zlacker

Reading this article by Rebecca Solnit [0] posted on HN here [1] absolutely helped me make sense of the Garry Tan story, and what is going on in Californian politics.

It's well worth reading, but is a long and initially tedious article bemoaning the passing of a gentler, humane culture.

Then about halfway through it grew some balls and teeth, and frankly I found it shocking. I had no idea California was this degenerate. And for those too close to it, no, this isn't just how every country's politics is. It reads like Chicago in the 1920/30's, or perhaps more like Mexico or El Salvator, with billionaires instead of drug lords.

Read alongside "The Californian Ideology" [2] it's eye opening and paints a great picture of the slow trajectory of San Francisco and California from a left-liberal counter-culture to extremist far-right billionaire technofascism.

[0] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n03/rebecca-solnit/in-th...

[1] >>39226296

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

>>nonran+(OP)
> Tech billionaires often seem more interested in surviving the apocalypse than preventing it.

- pretty much sums everything we observe today. And it's only getting worse, despite tech advancements. Great article.

>>dandan+kz
I find it interesting that you added "despite tech advancements". I don't see how the level of technological advancement enters into this equation at all.

>>JohnFe+9H
Maybe the connection dandanua is alluding to is that mythology from the beginning of the "Information Age" (circa 1980) that technology would "bring us all together in a giant conversation of humankind". As if. Now, here we are having this conversation on a platform owned and run by those same "bunker men" who probably bought the laws that destroyed the peered Internet that was our hope. We're still stuck in 1980, holding out that "technology will save us".

>>JohnFe+9H
tech advancements = improvements of life for the whole humanity, and thus overall happiness. But it seems this naive thinking doesn't work in this world.

>>nonran+(OP)
The wiki article is incoherent or at least not easy to sustain motivation enough to finish reading. I think the California ideology they seem to be hinting at can be better thought of as “luxury beliefs” the sort of which Ron Henderson writes a lot about. California is resource rich, historically. Historically this leads to growth and what I would call “messy progress.” It’s definitely gotten messier as growth surged in recent decades due largely to selfish policies that result from its very open (for better and surely for worse) political system.

>>nonran+(OP)
Isn't it a little harsh to include Sam Bankman-Fried in an article about San Francisco?

>>2devnu+6Y
Yes it's a bit undercooked on the Wiki.

FWIW here's a PDF (bitmap scan) I verified [0].

It's also lengthy and hard work, and took me three or four reads to fully grok. Suggest starting at p.61 Cyborg Masters and Robot Slaves for the wrap-up. Thanks for the Henderson tip.

[0] https://monoskop.org/images/d/dc/Barbrook_Richard_Cameron_An...

>>dandan+SN
> tech advancements = improvements of life for the whole humanity

Yes, that equation is inaccurate. Tech advancements mean more powerful tools. Tools that can be used to improve things or can just as easily be used to make things worse.

The entire history of mankind indicates that it will always end up being a mix of both.

>>JohnFe+Aj1
So you do agree that tech advancement could in fact slow or stop the apocalypse? That's all they were getting at.

Unless you want to argue that the lion's share of tech advancements instead doomed humanity.

>>nonran+(OP)
If you’re trying to learn about California and San Francisco from Solnit, you are far down the wrong path. My favorite part of that incoherent article was how Solnit takes credit for social movements that ended decades before she moved to San Francisco.

Pure clout chasing by a clueless white feminist.

>>shuckl+jS2
Was there something you particularly disagreed with, other than the gender and skin colour of the author?

>>nonran+Xb3
Actually white feminism is a technical term when used in my comment referring to a certain type of egotistical blindness to the reality of others enabled by an extreme privilege and narrative making of one’s own.

Solnit has no clue what she’s talking about. She writes as if San Francisco was a bohemian paradise in 1980 when she moved there when in fact it was already considered very expensive (the NYT would write that it was a city for childless yuppies a few years after she arrived), the gays were displacing blacks and Latinos in the Filmore and elsewhere (it was losing more of black residents then than anytime in the 21st century), and it was the financial capital of the west coast.

Most importantly: all the so-called billionaires that clueless progressives think live in San Francisco and influence its politics actually live in Atherton and couldn’t care less. You wouldn’t get clowns like Hallinan and Daly winning elections if there was any meaningful moderate faction in local politics. Which is why they so greatly fear the establishment of one in recent years.