> Taipei 101 is designed to withstand typhoon winds and earthquake tremors that are common in the area in the east of Taiwan. Evergreen Consulting Engineering, the structural engineer, designed Taipei 101 to withstand gale winds of 60 meters per second (197 ft/s), (216 km/h or 134 mph), as well as the strongest earthquakes in a 2,500-year cycle.
> During construction, on 31 March 2002, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Taipei; two construction cranes from the 56th floor, the highest floor at the time, toppled. Five people died in the accident, but an inspection showed no structural damage to the building, and construction soon resumed
But that region of low biodiversity prevents those humans from spreading across a huge swath of land and ruining biodiversity for thousands of miles in every direction
Literally the more developed a country is, the lower it's birth rate. More education, especially women's education, less religiosity and better contraceptive prevalence is all you need. The US is already at 1.6 births per woman, well below the replacement rate of 2.1
You don't need "less breeding habitat" you just need more development.
If you want to live in Manhattan, go live in Manhattan. I run by the Painted Ladies regularly as the sun rises and I love being able to see the skyline behind them.
Sure, we should have higher density apartments in more areas, but they'll probably still all cost the same, the demand is pretty unlikely to be met and landlords will continue to charge insane rents no matter what. They'll probably all be luxury apartments as everyone is looking to maximize their profits.
Increasing any amount of supply will decrease prices while demand stays constant. Do you have reason to believe demand will grow at the same rate as new housing is built?
I mean, yes? Housing prices have continued to shoot up in many western cities despite large increases in housing supply.
It's weird to me that the concept of induced demand is pretty common knowledge when it comes to road traffic, but mostly ignored in housing discussions.
>I mean, yes? Housing prices have continued to shoot up in many western cities despite large increases in housing supply.
Well yes, because we have decades of undersupply to correct! Of course a small step in the right direction doesn't magically fix everything. We need to build WAAAAYYY more, like to a vast overabundance, which capitalism unaided can never do because a builder will never start building a hundred rooms if that makes the market go down because that would ruin their profits elsewhere.
I would be surprised if, after there is enough supply, there is an "induced demand" effect for housing. Humans take like 20 years to go from born to needing a house, and most people don't choose to have children when they otherwise wouldn't because of cheap housing.
As long as the Federal government has a de facto open borders policy, demand will continue growing. I'm not trying to start an off-topic debate about immigration policy here, but regardless of your feelings on that issue the reality is that today we have a lot of people crossing the border and looking for places to live.
Not especially. Depending on your preferences it’s probably better than at least 75% of the country. It’s more like the Bay Area is uniquely good than that NYC is uniquely bad.
> May the painted ladies be demolished and replaced with supertall skyscrapers jam-packed with cheap apartments, maker spaces, and startup incubators!
Without value judgement: Manhattan doesn't look like this. The parts you're thinking of (midtown and downtown) are full of luxury skyscrapers; the majority of the "cheap" (by relative standards) housing is in the north of the borough in 6-10 story apartment buildings.
This guy clearly doesn't know Manhattan real estate. A skyscraper full of cheap apartments in Manhattan? Only in the fever dreams of the relative peasants with 6 figure salaries.
Besides, geotechnical engineering is your friend. A landscape of supertalls may not be the best way to go for San Fran's geography.
We'll just have more leaning towers - SF land is horrible to build on, unless the foundation hammered in for months - even then I wouldn't trust it for tall skyscrapers.
Do people who actually live and vote in San Francisco want to turn it into another Manhattan? If we want more super tall skyscrapers jam packed with cheap apartments and offices then why should they be built in SF specifically? Why not Bakersfield or Cleveland?
San Francisco (and cities in general) are places of great opportunity. Limiting that opportunity only to incumbents who already live there is stifling to our nation as a whole, and it's cruel.
As a thought experiment, what if we treated immigrants to the country in the same manner... "What if existing US residents don't want to turn it into Mexico by allowing Mexicans into the country. Why can't the Mexicans go to Canada or Guatemala".
Allowing more housing to be built is key to allowing more opportunity in a vibrant and active community. Allowing more housing to be built reduces housing costs which lets people flourish. Dense urban areas obviate the need for a car, reducing greenhouse gasses and isolation. All of these are good things.
> San Francisco (and cities in general) are places of great opportunity. Limiting that opportunity only to incumbents who already live there is stifling to our nation as a whole, and it's cruel.
Instead of punishing residents by doubling their population density (more traffic, more crowded schools, etc), the mega-companies (the "great opportunity") should start hiring elsewhere. And of course we're already seeing that happening post-pandemic.
These companies need an endless supply of engineers, sales, and support staff to build out their ad-revenue engines, so that the execs can continue receiving their multi-million RSUs every year... and somehow the residents are cruel for not wanting their city and neighborhoods to change to accommodate them?
You're phrasing that as if the residents aren't thrilled to have the megacorporation there. They want the company there to drive up their house's value without having to deal with the consequences.
If you talk to long-time Mountain View, CA residents they aren't thrilled about having Google HQ there. Homeowners that bought decades ago have much higher net worth on paper, but the quality of life has gone down.
San Francisco could add a ton of housing without adding super tall skyscrapers across the city. Maybe some YIMBYs want to Manhattanize SF but certainly not all of them.
> Over the course of two hours, the CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator personally attacks or retweets criticism of “extremist judges,” whom he accuses of emboldening criminals with the help of local media; any supervisor who dares to oppose bonuses to hire more cops; Nancy Pelosi and lawmakers concerned about the safety of autonomous vehicles; education activists who want to change math curriculum in public schools; venture capitalists who are “evil” to startup founders; “decels” who want to pump the brakes on technological progress; Apple’s monopoly on apps; YouTube censors; and last, but certainly not least, NIMBYs.
