It's horrible future, but a future to come if people dont "want nothing to do with it", it being the very reality that they have diced a 6 on, and somebody lesser fortunate being born beyond the wall has diced a 1 on, only guilty of having another mother and father.
Some say it's a future only distant in the eyes of the rich. I think that is, sadly, very much true.
We have that in the UK, some of the poorest areas are council estates, lots of people never have to go onto them and have little to no incite into the lives of the people who live there, I grew up 'poor' (by the standards of the UK, not talking living in a shanty town or anything) and it leaves a mark on your thought processes that never entirely goes away.
Things are getting much worse here, 6 years of austerity has removed many of the services that poor/disabled people rely on gone or in a perilous state but there isn't widespread anger about it because it has dis-proportionally hit the least 'powerful' in our society the hardest.
Frankly I think we are headed down (if not already some way down) a very dark path and I wouldn't blame the people who are hit by this in the slightest for rioting/rebelling.
Society should be about making sure that the poorest members have at least a decent standard of living otherwise what is it for.
I can't change anything. I can't help them. It's not my responsibility. I'm out and I want to put as much distance between myself and that as possible.
I think wealthy "first worlders" tend to be very "aware" of poverty and want to make a difference despite being quite far removed from it.
On the other hand in countries with serious poverty where the middle class live in the same communities as those in desperate poverty there is a lot less focus and sympathy.
Being aware of suffering in the world and living with a minimum of class segregation are orthogonal concepts, or maybe even inversely coupled, with the comforts of segregation helping superficial salon socialist ideas.
But the way I understand the root post (grandparent or deeper), the idea of avoiding the segregated bus is not directly about helping, it is just a routine reminder that the people outside the bus are persons. Maybe with their individual flaws and imperfections, but not the fearsome mass of zombies or orcs that they become in the eyes of those who spend too much time in comfortable isolation. Fear is difficult to get rid of once it is there, but it can be trivial to not allow it to start.
Can you explain that emotion to me? Why is walking through a relatively poor district and generally being a decent neighbour "saviour complex" just because the person doing it is richer?
Having grown up in poverty, been homeless for a summer, walked home past homeless people every day for years, and now a well-paid engineer in a nice city, I understand the questioning rage, wishing there was someone there to ease your burden. But I also recognize that direct charity prevents or delays people from finding a better solution, or even just having the dignity of knowing they've done the best they can for themselves.
In a sea of inequality, there is no peace, only calms between the storms. Making everyone equal is a laudable goal, but a more realistic goal is simply ensuring everyone has a rewarding and fulfilling life, and we still have a long way to go with that one.
I also recognize that direct charity prevents or delays people from finding a better solution
You may claim that, but don't try to pass your opinion off as some universal truth that you 'recognize' while other people can't.
Employ homeless people.
Give a homeless person a break. Maybe just ignore them in their shelter. They must do everything in public, for they rarely have a private space. They can't afford the luxury of choosing which actions others may view.
Learn how communities in your area address the homeless people who live there. Remember that homeless people do still live somewhere. This is not a part of their life they will be proud of, but it's not the end of their life, not a permanent placement.
What about something like this instead?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/08...
There is a program by which they distribute a magazine[0], mainly about the homeless life, and in theory with articles written by them.
It's still a begging of sort, so not as good as a proper job, but I've always felt it was much more dignified than panhandling. And from the other side, it gives you the idea that people handing out the newspaper are at least putting in some effort rather than just sitting on the corner (not saying they'd do, just talking fo perception).
One reason is that my background gives me a realistic (as opposed to hysterical) view of the suffering and danger in these areas. I'm not deathly afraid to get mugged, and if it happens to me yet again it's not the end of the world. And I can see past the grimy streets and homelessness to the camaraderie and warmth. I chat with random people on the bus and in the shops, and enjoy a simple friendliness which stands in marked contrast to the chilly self-conscious distance which seems to be the norm in the gentrified areas where I usually find myself.
Also, given my upbringing, I need to spend some time in such areas to maintain some feeling of rootedness. The more time I spend in gentrified areas (and I do enjoy the style and amenities!), the more I feel some drive to be surrounded by simpler, less self-conscious people and things. It feels nourishing. And I know it's probably not rational, but what's the harm?
I've experienced "first-world poverty", and it sucks. The solution isn't to plug our privileged tech worker ears and pretend "the poors" don't exist. The solution is to get involved with our communities, by helping the old man at the convenience store, helping the wheelchair man up the curb, and talking to the homeless who spend their entire day on the sidewalk getting ignored by everyone caught up in the rat race. Shame on you.
Starting and ending your comment in the way you did is almost guaranteed to invoke a negative, defensive reaction from the commenter which will only further drive divisiveness (which you presumably espouse).
Also, instead of just stating the solution, try explaining WHY the solution works.
