The Google buses and the joys of hippy punching

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Google is based in Mountain View, CA.  A significant number of its employees live in San Francisco, enough that they run private shuttle buses between SF and Mountain View.  What’s the fuss?  After all, running shuttle buses reduces the number of cars on the road and that’s a good thing.  Well, superficially at least, there’s some fuss that the Google buses have been using public bus stops as pick up and drop off points.  More significantly, there’s an argument that the Google buses apparently have an adverse impact on the finances of SF’s public transportation system.   Fair enough.  But while the buses themselves are a source of conflict they’re a proxy for a bigger issue:  gentrification.  High-salaried techies – Google employees and otherwise – are driving up the cost of living and driving out middle class residents – see here and here for anecdotes.  It’s enough of an issue that here’s been a bit of a popular uprising against the buses.

With that as background, there was a post on Unfogged the other day re the Google bus protests:

President Googly writes: In the past month, the situation with the tech buses has gone from mildly annoying to slightly worrisome to bone-chilling. I’ve heard every side of this argument six different ways by now and I’m really quite hopeless that the root causes can ever adequately be addressed. Furthermore, I’ve never seen the DFH [“Dumb F%^*ing Hippies”] contingent so thoroughly stink up an issue (i.e., the housing shortage not the damn bus stops) that genuinely calls for a vigorous progressive response.

The most interesting part to me is how unhinged the whole debate is becoming and the weird interaction between a genuine public policy dilemma and a semi-professional Left that’s piling on with all kinds of non-answers. This is probably old hat for Bay Area natives, but I’m a neoliberal from back East and I’m not accustomed to finding myself on the “conservative” side of an issue.

Also, if you click through to the details of the “protest” at a random Google employee’s house in Berkeley, the details are really, really creepy and it is not at all unreasonable to fear for this guy’s personal safety.

The post does beg the question, Just what is President Googly’s suggested “vigorous progressive response” to SF’s affordable housing problem?  Listen to the crickets chirp?  (No answer is better than non-answers?  Please.  Put up or shut up.)  That aside, the comment is just run-of-the-mill hippie punching.  So what?  The so what is that Pres. Googly inspired the following comment from the usually astute Brad DeLong.  He posts:

From my perspective, this bunch of protesters is important to have because they make it impossible to sustain with good faith the argument that neoconservatives have no point at all. They do have a point.

The comment inspired spirited responses and much piling on.  (One obvious question is, What point?  As of 20:18 EST on February 5 that remains a mystery.)  Commenter Graydon was particularly on point (emphasis mine):

The buses represent a comprehensible manifestation of inaccessible privilege. Of course people hate them.

Since the buses are a vulnerable, visible form of privilege, it does make some sense to try to make it impossible for them to exist. If they can’t exist, some other solution to housing issues has to be found than distance.

This is (also) a major downside to the naked plutocracy; people with no money have no political options. They can submit, or they can light things on fire. No meaningful third option.

It’s not complicated and Graydon gets to the heart of the matter.  I offered a response of my own but it didn’t make it into the comments section.  Oh, well.  One of the benefits of having my own blog is that I can reiterate my point and elaborate here and I will.

On reading Brad’s post my reaction was:  Whose side do you think you would have taken during the Indian Wars?

A little high on the snark factor, yes, but the analogy has merit.  The core issue in SF is that one group of people is essentially forcing another group off to ‘reservations’ because they can.  Not at gunpoint now but if push came to shove wouldn’t it be?  (Compare and contrast of public housing with indian reservations is left as an exercise to the reader.) [Note 2/6/2014:  Reading this over I realize that I’ve conflated middle class types from the sfgate articles with lower income types who’ve been the principals behind the Google bus protests.  Sloppy for me to conflate the two but read on.  The bigger points hold.]

Is it that difficult to understand the locals’ hostility towards Google employees and others passive aggressively forcing them out of their neighborhoods?   When someone says “I like what you’ve got and I’m taking it.” you’re picking a fight with them.  Maybe they slink off without saying a word.  Maybe they fight back.  If they choose to fight back then don’t act surprised and be a pussy about it.  The old cliche applies:  Don’t start a fight that you aren’t prepared to finish.

Why pick on Brad’s comment?  I suppose because it exposes the tension between (left) neoliberals like DeLong and New Deal/social democrat types like myself.  Neoliberals have constructed a narrative to justify gentrification.  (Pro-choice, pro-marriage-equality, pro-weed artsy liberals contribute more to the advancement and cultural enrichment of a city than blue collar types, no?)  Of course neoconservatives also have their own narrative to justify kicking the undeserving in the teeth – gentrification falls within the scope.  I despise neocons.  No further discussion necessary.  In contrast,  I can often find common cause with the neoliberals.  I can and do but I’m still not keen on them [see Note 1 below].  Why not?  Well, recall that it was neoliberals who brought us NAFTA, did away with Glass-Steagall, and generally liberated markets we can credit for the current state of economic affairs.  That makes neoliberal policies suspect – if not anathema – to people with populist tendencies.  Neoliberal policies enable political situations where large groups of people get shafted.  That’s no good.  I’ll grant you that a pro-choice, pro-marriage-equality, WiFi-and-iPads-for-all feudal society looks far preferable to what would play out if we followed the neocon playbook but that doesn’t make the former appealing.  A kinder, gentler feudal society is still a feudal society.  It’s good to be the lord – not so much if you’re not.

“Reality-based technocrats” are often well-intentioned but they don’t get politics.  Politics is about deciding who gets to do what to whom.  People who lack a power advantage who agree to “be reasonable” generally get it done to them.  Class matters. While suggesting technocratic solutions to problems is constructive, such suggestions need to be considered in the context of politics.  People like Arin Dube get this.  Left neoliberals generally do not.  (UPDATE 2/8/2014:  Dan Kervick speaks eloquently on the limits of neoliberalism here.)

Some links:

Notes:

  1. “That person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally; not a 20 percent traitor.”