It's really, REALLY not. I've been here 10 years. I'm post-exit, and I still can't really afford to own a home. I could cash a down payment check, but it'd wipe out most of my savings and the home would be some ancient decrepit thing needing an 8th of its values in repairs. As such, I'm at a disadvantage in exercising political power. I'm constantly forced to move around, limiting the time I have to short stints in any given community.

Most of us actually exert very little influence in local politics, precisely because we're here for the work. I'm in a tiny minority that's decided to "settle down" and not retreat "back home" once I've got a quarter million in investments and another 100k in cash.

And in fact, I think very few of my peers are super into local politics. Even I'm guilty of being somewhat disengaged until recently, and I'm trying to make up for that now in Daly City.

The property owners moving in sync are what dominate a lot of features in this town, and very few "hackers from this site" are actually in that club. Even the rare post-exit folks like me. The truth is that they have a lot more to gain by keeping the status quo than itinerant tech workers have to lose by just leaving rather than dealing with the difficult problem of entrenched NIMBYism.

I'm dealing with that now in my area and it is AGONIZING to sit there listening to some old man or woman go on about how Asians and Brazilians ruining the community and stealing their parking when they're the ones renting out 3 homes in the first place.

2/3 of my coworkers don't even vote, so it's not quite created by them in the way you imagine.

How does voting have anything to do with helping create the gig economy, driving up rent prices due to high paying jobs for single people, etc?

Those things don't exist in a policy vacuum.

Every action is political and ignoring that reality is how many of these problems are created in the first place. This is why many tech workers "hate politics", they hate having to be responsible for their actions.

Most Americans "hate politics" because they've been socialized to, not because they actually do. "Bureaucracy is bad," is an idea deeply seated in the American psyche.

It's true though, if more of us went to local government sessions, we could probably just utterly dominate the discourse and reject a lot of NIMBYisms outright, and that'd probably result in a lot of political changes.

I myself regret bitterly how much I let my parent's culture influence my opinions on this, and it's only as I get older that I fully appreciate the many toxic and counter-productive ways my fundamental christian socialization has influenced me even as I've struggled to move more left throughout the course of my life.

The vast majority of people hate having to be responsible for their actions, no need to single anyone out.

I have two definitions of politics, to help me think about this. The traditional and perjorative "theater meant to influence a goal" definition, as well as the "earnest, often unconscious, dynamics of a relationship." It is easy to want to avoid the first, but the second is ubiquitous unless you are a self-sufficient hermit.

That's a weird assumption. I hate politics due to the influence of money, first past the post voting, and gerrymandering.