Based on what we know, it's possible that he simply believes any poor person can escape poverty through hard work and tenacity. This belief (though arguably incorrect) is supported by his personal experience. And, the idea of someone 'pitying' or feeling 'guilt' for someone in his former position is detestable because it suggests that they think they're better than him.
I want to make it clear that I don't agree with this perspective, and don't believe it's constructive. However, I don't believe we need to be publicly shaming people when we can be having constructive conversation. Instead, I think we should be trying to understand where people are coming from, and discussing ideas openly. A person's character really has no place in a discussion of ideas.
If you want to help the poor, work harder and give the extra money you make to good charities. That is not going to solve the problem, either, but it will improve things more than anything else you could do in the same amount of time. The direct personal involvement you seek only serves to benefit you, at the expense of greater possible material improvements for them.
If that sounds inhuman, that's because our moral intuition, like so much of our instinct, does not scale. What is good for a single poor man is not necessarily best for poverty as a social problem.
I've never heard this phrase used out of genuine concern for those in poverty. It's just another way of saying "don't make me feel guilty by reminding me that it exists".
The condescending presumption behind the phrase seems to be that those in poverty would actually prefer it if you hid behind your gated community.
I think the most likely belief set here is that it's possible for any poor person to escape poverty through hard work and tenacity. This belief (though arguably incorrect) is supported by his personal experience. Furthermore, because he's proud of his struggle and achievement, the idea of someone 'pitying' or feeling 'guilt' for someone in his former position is detestable because it suggests that they think they're better than him.
In this light, he is not a cynic. Rather, in a sense, he is an extreme optimist and someone who is very proud of where he came from.
This is ALL speculation. My main point is that we should remain open minded in discussion and not make moral judgements on others when they are unsubstantiated (e.g. you "should really" assess your own inner self) i.e. i really think something is fundamentally wrong with you.
We had transportation to the local office and I saw much the same as you, but in way worse conditions.
It affected me just the same as you. I didn't last very long before taking a remote assignment and going back home.
Second, treating the world as a software project gives us a rationale for being selfish. The old adage has it that if you are given ten minutes to cut down a tree, you should spend the first five sharpening your axe. We are used to the idea of bootstrapping ourselves into a position of maximum leverage before tackling a problem.
In the real world, this has led to a pathology where the tech sector maximizes its own comfort. You don't have to go far to see this. Hop on BART after the conference and take a look at Oakland, or take a stroll through downtown San Francisco and try to persuade yourself you're in the heart of a boom that has lasted for forty years. You'll see a residential theme park for tech workers, surrounded by areas of poverty and misery that have seen no benefit and ample harm from our presence. We pretend that by maximizing our convenience and productivity, we're hastening the day when we finally make life better for all those other people.
- http://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm
and
if you visit San Francisco, [the poverty] is something you're likely to find unsettling. You'll see people living in the streets, many of them mentally ill, yelling and cursing at imaginary foes. You'll find every public space designed to make it difficult and uncomfortable to sit down or sleep, and that people sit down and sleep anyway. You'll see human excrement on the sidewalks, and a homeless encampment across from the city hall. You'll find you can walk for miles and not come across a public toilet or water fountain.
If you stay in the city for any length of time, you'll start to notice other things. Lines outside every food pantry and employment office. Racially segregated neighborhoods where poverty gets hidden away, even in the richest parts of Silicon Valley. A city bureaucracy where everything is still done on paper, slowly. A stream of constant petty crime by the destitute. Public schools that no one sends their kids to if they can find an alternative. Fundraisers for notionally public services.
You can't even get a decent Internet connection in San Francisco.
The tech industry is not responsible for any of these problems. But it's revealing that through forty years of unimaginable growth, and eleven years of the greatest boom times we've ever seen, we've done nothing to fix them. I say without exaggeration that the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 did more for San Francisco than Google, Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest of the tech companies that have put down roots in the city since.
Despite being at the center of the technology revolution, the Bay Area has somehow failed to capture its benefits.
It's not that the city's social problems are invisible to the programming class. But in some way, they're not important enough to bother with. Why solve homelessness in one place when you can solve it everywhere? Why fix anything locally, if the solutions can scale?
And so we end up making life easier for tech workers, assuming that anything we do to free up their time will make them more productive at fixing the world for the rest of humanity.
This is trickle-down economics of the worst kind.
In the process, we've turned our city into a a residential theme park, with a whole parallel world of services for the rich.
There are luxury commuter buses to take us to work, private taxis, valet parking, laundry and housecleaning startups that abstract human servants behind a web interface. We have a service sector that ensures instant delivery of any conceivable consumer good, along with some pretty inconceivable ones.
There are no fewer than seven luxury mattress startups. There's a startup to pay your neighbor to watch your packages for you.
My favorite is a startup you can pay to move your trash bins, once a week, three meters to the curb.
