Empirically, all historic efforts to alleviate the heartlessness of market forces with centralized planning ("us" making necessary changes) have resulted in even worse and more heartless outcomes for even more people. Talk to some Cubans, Russians, North Koreans, or East Germans about how that whole process turns out.

It's not that the free market solution is great. It's that all other possible solutions are even worse.

Wait, what are the problems?

"Everyone rides an Uber" is great for the Uber drivers. "People spend too much on organic produce" is great for the farmers. "Even bad engineers are in high demand" is great for the mediocre engineers.

Housing is a problem, but this post didn't mention it.

So before we start making changes, what are the problems in your opinion?

And, then, what changes are you proposing?

Well the problem is the people who haven't been included in the tech boom and are living on salaries that can't afford those things and are being forced out of their neighborhoods. You can say it's just free markets again but there is a huge human cost.

Being forced out of their neighborhoods is a housing issue. I think I agreed that housing is a problem. I totally agree we need much, much more housing in the Bay Area. Of course reasonable people can disagree about whether rent control and restrictive zoning helps or hurts the situation for the poorest neighbors. But no one was talking about housing.

"the people who haven't been included in the tech boom" ...are living on salaries that are supported by the people who have been included in the tech boom. It's exactly their expensive offerings to the tech people that is supporting their good income, BTW!

The changes I'm proposing are actually changes to our collective values. Namely, that we shouldn't worship economics and the power of the invisible hand to the point where we think about "market correction" before the well-being of the people around us.

Rose tinted glasses much? Have you ever been to a poor area in your life?

Even mentioning Uber, organics, bad engineers and mediocre engineers ignores places like the south side of Chicago and any gradient between. It's not as pretty outside as you think it is.

I forgot to answer your question. Yes I've been to a poor area before.

I also forgot to apologize for mentioning Uber, organics, and engineering. You're right, but acknowledging the existence of those concepts I'm totally ignoring the South Side of Chicago.

But by bringing up Chicago, you're completely ignoring sub-Saharan Africa and Bangladesh. It's not so pretty there, either. Are you going to apologize for that?

Let's just remember that we should always mention regions of extreme poverty whenever we discuss something.

Because these areas are part of the nuance that allows SF-like mentalities to exist. Ignoring that nuance ignores the larger problem on how these bubbles can happen.

I really can't make any sense of this. Is it supposed to make sense? How can something be part of a nuance? What is the nuance you're talking about? And if ignoring the nuance means ignoring the "larger problem," how is it that it is a nuance at all? Is nuance just supposed to be a word for something you don't care to explain?

To me, 'nuance' is just a word to describe "the sub-surface stuff that has no immediate and apparent effect within a local system." So, when I say "ignoring the nuance ignores the larger problem", I'm suggesting that there's a large set of problems occurs when you ignore the lon-local effects - ideologically and physically.

It's a complicated problem with many, many components. Nuance is more relevant than you think it is. Think of fractals and weather patterns.

An effect of SF: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/globalcity/ct-global-city... Why it happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight

Wait I'm missing something. How does largesse in the Bay Area cause poverty elsewhere?

"We can solve all of the world's problems!" - Bay Area "What about us?" - The world

rant.

Maybe I'm a bit naively bitter on the subject, particularly after spending some time at Chicago's opengov hack nights. Something about it got very, very turned me completely away from modern civics and its problems solving. Much of it seems to stem from the same vain as high school grads building unmaintainable schools in "primitive" cultures many miles away.

My problem isn't that Uber, SF etc exist. Individually, "fuck yeah!". As a whole, though, they take the focus away from the nuance of actual problems and create comfort for those who can afford it. The poor, the mentally sick and the fringe simply aren't accounted for to the level that they can be. Especially after walking through SF streets earlier this year. It was infuriating to see so much homelessness and prosperity of achievement condensed in the same place. Chicago and NY have nothing on how sharp that difference was (although, I admit it might be selection bias).

Many techie-type folk my age tend to complain about the large economic/social problems. Very few of them ever take action - yet they complain about inaction! If that feeling is as pervasive as it seems, then maybe the problem just might be within some nuance that's not being addressed. When skill's diverted from that nuance towards Bay-like areas and their functions, then YES, they are part of the problem. Just maybe not directly or in an intuitive way.

Thanks, it's interesting that I simply asked "what are the problems?" and that offended people so much that they downvoted -- but then I got three different answers.

One person says "collective values, worship of the free market." Another person says "there are poor people in Chicago." Finally there's a third person who says "people can't afford to live in their neighborhoods because cost of living got too expensive."

So they haven't agreed on the problem, but they agree on the enemy - it's the spoiled engineers and their high salaries.

"They"? The people who responded to you aren't part of some larger conspiracy to oppose you, or even advocating on behalf of the same people or ideas. The fact that I'm commenting here doesn't even mean that I agree with the article.

Could it be possible that there are several problems at play here, at once? You can't look at situations as if they are black or white, or "us vs. them".