[nirnira]

Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, spent a reported $US10 million on his wedding

Wow, how unbelievably arrogant. Spending his money however the fuck he wants? Paying people to render him services of their own free will? What an asshole. He must've forgot signing that social contract with angry poor radicals that once you hit $(whatever today's immoral amount of money is) you no longer have the right to spend it... oh wait.

Whatever. Give me a break. This article is really about the worst side of SF - not the successful businessmen, but the unsuccessful, jealous, negative, unproductive "radicals" whose politics boils down to "I hate everything that I don't understand, and I'm not going to bother to try and understand it because I hate it."

an arrogant and often tone-deaf industry

The only arrogant people here are these fucking losers who think they deserve to live in the one of the world's most expensive and desirable cities, and think they deserve to dictate how other people can and should behave, despite providing absolutely nothing of value to anyone.

Perkins is right. The closest parallel to the mindless, hate-drenched opprobrium of these people is Nazi Germany turning on the Jews (a similar group of successful, largely innocuous businesspeople.)

[doktrin]

> Perkins is right. The closest parallel to the mindless, hate-drenched opprobrium of these people is Nazi Germany turning on the Jews

This perverse non-analogy is an embarrassment. It reads like absurd satire. Please stop repeating it.

[nirnira]

Sorry, no, it does have merit. In both cases, a failure of popular economic intelligence lead or is leading to self-defeating national attitudes and policies, driven in both cases by misattributed resentment.

[waps]

People getting thrown out of their houses due to lack of money (and lack of earning capability) are complaining about other people spending massive amounts on frivolous uses ?

I am amazed. Wait ... no I'm not. I'm even inclined to call those claims justified.

[nirnira]

Sorry, what? Nobody is getting "thrown out" of "their" houses. People who were renting other people's for a period of time found themselves outbid by other people who wanted to live in the same area and were willing to pay more for it than they were. And so they were asked to leave. Perfectly legal. 100% the property owner's right.

Nobody signed a contract with these people promising to let them live there forever. They were rentors, and if they didn't understand that they could be asked to leave at any time by the true owners of the property, that's their fault. And if they were so concerned about their ability to continue living there indefinitely, maybe they should have worked harder to ensure their position? Maybe they should have striven to provide more economic value, so they could have purchased this apparently extremely important good?

These people have no excuse. They knew the rules. The rules were clear to everyone. They were happy as long as they got what they wanted. Now the situation no longer favours them, they want the rules to be changed - so that they get everything exactly how they want it.

[waps]

I don't know about America, but in Europe, this is not how things are done. Rentors need those homes. Landlords, by definition, don't. You should always err on the side of rentors, which is exactly what European courts do.

> Nobody signed a contract with these people promising to let them live there forever.

No but they agreed to something stronger than a contract called "Rent control". And before you say otherwise, if you read this law, it specifically states that it overrides contract provisions. Since we live in a democracy, those landlords agreed to this.

> And if they were so concerned about their ability to continue living there indefinitely, maybe they should have worked harder to ensure their position?

Ah the mafia argument. As if this is anything but money grabbing through threats. As if there is any amount of money that would leave these vultures satisfied.

> These people have no excuse.

Look I am normally pretty right wing, but make this statement to my face and I'll be the first to start throwing bricks through your window. It's that simple.

Btw : do I get to throw you out into the streets the second you are less economically valuable than me too ? Fair's fair after all.