Slashdot Mirror
'I'll Make Their Life Miserable': Tech CEO Bullies Low-income Vendors By His Home (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an article on The Guardian that has caused a spark on social media: A Silicon Valley tech CEO has sparked backlash for comments slamming local fruit vendors, saying he would "make their life miserable" and "destroy" their produce if they were stationed near his house -- making him the latest wealthy Californian entrepreneur to publicly rail against low-income people. Mark Woodward, CEO of software company Invoca, published -- and later deleted -- a Facebook post saying that he would have no qualms about aggressively harassing unauthorized fruit sellers in his neighborhood if they got near his home. "I would go out there and make their life miserable. I would do whatever it took to make them leave. If that meant destroying some of their produce, or standing out there with signs to chase everyone away, Or just making them very uncomfortable, I would do that in a heartbeat."
And when we have no home no job no doctor. We will just hang at your place and go head and call the cops the jail will give us room and board + a doctor.
what an asshole.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
How should this thread play out? Are unlicensed vendors the noble poor today? Are we supposed to be pro-regulations or anti-regulations?
...Invoca is a software company based in Santa Barbara, California that develops a Software as a Service platform for marketers...
Yeah, so, to guy is pretty much an asshat anyway.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Should we pay attention to every rant? Even if it's a CEO of a company?
When I am ranting, I spew all kind of nonsense, threatening to exterminate all life on Earth, etc. Does it mean something beside the fact that I have a temper so hot that I can't restraint myself from public display of expressing it.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"advertises its leadership team as the 'big brains and small egos creating amazing technology".
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, this isn't about zoning laws.
It's about America not being a computer program where all subroutines relate to each other by passing money as the only call parameter; it's a community of human beings that relate to each other on more complex levels than money most of the time.
It's about a guy seeing a phenomenon driven by poverty - you think they're breaking the law to be radical teen rebels or something? They're desperate. So he sees this phenomenon driven by poverty and his sole concern is himself and his comfort...in this case, his psychological comfort of knowing they aren't there...please note he wasn't complaining about noise or interference with his activities; he just hated the existence of poor people on his block.
And that's STILL absolutely OK, free country, he can have that opinion - hey, they're breaking the law and he's in the right to complain. The problem is that he's a CEO of a corporation, very much a representative of it, not just a private citizen. So he's basically saying, in the first person, PLURAL:
"In my company, we care only for ourselves and will use very ugly, unsociable bullying against those weaker than ourselves if they inconvenience us. Now please do business with us".
This is a news story not because he's an unpleasant neighbour and bad citizen, it's because he's a stupid CEO who just cost his company serious coin for no good reason at all.
Look, I fully agree with your generalization because as a normal person I don't have to be concerned with a public image. Once you are in the public spotlight the game changes, and everything you do will be scrutinized because at that level you sell your image. Celebrities, including CEOs are not smarter than other people. Sometimes quite the opposite, because they get caught up in their image and neglect the basics.
It's like the guy in SF who publicly wanted to be a "thought leader" and then starts bashing homeless people. I have no sympathy for that person, because their goal was to be a public voice. The contract for selling your soul for loads of cash and public spotlights is messy. The next guy should be a whole lot more careful about what they say, and read the contract.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The problem is not two sided. We as a culture, would much rather ignore the problems of the poor than face them.
This argument "I don't want to see poor people" are Coded in a lot of different ways.
"Worried about property values", "Maintain community values", "Allow our children to safely play outside"...
But it really comes down to the fact that we don't want to see poor people. Because they can be scary because there isn't much for them to lose. And we may emotionally feel bad for them, and we don't want to feel bad.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If they were breaking zoning laws and he was complaining about that, I don't think there would be as much outrage. He really crossed a line when he said it would be perfectly acceptable for him, personally, to harass the vendor or even destroy their produce until they left. If someone is breaking laws, you get the police to intervene. That's what they're paid for. This guy seems of the opinion that he can personally intervene even to the point of destroying private property and it's ok because he's rich and they're not. (He probably views the worst case scenario as: Throw some lawyers at the upset poor person so they either shut up or wind up losing what little they have.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
There are some issues here that may apply. Is the vendor blocking traffic? Some placements will generate traffic congestion. That makes the vendor non-harmless. Is the vendor on private property without permission? That's a bad idea all around, not so much because "hey someone is selling stuff" but because it sets a negative precedent about the right to control what one owns. Blocking the sidewalk? That's no good either. The sidewalk seems to me to be something you can reasonably share -- it's public property, which means the vendor has a stake in it as well -- but if you block the sidewalk, you've gone too far. I don't think it's too much to ask that a vendor arrange their business such that the sidewalk and the road both remain traversible without requiring detour or delay.
I'm no fan of licenses per se, I think they are counter-productive on almost every level I can think of other than as a means of extracting money from the business community (and often that's counter productive as well), but if you're selling food, cooked or otherwise, I *am* a fan of inspection. If you haven't passed a recent inspection for handling, storage, cleanliness and refrigeration / prep as would be considered reasonable practice for whatever it is you are selling, I'd prefer you weren't allowed to sell, and if I can't have that, I'd at LEAST like to know about it so I can avoid your enterprise. Likewise healthcare, sexual services, etc. You should have the right to conduct business, but that should be tempered with the responsibility to do so in a safe and sane manner that takes the health and welfare of your customers into account as much as possible.
IMHO, most communities go way, way, too far when it comes to who can do what, where. And they do this to create "sanitized" zones where the "undesirables" are prevented from sullying the space they consider to be theirs. I find that attitude generally despicable if the space is public. If the space is private, then it should be 100% up to the owner, not the community, how that space is used. You want to spend a zillion bucks on a big house? Fine. Guy next to you wants to put up a rusty old junker on blocks right next to the property line? Fine. You don't like it? Should have bought more property (and perhaps less house) so your tender little eyes wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of photons you don't like. Some high fences would help too.
Anyway. It seems to me that the high road almost inevitably consists of giving your fellow human beings some room to exist and hopefully exercise some opportunity to improve their lot. I'm really pretty tired of "me first" explanations for what amounts to casual maltreatment of others. I understand and agree with concerns about private property you own. Beyond the boundaries of your own property, my sympathies for complaints about actions of others that do not directly pick your pocket or break your leg drop off dramatically.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Yeah, this guy is talking out his ass, but I'm pretty sure it's because he knows he'll never have to back his words up with actions. Seriously, where do you usually see fruit/ice cream carts? Here in the San Fernando Valley, it's usually around the lower income areas, such as manufacturing districts, public parks, cheaper housing. I've never seen a fruit cart in my lower middle class neighborhood, let alone the richy rich areas. I doubt the 1%ers anywhere would eat off one of those carts anyway, when they can just have their PA go down to Whole Foods and pick up a truck load of whatever. There's just not enough foot traffic or eager customers for the carts in these areas, so they simply have no incentive to be there. This guy is just inventing a scenario where he thinks he sounds tough and can rally his kind against the poors, but would most likely get his ass kicked if he started destroying someones livelyhood.