I once learned a lot about helping people with alcohol addition for a family friend. A few of the things I learned were: 1) labeling the person as an alcoholic will make them drink more 2) yelling at them and forcing them to defend themselves will make them drink more 3) any kind of aggressive intervention will make them drink more.
Unfortunately, attacking people generally serves to make them feel defensive and want to defend themselves. When we defend ourselves, that generally makes us dig in further.
I'll note that I hope that SF shifts in the direction of Garry's vision, and I'm in favor of the end outcome.
If Garry's goal is attention ("if you want to get an audience, start a fight") then attacks are a good method. If his goal is to change minds, I'd note that he may be more successful if he picks up a few books on helping people who have addictions, and borrows some of the methods from them (in short: make them first feel understood by you, and understand their hesitations and what makes them tick).
He could kind of treat it like he's doing customer development for a startup. Find people who've gone from one side to the other, talk to them about their journey, and so on.
The main point I'm hoping to emphasize is that attacking the other side like this to win may result in victory, but it won't result in peace.
How is that non-confrontation approach to politics on getting things done/getting effective decisions made?
Just Devil's Advocate, but in DC we have a confrontational approach and we still get nothing done. Nor do we get any effective decisions made.
My suspicion is that anyone doing anything other than collaborating with each other, is probably not getting anything real done.
I guess I'm just not sure any of what you said is unique to San Fran. Or even if the opposite of what you just said would yield any better results in San Fran. In fact, I'm positive that it won't, because that's not really a San Fran problem. That's the public discourse problem that we've been having in the US nationally for 30 plus years now.
> I once learned a lot about helping people with alcohol addition for a family friend
I had quite the opposite experience. We held an intervention for my father, sent him to rehab, and he hasn't drank again in 25 years.
The bottom line is, there are prerequisites for maintaining a functional, prosperous society. Preventing crime, enforcing laws, and ensuring order and decorum in public spaces are among them. Several of the board of supervisors, through what is most generously described as extreme naïveté, have done their best to undermine these things.
Garry and other prominent people have taken it upon themselves to try to intervene. It appears to me that he is trying to draw attention to how SF has been degraded by its board of supervisors' disastrous policies. My anecdotal experience is that things have gotten so bad that even SF's leftist core is waking up to how calamitous their voting choices have been.
> it won't result in peace
You may be right. But what choice do we have? This is not a fight over which statues to erect. This is a civic emergency. People are dying on the streets and SF is spiraling into a doom loop. Drastic action is needed.
Actual drastic action would be to structure a public safety department that could manage mental health crises without an armed response every time, and would make police more effective at the crimes that matter to the middle class.
Throwing money at police has zero success stories.
The large majority of the problems stem from the rampant, open air drug dealing and use, as well as the tidal wave of theft and robbery that goes virtually unpoliced and unpunished. These are not "mental health crises".
In the real world, there are numerous examples that refute your suggestion as the best/only alternative to the current mess. For example, drug dealing and possession:
Singapore executes drug dealers. Tokyo sentences drug dealers to long stretches of imprisonment and large fines. Stockholm practices zero tolerance towards drug dealing and possession. Calgary imposes jail sentences for drug possession. The list goes on and on.
I liked living in sf when I was there. One nice thing about moving is not having to feel like I care about all these little political battles people get outraged about. Something about that city attracts the most toxic and loud people like this. Every city has problems, but there is a lot of media and internet outrage about sf.
It's embarrassing to watch a CEO of anything fire off what they think are 'pithy' and 'clever' tweets. It's pathetic when Musk does it and it's no better here.
Doesn't he have something better to do with his time as the CEO of YCombinator?
Edit: To be clear, I don't care about the content of the tweets, I'm not taking a position on Tan's politics. I just can't fathom him spending time on this stuff.
I would submit that it’s influencing the public discourse, since it’s being reported in the Standard and now we are contesting the issues in these comments. Public discourse affects politics, and politics affect our lives. Some people think SF can do better!
As opposed to what, only allowing hot takes from pseudo-anonymous boutique political accounts?
Politics is important, and personally I think everyone up and down the significance spectrum should be allowed to participate without the kind of shaming you’ve just partaken in.
The entire industry of 'hot takes' is a waste of time and participating in it cheapens and does a disservice to pretty much all of the participants.
But I'm not saying ban it. I'm saying I expect people to exercise judgment about whether it's worth their time. Virtue in this case would be having the ability to do this, and choosing not to, in favor of more substantive contributions to the world.
"Hot takes" politics actively makes things worse for EVERYONE. Real life is full of nuance and grey areas and none of that can be managed by something described in 160 characters.
I can’t even see what he tweets because he blocked me, even though we never interacted. I think he just blocked an entire graph of YIMBY accounts or something. Petty, yes. Important, no. I don’t really care which form is taken by the destructor of SF’s political class. Dean Preston and his whole coterie of trust-fund socialists should be posted back to Connecticut where they came from. Peskin and the other do-nothing landlords can retire finally. The heir class should just be disqualified from office on the basis of a lack of life experience. If Tan can get rid of these guys then I am not overly concerned by Tan’s own behavior.
It may be that the biggest problem YC has is the perception of SF as a sick city. One way to change that would be to change people's perception of the city by improving the material conditions.
The “tech bro” angle of critique is getting stale, although I understand the reasoning. People are fine with those who solve problems. It is the people who modify the set of problems they must deal with that upsets them, even if the problem set is net smaller.
Paper funded by one VC publishes glowing writeup on another VC, talking about how everyone else is just getting it wrong and we all need to get into.. effective accelerationism. (What is it about tech and the word effective?)