If at the height of boom times we can look around and not address the human crisis of our city, then when are we ever going to do it? And if we're not going to contribute to our own neighborhoods, to making the places we live in and move through every day convenient and comfortable, then what are we going to do for the places we don't ever see?
You wouldn't hire someone who couldn't make themselves a sandwich to be the head chef in your restaurant.
You wouldn't hire a gardener whose houseplants were all dead.
But we expect that people will trust us to reinvent their world with software even though we can't make our own city livable.
- http://idlewords.com/talks/what_happens_next_will_amaze_you....
>In the real world, this has led to a pathology where the tech sector maximizes its own comfort. You don't have to go far to see this. Hop on BART after the conference and take a look at Oakland, or take a stroll through downtown San Francisco and try to persuade yourself you're in the heart of a boom that has lasted for forty years. You'll see a residential theme park for tech workers, surrounded by areas of poverty and misery that have seen no benefit and ample harm from our presence. We pretend that by maximizing our convenience and productivity, we're hastening the day when we finally make life better for all those other people.
This wasn't programmers' fault. It wasn't robots. It wasn't automation. It wasn't the fault of boomers. It wasn't the fault of millenials. It wasn't the fault of "us" in any sense.
It was the fault of the same American oligarchy who conspired to suppress American wages across the country, including those of programmers: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/google-apple-tech-tit...
I'm quite sure they are. It's convenient to paint Silicon Valley tech workers as generally self-absorbed, complacent and pampered. The thing is people criticising this behaviour, activists and politicians are often as much - or even all the more so - to blame.
Maciej mentions a city bureaucracy where everything is still done on paper. This is just one symptom of the issues underlying both poverty and other social problems: Societal change moves at a glacial pace, especially when compared with the technological progress of recent decades. Agents and stakeholders often are not just not susceptive to change, they're more often than not actively fighting it because change might endanger their position or job.
Many of the issues mentioned - while not solvable immediately and completely - could indeed be alleviated to quite some extent today. However, it's not because of the ignorance of tech workers who couldn't care less that these problems remain unsolved. It's due to the inertia, incompetence and ignorance of politicians and civil servants. It's also due to the indifference of the electorate at large.
Effecting significant political change is incredibly hard, especially in the congealed, largely adversarial two-party political system of the US. It's no wonder young, intelligent and skilled people much rather turn to solving technological problems or try to solve every problem with technology than go into politics in order to solve problems the old-fashioned way: With technology you stand a much larger chance to change the world in a positive manner.
People keep saying that these issues can't be solved by technology. It seems however that the current political system is incapable of solving them as well. Perhaps technology is the key to forcing political systems to adapt more quickly. Liquid democracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy ), devolution of power to the local level, decentralisation, a basic income. Those are promising approaches enabled by technology that could play a large part in solving eminent social problems.
The remainder of your comment seems to be exactly what he's complaining about. Problem: poverty sucks. Solution: Let's computerize city hall! Problem: politics is hard. Solution: Let's wait until magic technology makes it easy.
Pure self interest isn't a difficult vector to map. The results are predictable and repeatable.
"Taxation is theft!"
The scenes where main character Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is on the really nice buses, and there is classical music playing in the background, while outside the window there is so much poverty really resonated with me.
I've lived in SF going on 6 years now. My apt complex has private buses that run from here to FDi in the morning and evening. The route sometimes changes but a lot of the time we would go thru the heart of the TL. I'd be half asleep comfortably siting on this Bauer's bus, usually listening to something like Aphex Twin's Select Ambient Works, so not the classic music, but still I would sit there in this amazingly privileged situation and look out the window to all this poverty and despair. It constantly reminded me of this movie.
I worked at Apple for a while, and the same thing, yet instead of my apt complex, it was dozens of Apple buses, shuttling 1000s of people for all over the bay area, and again on the way i'd see so much that really made me think about the current affairs of lots of things that's going crazy in our small little part of the world.
I've since left Apple and joined to a small startup near Union Square/FDi area. I still live in the same apt complex, and they still have the buses running every 15-20 min in the morning, but i don't ride them any more.
I walk the 2 miles everyday to and back from work, and I love it. For so many reasons I love it. One big reason is I don't want to be shielded or sheltered from the real world going on around us. I don't want to deal with the shit on the sidewalk or the craziness that exists in between my spot and my work, but i also don't want to pretend it doesn't exist and try and ignore it.
Sometimes it can be very annoying, hell even scary. But also, A few times it's been amazing rewarding to help someone for 5 minutes. All sorts of little things, I've helped people that can't get their wheelchair from the street onto the sidewalk, or helping the elderly man trying to pick up a heavy box of fruit delivery for his corner store I walk past.
I've had to explain this to some friends that live in apt complex. They take the bus daily and asked why I don't ride it any more, and again it all comes back to the bus scene from Children Of Men.