From: Emlyn O'Regan (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Sun Sep 10 2000 - 04:17:42 MDT
I've got to ask a really naive question.
What's the point of a CBD? Why do all these companies that do whitecollar
work pay the exorbitant sums to have buildings smack in the center of town,
forcing their employees consequently to either pay sky high rents
themselves, or to commute long distances? What advantage does this confer on
the employer?
Similarly, why is silicon valley the place to be? Why would I set up
business there, with all the attendant cost, if I was running an essentially
whitecollar (knowledge work) business? Is it so important to be
geographically close to my complementors, and my competition?
I realise there's probably a simple answer to this, but for the life of me,
I can't work it out.
Emlyn
----- Original Message -----
From: "Spike Jones" <spike66@ibm.net>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 09, 2000 3:10 PM
Subject: Re: Homeless
> > Brian D Williams wrote: ... and a third class
> > who are truly bums, unwilling to work because most can scam better
> > in a couple hours, than they can earn working a whole day at minimum
> > wage...
>
> The latest societal convulsion in the SF Bay area has created
> some oddities. During the bad old days of the late 80s, we
> had a great number of signers: these guys holding signs insisting
> that they would WORK for FOOD, etc.
>
> Well, unfortunately for them, prosperity intervened (Clintonomics?)
> and even they must have recognized the absurdity of the notion,
> holding such a sign on the street corner, when all the local fast
> food places had *permanently mounted* their HELP WANTED
> signs in the window.
>
> Last year, the government issued a very large number of visas,
> to pretty much anyone who could pay taxes on 60k, which is
> just about the starting wage around here for anyone who can
> place one line of code in front of another, so as one might
> suspect we had a massive influx, which caused the apartment
> vacancy rate to drop to a few parts per million, which caused
> the rent prices to skyrocket to the point that the "homeless-
> will-work-for-food"ers were in danger of actually becoming
> literally without a home.
>
> All the local fast food joints have raised the starting wage to
> about $9/hour, still not really competitive with what the
> signers can earn, but as high as they can pay selling 3 dollar
> hamburgers, but at $9/hour a person would need to work
> 60 hours a week to cover the rent alone on a typical studio
> apartment in Sunnyvale, consequentemente...
> the employees leave.
>
> Then, the fast food joints start asking their employees to
> work longer hours, forgetting why people take those jobs
> in the first place: they allow people to work part time. When
> they are asked to work full time, they figure they might as
> well get a *real* job, which they do, and now the Burger
> King is in even worse straits.
>
> The will-work-for-fooders stand out there on the corner,
> with all limbs in apparent working condition, while Burger
> King is *crying out* for someone willing to just push a
> mop and wipe tables. And they will hire *anyone* no
> questions asked, dog kickers, mass murderers, whatever.
> They hire the mentally retarded, but oddly enough, there
> arent enough of them either. And the fast food gets steadily
> slower, because there arent enough people working the
> kitchen. Meanwhile the floors and tables get ever dirtier.
>
> Engineering teams dissolve because the young PhDs
> cannot afford the rent. Those who argue that National
> Missile Defense is an impossible task never do site the
> *real* most difficult hurdle facing it: keeping teams together
> in areas that are too expensive for those working the project.
> For those who have managed to acquire a home, of course,
> it is like winning the lottery in slow motion.
>
> So here in Silicon Valley we see a foretaste of a future
> in which wealth is distributed ever more based on technical
> ability and insight, steadily less on the number of hours worked.
> I can see that what must happen here is that the techno-have-nots
> must abandon the valley, being replaced in the short run by
> commuters from the outlying areas, these being replaced in
> the long run by androids. All this looks great from the point
> of view of a techno-have, but I can scarcely imagine the
> anguish of the other half. My solution is to not be one of
> them. Other ideas? spike
>
>
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