Would you invite tech bros and highrises to ruin Santa Fe and Sedona?
Then why let them do so Austin and San Francisco?
The answer is because these cities, like Santa Fe and Sedona, are large blue cities, with huge pension and retirement obligations for municipal unions, that demand a never sending source of income into to avoid, or fend off, going broke. But making a deal with the devil - as all literature teaches - comes with a price. In this case, destroying the entire look, vibe, and cultural identity these cities have cultivated for decades as an escape from the rat race, and not the epitome of it.
My name is Ted Queso, tq for short, and I became severely and permanently disabled by and unregulated supplement in the 90’s, before there was an internet, and any possibility to check out the claims made by the quack of an author were true. We lived, and in my case nearly died, by the words of the author who published the mass market paperbacks back then, and by the assurance of doctors who had awful bedside manners and were dismissive of the concept of explaining things to the patient to the point of understanding.
Cities like Austin and San Francisco were my laid-back refuge. No longer subscribing to any political party or doctrine and just viewing all as trade-offs with huge pros and cons, I could hang out in these cities because they were inexpensive, laid-back bohemias. While I leaned libertarian at the time while most denizens of these cities leaned left, the majority of people I interacted with were friendly and tolerant.
Now, arguably our two best large cities in the country, have been taken over by a cool — at least in their perception — New Right group of Venture Capitalists and Tech Bro True Believers who profess to believe in a trade-off themselves but actually adhere to detached, pure business-like libertarian dogma.
I have nothing against religious Christians and consider myself to be both religious and a realignment Republican myself. You remember the realignment don’t you? The supposed movement chronicled in thousands of articles where Maga would come in and led by their supposed affection for actual trust-busters like Lina Khan, would bring back the day where the GOP would return to their Teddy Roosevelt Square Deal roots.
As we know now, that turned out to be a joke. Lina Khan is gone and there is now a role-played “civil war” between the shrieking Steve Bannon and more thoughtful Batya Ungar-Sargon and the VC’s and Social Media moguls on the other side. I say role play because we all know which side has won.
Meanwhile, the press is not chronicling the extent of the 180 degree transformation these VC’s and tech moguls are doing to the community traditions that reigned for so long in places like SF and Austin.
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.