...Well, for one, great convenience, for another, businesses that actually have no physical location. This is a short documentary about the tech revolution and how it affected one city - San Francisco.
Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House of Representatives minority leader Nancy Pelosi, directed, wrote, and provided any narration needed for this documentary. She did a great job, partially aided by the fact that this is her hometown, born there in 1970, so she gets the context of the entire situation. The trick is, she communicates that context very well.
She goes into the history of San Francisco a bit - how it has long been a haven for the unconventional and progressive, even passing a law against prohibition during prohibition. Then came the tech revolution, starting actually in the late 70's in Silicon Valley. But the young turk techies working in the valley did not want to live there. They wanted to live in hip San Francisco. So high tech companies, wanting to retain their talent, sent buses to pick up their employees in San Francisco and ship them down to the valley every day. As Alexandra says, it didn't take long for those governing San Francisco to see that they might make revenue off of this by offering breaks to Silicon Valley companies that moved into San Francisco. No more long commute for the employees, breaks for the companies, revenue for the city, who could lose? Well it turns out that the great changes have caused the city to risk losing what made it so special.
More companies came to San Francisco than was originally dreamed of. With them came an army of invading techie hipsters that drove the price of everything up and drove long existing businesses out. One 20 something man said that, based on the fact that everything interesting happening in the tech world seemed to be happening in San Francisco, he bought a one way plane ticket to San Francisco to find a career there. Another young man had founded Bebo, sold it to AOL for 850 million dollars. When it failed he bought it back for one million to try and make a go of it. That's one thing you see over and over. Freshly minted millionaires whose companies and accomplishments you probably have never heard of.
One techie described San Francisco this way - in parts there are no children, no old, just techies sitting around building apps that try to improve everyday experiences such as ordering pizza. Then Pelosi moves on to the displaced residents. One drove Pelosi through a neighborhood once full of children playing in the streets. Now the houses are owned by techie millionaires - nobody else can afford them. Evictions are at an all time high, not because of non payment of rent, but because the rich want to buy the property owner out, tear down the building and either put up housing for the wealthy or a complex for the tech workers.
Next Pelosi brings up the problem of regulating companies that have no physical presence - Lyft, Uber, AirBnB - all who have no real employees. People just provide services through them when they can. As a result the pseudoemployees have no job security at all because they have no jobs. The companies they serve are completely unregulated because of their lack of a brick and mortar presence and address. This puts regular hotels who are regulated at a complete disadvantage. Economist Robert Reich joins the conversation towards the end and says that what is happening in San Francisco is a microcosm of what is happening in cities around the world. That as the rich become geographically divorced from the poor and middle class, added to their great political influence, that this cannot end well.
Finally, a guy named Alan mentioned in the documentary , representative of the older displaced worker with no training in tech, haunts my thoughts. Working in the finance sector for thirty years until the crash of 2008, unable to find any job since, he ran through his unemployment, then his savings, then finally his 401K. 61 at the time this film was made, he is now penniless, living in a bleak room in an SRO, and avoids this depressing place during the day, only returning at night. I wonder what ever happened to him. As he said to Pelosi "I no longer live in your world. What is normal for you is no longer normal for me".
Here Ms. Pelosi followed the first rule of making a good documentary - talk about what you know. Highly recommended.
Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House of Representatives minority leader Nancy Pelosi, directed, wrote, and provided any narration needed for this documentary. She did a great job, partially aided by the fact that this is her hometown, born there in 1970, so she gets the context of the entire situation. The trick is, she communicates that context very well.
She goes into the history of San Francisco a bit - how it has long been a haven for the unconventional and progressive, even passing a law against prohibition during prohibition. Then came the tech revolution, starting actually in the late 70's in Silicon Valley. But the young turk techies working in the valley did not want to live there. They wanted to live in hip San Francisco. So high tech companies, wanting to retain their talent, sent buses to pick up their employees in San Francisco and ship them down to the valley every day. As Alexandra says, it didn't take long for those governing San Francisco to see that they might make revenue off of this by offering breaks to Silicon Valley companies that moved into San Francisco. No more long commute for the employees, breaks for the companies, revenue for the city, who could lose? Well it turns out that the great changes have caused the city to risk losing what made it so special.
More companies came to San Francisco than was originally dreamed of. With them came an army of invading techie hipsters that drove the price of everything up and drove long existing businesses out. One 20 something man said that, based on the fact that everything interesting happening in the tech world seemed to be happening in San Francisco, he bought a one way plane ticket to San Francisco to find a career there. Another young man had founded Bebo, sold it to AOL for 850 million dollars. When it failed he bought it back for one million to try and make a go of it. That's one thing you see over and over. Freshly minted millionaires whose companies and accomplishments you probably have never heard of.
One techie described San Francisco this way - in parts there are no children, no old, just techies sitting around building apps that try to improve everyday experiences such as ordering pizza. Then Pelosi moves on to the displaced residents. One drove Pelosi through a neighborhood once full of children playing in the streets. Now the houses are owned by techie millionaires - nobody else can afford them. Evictions are at an all time high, not because of non payment of rent, but because the rich want to buy the property owner out, tear down the building and either put up housing for the wealthy or a complex for the tech workers.
Next Pelosi brings up the problem of regulating companies that have no physical presence - Lyft, Uber, AirBnB - all who have no real employees. People just provide services through them when they can. As a result the pseudoemployees have no job security at all because they have no jobs. The companies they serve are completely unregulated because of their lack of a brick and mortar presence and address. This puts regular hotels who are regulated at a complete disadvantage. Economist Robert Reich joins the conversation towards the end and says that what is happening in San Francisco is a microcosm of what is happening in cities around the world. That as the rich become geographically divorced from the poor and middle class, added to their great political influence, that this cannot end well.
Finally, a guy named Alan mentioned in the documentary , representative of the older displaced worker with no training in tech, haunts my thoughts. Working in the finance sector for thirty years until the crash of 2008, unable to find any job since, he ran through his unemployment, then his savings, then finally his 401K. 61 at the time this film was made, he is now penniless, living in a bleak room in an SRO, and avoids this depressing place during the day, only returning at night. I wonder what ever happened to him. As he said to Pelosi "I no longer live in your world. What is normal for you is no longer normal for me".
Here Ms. Pelosi followed the first rule of making a good documentary - talk about what you know. Highly recommended.