We promise, say VC's, that if you just get rid of one more $PERSON_GARRY_TAN_DOESNT_LIKE, everything will magically get better, despite no fruit coming from that tree so far.
I, the millionaire tech investor, am the real scrappy working class person, not like those supervisors, I really care about you. Also go SFPD.
> I, the millionaire tech investor, am the real scrappy working class person, not like those supervisors, I really care about you. Also go SFPD.
That’s not snark? Ok in that case I 100% agree with you. And thank you for your investments into our community. Fully support SFPD. Fund the police. And yes, a tech investor in SF is without a hint of a doubt a harder working, more valuable person than those supervisors. As are a lot of other people.
For a second, your comment sounded like the meaningless drivel from the twitter-born progressive activist class that has inundated the politics of west coast cities. And all of us living in urban centers across these states have become completely tired of it. It was interesting in 2015. It’s toxic in 2023.
I'm with you on the silliness of putting "effective" into all sorts of places where it should already be implicit.
But I do like the awareness among engineers and other practical people that any idea can be executed badly, many flawed ideas can be executed well, many good ideas resist successful execution for a long time, and many good-seeming ideas resist successful execution indefinitely. It's an everyday reality for some people, but to others it's a bizarre, suspicious-sounding line of reasoning, most likely invented to avoid doing the <all caps> obviously right thing </all caps>.
Doesn't mean he's not right. I'm from NYC, and at 10x the population we seem to have a much better handle on violent and property crime as well as sanitation per capita.
No I get it, warehousing poor and mentally ill people in prisons definitely hides social problems from rich people & lets us pretend we've fixed something meaningful. Cops & prisons are a great way to do that.
I wonder how much of the car robberies are mentally ill people? I wonder how much of the shop lifting is mentally ill people? Hiding actual criminals behind a group that does deserve help while doing nothing to protect your every day populace is absurd. It's not just hiding social problems from rich people, it's protecting the shift worker who's car window just got smashed for the 3rd time in a year and really can't afford that shit.
Putting aside mental illness, what makes a person a criminal? What circumstances led to their decision?
Sure, protect the shift worker who has little power and therefore little blame. But, who's to blame for society's ills then? Calling for more arrests and incarceration has never, ever solved the underlying issues. What Garry Tan doesn't realize or won't admit is that he is part of the wealthy caste that caused this. Now that he got his money? Lock all of these bad people up!
Society's ills? I think we're talking about just SF. The rest of the nation seems to handle things at a better rate, per my comment about NYC where I live. So what is special about SF except lax rule of law?
I agree heavy sentences and private jails and, what is clearly a planned system to take offenders and make sure they can't re integrate into society are terrible and we need reform in the jail system.
Policing, as a deterrent, and arresting for petty crime however are effective. The threat of punishment is an effective deterrent. The fact we have a draconian system after that point is unfortunate, but if I understand SF doesn't even present the threat.
> The threat of punishment is an effective deterrent.
> [Police] arresting for petty crime however [is] effective
Incorrect. These are myths that people fall back on when they want to advocate for the same policy positions that have produced worse social outcomes for at least the past 40 years. The same thing, over and over again, driven by the belief that punishment must be involved to deter crime.
The threat of punishment has zero effect on deterrence. "Certainty of being caught" apparently does, but as you build a police force that makes getting caught of committing a crime a certainty, you have already fallen into the same trap America (and her cities) fall into over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
"1. The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful
deterrent than the punishment.
Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more
effective deterrent than even draconian punishment. "
That's my point, and it was the first bullet point in what you linked. Can't be worried about being caught if there is no policing.
> "Certainty of being caught" apparently does [provide a deterrent effect], but as you build a police force that makes getting caught of committing a crime a certainty, you have already fallen into the same trap America (and her cities) fall into over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Police aren't a solution. They're a problem. That's not to say there's no UPSIDE. It's to say there are trade-offs and I think they have been proven by history to be unfavorable trade-offs in the long view.
Yes I understand your position. I've been listening to variations on the theme for decades. You're still rehashing the same policy positions that have only ever created more problems than they've solved.
No one in power has any interest in upending the entire US penal system, I understand this upsets you. The reality is those people won't be helped in the way you want maybe ever.
I don't agree that letting otherwise law abiding average people suffer the consequences because of that is okay.
I also don't see people taking the needed action to make these changes you want. For all the extreme positions of complete reform that I see they only come to me online in talk.
I'm a moderate I really don't share the passion, but if I did I'd be taking more physical action to enact it than I see.
> law abiding average people suffer the consequences
law-abiding average people suffer the consequences of increased policing and incarceration, it's just law-abiding average people you don't see or share community with.
Moderates in my experience are the only people who seem to have a grasp on reality. So far you've just been angry and provided no workable alternatives. Let crime run rampant isn't workable.
What is your proposed solution to crime in SF? Is it feasibly executed? This entire conversation is you saying what doesn't work without providing a realistic alternative.
where you and i differ is thinking that more cops & more prisons actually solves anything. i'm getting old, and watching the ultra rich play the same tune on the same horn, exploiting people's legit fears & concerns to stump for the same ineffective solutions that have proven over and over and over and over and over again to be nothing but gussied-up racial & socioeconomic oppression is getting old too.
we've already done the carceral state thing. It doesn't solve anything. history has taught us this lesson already. it's brain-dead to keep pimping for it like he's doing.
That's been my critique of Garry's outspokenness from Day 1. Nowhere is there ownership of what caused SF to devolve into this state in the first place. Tech companies aren't entirely to blame, but they've had a pretty big hand in changing the economic landscape of SF.
