,
No, it reduces congestion in the city.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Shaming the unemployed is not so effective when there are no jobs.
Sure it is! It's still a perfectly good rhetorical justification for not doing anything about them, and I'm certain they'll either starve or do something we can imprison them for soon enough!
if it takes a private bus to get them to stop driving, the issue is that they're already looking down upon "regular" people, and that is not to be rewarded.
Bullshit. Lots of people don't take regular buses because:
1) The schedule is not as regular as you might hope
2) Hard to work on most public buses (not good seating for it or network access, and you may well not get a seat).
3) Total time taken might be very long if you have to transfer, and the bus is not going exactly where you are so there's some walking component when you reach home.
4) Bus schedules at night get worse.
The company buses potentially solve all those issues:
1) Buses will be more regular as they have fewer (or possibly just one) stop.
2) Seats meant for working and enough buses so that you can get a seat.
3) Total time taken is greatly reduced and it's going exactly where you are, so no wasted time walking after the bus stops.
4) Can run buses on demand.
Really the reason these companies have buses is because employees can get hours more work in per day. That's also better for the employees because they do not necessarily have to stay at work late if they can finish up things on the bus.
There's nothing elitist at all, it's just that a bus tailored to working serves people far better than public transport ever can. There's nothing wrong with this and as many have pointed out it is reducing congestion for everyone and ever keeping the public buses less crowded for rush hour commuters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In case I'm unclear: I'd much rather be on a road with 1,000 people driving 1,000 cars, than 500 buses with 2 people in them. I used n=2 in this example, but I'm thinking even for n=6, it's a net loss. I don't actually know the value of n.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I whole heartedly agree. I couldn't bare to see Texans squeezed out of Texas. Keep them there where they're well contained and away from me. It's bad enough I have to deal with their politicians from time to time.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I realize that it's easier to be an asshole than think and read, but failing to educate yourself makes you "just" an asshole.
I live near Google and see these buses all the time. Many times these buses are empty, and driving to stops with no people. It's not a door to door limousine service, it's a bus route paid for by private funds. Just like any other bus service, there are peak and off hours. The difference between public and private is that routes can be changed when the pubic sees money being wasted. Google may keep a bus route for 1 person they believe "key" in a project, and reschedule buses at will.
Buses are much larger than cars (obviously) and they block traffic and cause congestion which omits what they are supposed to be doing (relieving congestion and carbon emissions). When you have numerous buses blocking a lane for several minutes, it's not doing any one other than the company and employee any favors.
In terms of city revenue, it also hurts. Tax revenue for cities that house these companies suffer as a result of people _not_ moving closer to work. They don't need to move closer to work, because they have a free shuttle service and get counted as working on the bus.
It also makes the companies more money, because by shuttling people in they don't have to pay the same rates.
The excuse that it's "Greener" is questionable at best, if not dishonest. It's convenient for the companies and more profitable for the companies. If you truly believe it's greener show me some stats that prove that since these bus services started there has been improvement in traffic in the bay area. You can't, because there has been no such improvement.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
True, but what I think the protesters are thinking is that if companies eliminated the shuttles (or shrank their radius so that SF was outside of it), then most workers, rather than endure a multi-hour commute each day, would simply move closer to work (and, more specifically, outside of SF city limits). It might increase traffic in/around Mountain View, but the companies could run local shuttles with a 10-mile (instead of 35-mile) radius to alleviate that problem. But it would no longer be SF's problem.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
You have a weird definition of public spaces if there are certain classes not allowed to use them.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
At a minimum, people's lives are being upended due to no fault of their own and it's quite clear where they should direct their energy.
Toward getting better skills, better jobs, or finding more affordable places to live if the first two don't work out?
Talk about fault, what fault is there with Google or its employees? The process you describe will happen regardless of where Google goes (since it can only go where supporting infrastructure exists). So Google and other high paying companies are terrible, evil companies regardless of where they go? How about their employees? Are they only allowed to live in their own offices at work? Since apparently they aren't allowed to choose where to live based on the location, rents, etc.
Sorry, but paying rent today (or for however long) does not entitle one to continue paying that same rent tomorrow and forever into the future. What you're entitled to is what's in your lease. If your lease says you can pay rent for the next 12 months at $1,000, there's absolutely nothing there saying you can pay that (or anything near that) 13 months from now. If you want the security of staying where you are, BUY; renting doesn't give you that and it shouldn't. This whole concept of some people being somehow entitled to continue residing in the same place simply because they've been there for a given period is patently absurd.
Gentrification is a net positive for an area. It makes the area nicer, increases the tax base without altering the individual tax burden, reduces crime for that area, and helps stamp out poverty. It won't be a net positive for every resident and that's fine. No change ever makes everyone happy all the time and it doesn't have to to be a net positive. How many crime-ridden ghettos of NYC have been completely turned around by gentrification?
Want to see a place without gentrification? Look at Detroit.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
SF still has a few bad cheap neighborhoods, but they're under attack, building by building. The 6th Street corridor is still a druggie and flophouse area. But go a hundred feet off 6th and there are luxury lofts. The area of Market Street around 6th to 8th was also a big druggie/homeless area. Then Twitter HQ moved in there. As that area gets gentrified, the 6th St. corridor will be cut off from the Tenderloin across Market. We'll know that's happened when the last strip club there closes.
Dear God! What will San Francisco's good and decent law-abiding citizens do without crackhouses, whores, and the homeless?! Oh the humanity!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."