I appreciate the perspective of a person who identifies as Marxist.
I'm not a Marxist but I've been struggling to articulate why I believe this sort of protesting is counterproductive. For one thing, their complaints are not actionable-- they're co-opting a grab-bag of leftist, luddite terminology and the end result rounds down to a primal scream. I don't live in SF, but it seems to me that the horse is out of the barn: SF has changed irrevocably and it will never go back to what it was. I suspect they know this on some level.
A large subset of tech workers have libertarian leanings, to be sure, but there's a strong leftist/liberal bent, as well. More than a lot of other well-off folks, I'd expect tech workers to be allies. Regardless, though, they're/we're not going to consider ourselves evil just because someone says so. The incentives are simple and compelling: we get paid well for doing work we ostensibly enjoy. They want "techies" to go away because we're ruining everything but the only way to make that work at any scale is highly, highly questionable-- shit like violence and/or intimidation, in other words.
I'm sympathetic to the protesters' feeling of disenfranchisement, but it's increasingly difficult for me to remain sympathetic. The top tier tech companies can't undo the last few decades of Bay Area history. Gentrification is not a solved problem, but density seems to be one way to go. That involves compromise. My sense is that these folks feel entitled enough to claim ownership over SF such that I'd expect a rather cool response to compromise.
I'm not a Marxist but I've been struggling to articulate why I believe this sort of protesting is counterproductive. For one thing, their complaints are not actionable-- they're co-opting a grab-bag of leftist, luddite terminology and the end result rounds down to a primal scream. I don't live in SF, but it seems to me that the horse is out of the barn: SF has changed irrevocably and it will never go back to what it was. I suspect they know this on some level.
A large subset of tech workers have libertarian leanings, to be sure, but there's a strong leftist/liberal bent, as well. More than a lot of other well-off folks, I'd expect tech workers to be allies. Regardless, though, they're/we're not going to consider ourselves evil just because someone says so. The incentives are simple and compelling: we get paid well for doing work we ostensibly enjoy. They want "techies" to go away because we're ruining everything but the only way to make that work at any scale is highly, highly questionable-- shit like violence and/or intimidation, in other words.
I'm sympathetic to the protesters' feeling of disenfranchisement, but it's increasingly difficult for me to remain sympathetic. The top tier tech companies can't undo the last few decades of Bay Area history. Gentrification is not a solved problem, but density seems to be one way to go. That involves compromise. My sense is that these folks feel entitled enough to claim ownership over SF such that I'd expect a rather cool response to compromise.
Anyway, thanks for speaking up.