Crime is mostly the result of social ills. While individuals should own their behavior, so should the puppeteers. You can't make affordable, consumable tech without exploitation, whether of humans or of Mother Nature, full stop. I'd agree with Garry a lot more if he was trying to fix the dreadful economic situation as well.
I'm not following the details of this closely, but it sounds like he's a Democrat criticizing Democrats in SF for going to far left. Often these critiques from within the party are the best. There are lots of voices on the Republican side who see that party shifting too far right. I find those voices trying to pull to the center the most useful from both sides.
we'd all do better a country (IMO) if we all were more willing to criticize our allies for failing our supposed shared values than for criticizing our opponents for failing the values we believe they should have.
This won't win elections, so it wont happen (easily at least).
Republican politicians are significantly to the right of their constituents. Democratic politicians are also significantly to the right of their constituents. And the solution of mainstream Democrats appears to be... embracing the left wing of the Republican party, while rejecting the left wing of their own party, thus ceding significant power to the Republican party as a whole (the left wing of which happily goes along with the right wing's lunacy).
Is it good that we have to play "my team/your team" with politics? No, but it becomes a simple prisoner's dilemma. One team plays "always defect" and the other team... insists that not defecting is the right thing to do, and thus loses repeatedly.
I think the solution is simple: Democrats need to vote in Republican primaries and pull that party back closer to the center. Primaries are low-turnout affairs, so a Democratic bloc can put the scare in any nutso incumbent.
Unfortunately Democrats do the opposite. They interfere in Republican primaries to push that party further to the right and nominate the extreme candidates (the pied-piper strategy).
It's such an idiotic tactic. It completely undermines any legitimate concerns that the GOP has an extremism problem. If one truly believes those extremists are dangerous, then they should be defeated at any stage of the election process, not cynically advanced to a general election.
The smart example is crossover voters helping Georgia's Brad Raffensberger win over his Trump-backed primary opponent.
Just a reminder that the world is infinitely complex and there's no "two sides".
That American politics has been taken over by two political organizations is one of the greatest scams of all time
Truly I'm in awe of both the American republican party and the American democratic party.
I think Duverger's Law [1] is applicable here. The dominance of two primary parties is an emergent property of the rules for how candidates in the U.S. typically win elections ("plurality wins" as opposed to "majority wins"), not an ab initio "scam".
Indeed. And much like the TV show "Survivor", the factions continuously shift so that they remain balanced at nearly 50-50 over time. People who are in the majority but "at the bottom" jump to the other team, which re-balances the two parties.
A good example is how 30 years ago the Democratic party was solidly identified as the champion of the "little guy." But since then, the working class has felt abandoned by the Democratic party and now somehow they look to the GOP and Trump for help. It would have been inconceivable in the mid-80s that a state like West Virginia would become a Republican stronghold.
In SF, we subdivide the partys in to groups (moderates and progressives), but even that is unacceptably simple.
E.g. I am a moderate on housing policy (except the finite resource of public open space), I am generally progressive on transportation policy (we need to dedicate at least 25% of streets explicitly to prioritize non-automobile traffic if we have any change at growing or even fighting climate change). I am moderate on public anti-social behavior (when you don't get punished for breaking into a random person's car, you suddenly create a pipeline to organized crime, we see by bippers dumping tourists luggage a block away after taking the items they can fence). I am a progressive on criminal justice reform (I am convinced by the data that our prisons are crimongenic, however, I think the focus should be on prison reform).
It's entirely plausible to have a nuanced view on all theses issues, but most people don't want to think too hard about things, and politics as team-sports is a much easier and instinctual concept when it comes to the principal-agent problem.
Won't happen, because they view the Left as well-intentioned, but --in the case of SF-- badly executed in some specific policies. Whereas they view the Right/GOP as fundamentally ill-intentioned: theocratic, increasingly authoritarian, etc.
To paraphrase an old saying about bipartisanship, no matter how poorly run the restaurant you're eating in is, if the competition across the street is serving tire rims and anthrax you're going to stay put.
I get that for social issues, but when we're talking about crime, affirmative action (which greatly affects Asians especially),etc - why wouldn't those take priority?
That assumes that the GOP offers better alternatives on policy other than social issues and that social issues are insufficient to outweigh them. You don't get to vote for party policies or even for parties, you get to vote for candidates.
I'm mot Tan, but maybe personal perspective will shed some light.
I'm American, and my politics lean slightly conservative. So you might assume I'd typically vote Republican, but I don't.
The reason is that IMO, the Republican party has gone insane in recent years. Their support for Donald Trump is an extreme but telling example.
Nowadays I typically vote independent. (This year I registered as a Republican so I can hopefully prevent Trump from winning the Republican primaries.)
Is the author really trying to make the case that Garry Tan in the second most influential person in SF politics after Mayor London Breed? Give me a break. People really need to get off Twitter and live life in the real world once in a while. This is nothing more than a puff piece desperately trying to paint Tan as a new Elon Musk. He may have thrown money at a few candidates, but on the streets of SF he is a nobody, and his Tweetstorms don't really amount to political activism (at least not the effective kind).
LOL, an article about some posts where the author has confused Xitter slactivism as a proxy for actual involvement devoid of any actual policy. It's all just a morass of criticism.
I don't think people realize how little money they'll dance for. I always imagined you had to donate in the hundreds of thousands at a minimum to get their attention. Turns out for even a <$5K donation you can get an invite to a dinner party where you get to whisper in your senator or representative's ear for 2 hours.
A politcal landscape of career politicians and undignified, multi-millionare ideologues may be better than a landscape of just career politicians; I'm not sure if it's much better, however.
A successful political system is more about surviving to the next round of the game than scoring highly in any particular round. And voting usually boils down to choosing between what makes you sick and what kills you. Politics is certainly not a career for the faint of heart.
Serious question from someone who doesn't live in California or follow local politics there: Has Tan or any other well-off tech leader sharing similar visions/values run for supervisor or mayor? I see that Conway et al poured donations into the local party apparatus in the past (https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/ron-conway-big-tech-drop-tho...) but wouldn't their goals be more effectively served from an elected position of power, as opposed to back-room lobbying and social media attacks?
What is a list of the policies of the Board of Supervisors, and now Dean Preston in particular, which people find have been destructive to SF?
There's endless articles about how they've allowed criminality, they're too progressive, and so on, but I've had a tough time finding the actual specific policies that they've voted for.
I resided in SF for longer than any other city and in the bay area for more than two decades, over half my life. However I moved away a bit more than five years ago. While I like to think my experience is still relevant and I try to keep up with SF news I'm aware that my understanding of the city and its political context has drifted from reality (or reality has drifted from me).
That said, it confuses me how everyone talks as if issues like open drug use, the exploding homeless population, and property crime are recent issues in the city when I know the same problems existed during my time there. I saw people smoking and injecting drugs on the street and homeless people struggling with mental illness sleeping or relieving themselves anywhere. I had friends get mugged, my girlfriend's car window got smashed twice, and my roommate's Subaru got hot-wired, stolen, stripped and then dumped in Oakland.
I agree those problems and how common they are need to be addressed and that the government is doing a terrible job doing so, but it feels like they are framed as new and on the rise when I don't think they are. A year or so ago I looked at crime stats for the city currently compared to when I was there and they didn't seem hugely different in either direction.
On the specific topic you mentioned, I agree the comment was tone deaf and unhelpful, but its not particularly unusual or unexpected or only "recent", its one of the most common pieces of advice I'd hear about car break-ins. When I first moved to SF people were saying never leave valuables in your car, there were news reports and PSAs giving the advice. People already victim-blamed anyone that accidentally forgot a backpack or purse in the back seat.
I don't understand why the same brain-dead, empty platitude is getting discussed now as some new low or blunder. Yes its worthless advice from someone who should be trying to improve things, but the city has been saying the same things and being bad at their jobs in the same way for decades.
Am I missing discussion that includes the city's history with these issues and an inability to solve them? Are there better news or communities I should be following?
Does SF's largely transient population mean most current residents moved in recently while previous ones familiar with that history have left? Am I being a hackneyed "back in my day" hipster focusing on how a discussion "feels" instead of the topic being discussed?
Am I just wrong and SF is actually way worse off now than it was when I was there?
You're going to get a big list from a variety of perspectives, I think. To me the root cause of SF's current problems is the 1978 downzoning. Everything else stems from the consequent housing crisis. Dean Preston is only a latter-day bit player, perpetuating the crisis instead of reversing it.
The environmental impact report for the downzoning, written by and from the point of view of the proponents, states that the purpose of the action was to "stem the out-migration of current residents without attracting large numbers of new residents." So if you ever feel like SF's policies exist to enrich heirs while irritating newcomers, you're right.
This article feels like it displays a more balanced Tan than I see in the other coverage of him, or the rage-filled responses to his tweets. I'm glad to understand more of the context.
And, I'm left feeling like there are so many "smart" people who feel that the best way to fix things is to rage on Twitter. Tan isn't doing just that: he is donating money, and fundraising, and getting involved in conversations. Why not run for office? The people he is criticizing are putting their asses on the line, and he isn't really risking much other than his reputation.
My biggest criticism of this and most of the discourse you see on here is everything always has to be left vs. right.
Do you think people shouldn’t go to jail for being homeless? Ok left extremist.
Do you feel uncomfortable with outdoor drug use? Ok right extremist.
So as a result, you get people arguing about what a centrist policy is rather than just evaluating the policy for what it is.
Would SF be better if we had a large indoor space for safe drug use (like the armory)? Maybe maybe not - but let’s talk about that rather than dividing ourselves into teams based on imagined identity.
Everytime I see a bil/millionaire techy complain about "far left" politics I'm always like, my dude do you know what far left actually means?
Far left would mean you literally wouldn't exist. SF's problem is hyper-liberalism, not "far left". All of the actions being taken are band aids, while also maintaining the extreme levels on inequality that has put the city in the state that it is in.
Reducing policing and criminalization is always a good thing, but for it to be successful it has to be followed up with all the other (argubly much harder) tasks. Rent is skyrocketing, NIMBYism is alive and well, lack of social and housing support is still there. The war on drugs is alive and well.
SF can't decide if it wants to care about the 99% or the 1%. And until it makes that decision, it's going to continue being shit.
Also, a single (rich) city is not going to be able to counter the hyper-capitalist mentality of the country. These changes need to come from every level of government & not just a city.
> education activists who want to change math curriculum in public schools
Is this a reference to SFUSD's experiment to not allow any student to take algebra 1 before 9th grade? If so, it's not so much about changing curriculum, but preventing students from learning.
Can we please stop mistaking "Twitter wars" for what most people care about in real life? It's normally always an exercise in taking some of the most extreme views, on both sides, so that you can then paint your "enemies" with the most caricature-ist brush imaginable.
“Most people want certainty. They want to feel comfortable. And then the true founders, they want to find chaos, and they want to turn chaos into order.”
Garry Tan
I thought this quote summarized an important insight for founders. It echoes a model from Amar Bhide's "Origin and Evolution of New Business" that startups have to hunt for situations where the probability of high value cash flows is uncertain because the situations with low uncertainty will be dominated by existing firms who can make substantially larger investments of money and effort.
130 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 388 ms ] threadMay the painted ladies be demolished and replaced with supertall skyscrapers jam-packed with cheap apartments, maker spaces, and startup incubators!
(I say this with no sarcasm. SF should look like Manhattan; allow a few historic houses but most gotta go.)
> Taipei 101 is designed to withstand typhoon winds and earthquake tremors that are common in the area in the east of Taiwan. Evergreen Consulting Engineering, the structural engineer, designed Taipei 101 to withstand gale winds of 60 meters per second (197 ft/s), (216 km/h or 134 mph), as well as the strongest earthquakes in a 2,500-year cycle.
> During construction, on 31 March 2002, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Taipei; two construction cranes from the 56th floor, the highest floor at the time, toppled. Five people died in the accident, but an inspection showed no structural damage to the building, and construction soon resumed
Ah, the anti-human shows through. I guess we should just ... what, with the people then?
You don't need "less breeding habitat" you just need more development.
Sure, we should have higher density apartments in more areas, but they'll probably still all cost the same, the demand is pretty unlikely to be met and landlords will continue to charge insane rents no matter what. They'll probably all be luxury apartments as everyone is looking to maximize their profits.
It's weird to me that the concept of induced demand is pretty common knowledge when it comes to road traffic, but mostly ignored in housing discussions.
Well yes, because we have decades of undersupply to correct! Of course a small step in the right direction doesn't magically fix everything. We need to build WAAAAYYY more, like to a vast overabundance, which capitalism unaided can never do because a builder will never start building a hundred rooms if that makes the market go down because that would ruin their profits elsewhere.
I would be surprised if, after there is enough supply, there is an "induced demand" effect for housing. Humans take like 20 years to go from born to needing a house, and most people don't choose to have children when they otherwise wouldn't because of cheap housing.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-allowing-hundreds-of-...
Without value judgement: Manhattan doesn't look like this. The parts you're thinking of (midtown and downtown) are full of luxury skyscrapers; the majority of the "cheap" (by relative standards) housing is in the north of the borough in 6-10 story apartment buildings.
This guy clearly doesn't know Manhattan real estate. A skyscraper full of cheap apartments in Manhattan? Only in the fever dreams of the relative peasants with 6 figure salaries.
Besides, geotechnical engineering is your friend. A landscape of supertalls may not be the best way to go for San Fran's geography.
As a thought experiment, what if we treated immigrants to the country in the same manner... "What if existing US residents don't want to turn it into Mexico by allowing Mexicans into the country. Why can't the Mexicans go to Canada or Guatemala".
Allowing more housing to be built is key to allowing more opportunity in a vibrant and active community. Allowing more housing to be built reduces housing costs which lets people flourish. Dense urban areas obviate the need for a car, reducing greenhouse gasses and isolation. All of these are good things.
Instead of punishing residents by doubling their population density (more traffic, more crowded schools, etc), the mega-companies (the "great opportunity") should start hiring elsewhere. And of course we're already seeing that happening post-pandemic.
These companies need an endless supply of engineers, sales, and support staff to build out their ad-revenue engines, so that the execs can continue receiving their multi-million RSUs every year... and somehow the residents are cruel for not wanting their city and neighborhoods to change to accommodate them?
Paris has a height limit of 12 stories for most parts of the city https://www.archdaily.com/1002165/paris-reimposes-the-ban-on...
Hopefully the San Francisco BoS does their part and approves reasonable housing so it's not purely up to developers with SB 35/423.
I once learned a lot about helping people with alcohol addition for a family friend. A few of the things I learned were: 1) labeling the person as an alcoholic will make them drink more 2) yelling at them and forcing them to defend themselves will make them drink more 3) any kind of aggressive intervention will make them drink more.
Unfortunately, attacking people generally serves to make them feel defensive and want to defend themselves. When we defend ourselves, that generally makes us dig in further.
I'll note that I hope that SF shifts in the direction of Garry's vision, and I'm in favor of the end outcome.
If Garry's goal is attention ("if you want to get an audience, start a fight") then attacks are a good method. If his goal is to change minds, I'd note that he may be more successful if he picks up a few books on helping people who have addictions, and borrows some of the methods from them (in short: make them first feel understood by you, and understand their hesitations and what makes them tick).
He could kind of treat it like he's doing customer development for a startup. Find people who've gone from one side to the other, talk to them about their journey, and so on.
The main point I'm hoping to emphasize is that attacking the other side like this to win may result in victory, but it won't result in peace.
How is that peace and understanding coming along in dealing with that street drugs/addiction problem?
How is that non-confrontation approach to politics on getting things done/getting effective decisions made?
Just Devil's Advocate, but in DC we have a confrontational approach and we still get nothing done. Nor do we get any effective decisions made.
My suspicion is that anyone doing anything other than collaborating with each other, is probably not getting anything real done.
I guess I'm just not sure any of what you said is unique to San Fran. Or even if the opposite of what you just said would yield any better results in San Fran. In fact, I'm positive that it won't, because that's not really a San Fran problem. That's the public discourse problem that we've been having in the US nationally for 30 plus years now.
Rather than continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results.
I had quite the opposite experience. We held an intervention for my father, sent him to rehab, and he hasn't drank again in 25 years.
The bottom line is, there are prerequisites for maintaining a functional, prosperous society. Preventing crime, enforcing laws, and ensuring order and decorum in public spaces are among them. Several of the board of supervisors, through what is most generously described as extreme naïveté, have done their best to undermine these things.
Garry and other prominent people have taken it upon themselves to try to intervene. It appears to me that he is trying to draw attention to how SF has been degraded by its board of supervisors' disastrous policies. My anecdotal experience is that things have gotten so bad that even SF's leftist core is waking up to how calamitous their voting choices have been.
> it won't result in peace
You may be right. But what choice do we have? This is not a fight over which statues to erect. This is a civic emergency. People are dying on the streets and SF is spiraling into a doom loop. Drastic action is needed.
Throwing money at police has zero success stories.
In the real world, there are numerous examples that refute your suggestion as the best/only alternative to the current mess. For example, drug dealing and possession:
Singapore executes drug dealers. Tokyo sentences drug dealers to long stretches of imprisonment and large fines. Stockholm practices zero tolerance towards drug dealing and possession. Calgary imposes jail sentences for drug possession. The list goes on and on.
Otherwise, maybe try understanding WHAT people are saying and not just focus on HOW they say it.
Doesn't he have something better to do with his time as the CEO of YCombinator?
Edit: To be clear, I don't care about the content of the tweets, I'm not taking a position on Tan's politics. I just can't fathom him spending time on this stuff.
I've got a Jump to Conclusions Mat you may be interested in. It's a mat with a bunch of conclusions ... that you can jump to.
Politics is important, and personally I think everyone up and down the significance spectrum should be allowed to participate without the kind of shaming you’ve just partaken in.
But I'm not saying ban it. I'm saying I expect people to exercise judgment about whether it's worth their time. Virtue in this case would be having the ability to do this, and choosing not to, in favor of more substantive contributions to the world.
We promise, say VC's, that if you just get rid of one more $PERSON_GARRY_TAN_DOESNT_LIKE, everything will magically get better, despite no fruit coming from that tree so far.
I, the millionaire tech investor, am the real scrappy working class person, not like those supervisors, I really care about you. Also go SFPD.
> I, the millionaire tech investor, am the real scrappy working class person, not like those supervisors, I really care about you. Also go SFPD.
That’s not snark? Ok in that case I 100% agree with you. And thank you for your investments into our community. Fully support SFPD. Fund the police. And yes, a tech investor in SF is without a hint of a doubt a harder working, more valuable person than those supervisors. As are a lot of other people.
For a second, your comment sounded like the meaningless drivel from the twitter-born progressive activist class that has inundated the politics of west coast cities. And all of us living in urban centers across these states have become completely tired of it. It was interesting in 2015. It’s toxic in 2023.
I'm with you on the silliness of putting "effective" into all sorts of places where it should already be implicit.
But I do like the awareness among engineers and other practical people that any idea can be executed badly, many flawed ideas can be executed well, many good ideas resist successful execution for a long time, and many good-seeming ideas resist successful execution indefinitely. It's an everyday reality for some people, but to others it's a bizarre, suspicious-sounding line of reasoning, most likely invented to avoid doing the <all caps> obviously right thing </all caps>.
Sure, protect the shift worker who has little power and therefore little blame. But, who's to blame for society's ills then? Calling for more arrests and incarceration has never, ever solved the underlying issues. What Garry Tan doesn't realize or won't admit is that he is part of the wealthy caste that caused this. Now that he got his money? Lock all of these bad people up!
I agree heavy sentences and private jails and, what is clearly a planned system to take offenders and make sure they can't re integrate into society are terrible and we need reform in the jail system.
Policing, as a deterrent, and arresting for petty crime however are effective. The threat of punishment is an effective deterrent. The fact we have a draconian system after that point is unfortunate, but if I understand SF doesn't even present the threat.
> [Police] arresting for petty crime however [is] effective
Incorrect. These are myths that people fall back on when they want to advocate for the same policy positions that have produced worse social outcomes for at least the past 40 years. The same thing, over and over again, driven by the belief that punishment must be involved to deter crime.
The threat of punishment has zero effect on deterrence. "Certainty of being caught" apparently does, but as you build a police force that makes getting caught of committing a crime a certainty, you have already fallen into the same trap America (and her cities) fall into over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf
That's my point, and it was the first bullet point in what you linked. Can't be worried about being caught if there is no policing.
> "Certainty of being caught" apparently does [provide a deterrent effect], but as you build a police force that makes getting caught of committing a crime a certainty, you have already fallen into the same trap America (and her cities) fall into over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Police aren't a solution. They're a problem. That's not to say there's no UPSIDE. It's to say there are trade-offs and I think they have been proven by history to be unfavorable trade-offs in the long view.
No one in power has any interest in upending the entire US penal system, I understand this upsets you. The reality is those people won't be helped in the way you want maybe ever.
I don't agree that letting otherwise law abiding average people suffer the consequences because of that is okay.
I also don't see people taking the needed action to make these changes you want. For all the extreme positions of complete reform that I see they only come to me online in talk.
I'm a moderate I really don't share the passion, but if I did I'd be taking more physical action to enact it than I see.
shocking
> law abiding average people suffer the consequences
law-abiding average people suffer the consequences of increased policing and incarceration, it's just law-abiding average people you don't see or share community with.
What is your proposed solution to crime in SF? Is it feasibly executed? This entire conversation is you saying what doesn't work without providing a realistic alternative.
A person can be both ‘rich’ and want better for the community they choose to be part of.
we've already done the carceral state thing. It doesn't solve anything. history has taught us this lesson already. it's brain-dead to keep pimping for it like he's doing.
Crime is mostly the result of social ills. While individuals should own their behavior, so should the puppeteers. You can't make affordable, consumable tech without exploitation, whether of humans or of Mother Nature, full stop. I'd agree with Garry a lot more if he was trying to fix the dreadful economic situation as well.
This won't win elections, so it wont happen (easily at least).
Is it good that we have to play "my team/your team" with politics? No, but it becomes a simple prisoner's dilemma. One team plays "always defect" and the other team... insists that not defecting is the right thing to do, and thus loses repeatedly.
https://theweek.com/speed-reads/1015258/the-pied-piper-strat...
The smart example is crossover voters helping Georgia's Brad Raffensberger win over his Trump-backed primary opponent.
Truly I'm in awe of both the American republican party and the American democratic party.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
A good example is how 30 years ago the Democratic party was solidly identified as the champion of the "little guy." But since then, the working class has felt abandoned by the Democratic party and now somehow they look to the GOP and Trump for help. It would have been inconceivable in the mid-80s that a state like West Virginia would become a Republican stronghold.
When the corrective mechanism is nearly impossible to invoke, it doesnt really matter who wants what.
E.g. I am a moderate on housing policy (except the finite resource of public open space), I am generally progressive on transportation policy (we need to dedicate at least 25% of streets explicitly to prioritize non-automobile traffic if we have any change at growing or even fighting climate change). I am moderate on public anti-social behavior (when you don't get punished for breaking into a random person's car, you suddenly create a pipeline to organized crime, we see by bippers dumping tourists luggage a block away after taking the items they can fence). I am a progressive on criminal justice reform (I am convinced by the data that our prisons are crimongenic, however, I think the focus should be on prison reform).
It's entirely plausible to have a nuanced view on all theses issues, but most people don't want to think too hard about things, and politics as team-sports is a much easier and instinctual concept when it comes to the principal-agent problem.
I'm American, and my politics lean slightly conservative. So you might assume I'd typically vote Republican, but I don't.
The reason is that IMO, the Republican party has gone insane in recent years. Their support for Donald Trump is an extreme but telling example.
Nowadays I typically vote independent. (This year I registered as a Republican so I can hopefully prevent Trump from winning the Republican primaries.)
Their state's GOP would have to offer a political platform that appealed to the state's urban voters. That's it, it is not a mystery.
There's endless articles about how they've allowed criminality, they're too progressive, and so on, but I've had a tough time finding the actual specific policies that they've voted for.
That said, it confuses me how everyone talks as if issues like open drug use, the exploding homeless population, and property crime are recent issues in the city when I know the same problems existed during my time there. I saw people smoking and injecting drugs on the street and homeless people struggling with mental illness sleeping or relieving themselves anywhere. I had friends get mugged, my girlfriend's car window got smashed twice, and my roommate's Subaru got hot-wired, stolen, stripped and then dumped in Oakland.
I agree those problems and how common they are need to be addressed and that the government is doing a terrible job doing so, but it feels like they are framed as new and on the rise when I don't think they are. A year or so ago I looked at crime stats for the city currently compared to when I was there and they didn't seem hugely different in either direction.
On the specific topic you mentioned, I agree the comment was tone deaf and unhelpful, but its not particularly unusual or unexpected or only "recent", its one of the most common pieces of advice I'd hear about car break-ins. When I first moved to SF people were saying never leave valuables in your car, there were news reports and PSAs giving the advice. People already victim-blamed anyone that accidentally forgot a backpack or purse in the back seat.
I don't understand why the same brain-dead, empty platitude is getting discussed now as some new low or blunder. Yes its worthless advice from someone who should be trying to improve things, but the city has been saying the same things and being bad at their jobs in the same way for decades.
Am I missing discussion that includes the city's history with these issues and an inability to solve them? Are there better news or communities I should be following?
Does SF's largely transient population mean most current residents moved in recently while previous ones familiar with that history have left? Am I being a hackneyed "back in my day" hipster focusing on how a discussion "feels" instead of the topic being discussed?
Am I just wrong and SF is actually way worse off now than it was when I was there?
The environmental impact report for the downzoning, written by and from the point of view of the proponents, states that the purpose of the action was to "stem the out-migration of current residents without attracting large numbers of new residents." So if you ever feel like SF's policies exist to enrich heirs while irritating newcomers, you're right.
And, I'm left feeling like there are so many "smart" people who feel that the best way to fix things is to rage on Twitter. Tan isn't doing just that: he is donating money, and fundraising, and getting involved in conversations. Why not run for office? The people he is criticizing are putting their asses on the line, and he isn't really risking much other than his reputation.
Do you think people shouldn’t go to jail for being homeless? Ok left extremist.
Do you feel uncomfortable with outdoor drug use? Ok right extremist.
So as a result, you get people arguing about what a centrist policy is rather than just evaluating the policy for what it is.
Would SF be better if we had a large indoor space for safe drug use (like the armory)? Maybe maybe not - but let’s talk about that rather than dividing ourselves into teams based on imagined identity.
Far left would mean you literally wouldn't exist. SF's problem is hyper-liberalism, not "far left". All of the actions being taken are band aids, while also maintaining the extreme levels on inequality that has put the city in the state that it is in.
Reducing policing and criminalization is always a good thing, but for it to be successful it has to be followed up with all the other (argubly much harder) tasks. Rent is skyrocketing, NIMBYism is alive and well, lack of social and housing support is still there. The war on drugs is alive and well.
SF can't decide if it wants to care about the 99% or the 1%. And until it makes that decision, it's going to continue being shit.
Also, a single (rich) city is not going to be able to counter the hyper-capitalist mentality of the country. These changes need to come from every level of government & not just a city.
Is this a reference to SFUSD's experiment to not allow any student to take algebra 1 before 9th grade? If so, it's not so much about changing curriculum, but preventing students from learning.
I thought this quote summarized an important insight for founders. It echoes a model from Amar Bhide's "Origin and Evolution of New Business" that startups have to hunt for situations where the probability of high value cash flows is uncertain because the situations with low uncertainty will be dominated by existing firms who can make substantially larger investments of money and effort.