The SF Political Compass, with Sam D'amico and Noah Smith

There has been a lot of discussion of the SF housing crisis on the timeline recently so I brought on @sdamico and @Noahpinion to break down how we got here while we cooked some steaks.

Finally MOTS gets political.

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Transcript

The SF Sam power rankings and using the @ImpulseLabs stove

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This actually is a very special episode of Members of Technical Stuff because we're going to be cooking steaks. I'm here with Noah. I'm here with Sam. I don't even say people's last names because we're all just friends here. I'm also the only Sam in San Francisco, obviously. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the one and only Sam.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

We lost one Sam a couple years ago, but you know, just then.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

That's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

There is a Sam Power ranking.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

You're not allowed to see it. It's very secret.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean we wouldn't be we wouldn't be caught dead, you know, giving away actual information on the Mots Pod. We're gonna just be cooking steaks in front of a camera instead.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Trust us, Sam Domico has rocketed up these rankings and is very high. Maybe not the very top, but very not in jail at least, so we're good.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Yeah, yeah, I can't.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Yeah. This is this is true. This is true. In fact, we're in a we're in a content studio and we're gonna be using the impulse stove. Because uh, you know, the founder of Impulse comes onto a podcast, gotta make a shout out to Impulse and actually use the product, damn it. Okay, well you have never used this before. I've actually never I've actually never used it.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

I've actually never used it. So what's your so okay, so why don't you try to use it? Okay, okay so you want to boil that water? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect, perfect. Click the knob once. Now you just turn it up, like it's like a speaker. Turn it up all the way.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, because we want to be uh fully full of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

You know, you gotta you can go more than that.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Oh, just just all the way.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

And this is where it boils basically instantly, right? A watch pot boils now. We've we've changed the universe. I say we, but I didn't do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just walked in and just said we.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

And I just I just pressed the knob, actually. Um You pressed and turned because you have the compliance reasons for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yes. You have to do two actions. Also, what people don't know is we're actually going to be talking a little bit about, and I I gave I gave the guys a little bit of a briefing on this, but I wanted to get into a little bit of SF politics actually. Okay. Because you're pretty you're pretty well well versed in this, actually. I think I have been told I post about things about SF politics.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, I am.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

And I would say, you know, I mean, of course, of course, Nara is, I mean, tends to write about polit political stuff occasionally. Occasionally. Occasionally. And so, you know, I mean, I think like a good a good place to even start. Oh, water's already boiling, by the way. Water's already boiling. That's kind of amazing. How long did that take? Like 20 seconds? Not a lot of time.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

I don't even know how much water there was, but it was more than what you you folks called a liter. 30 seconds. More than what you folks call a liter, definitely. Okay. So so now um now turn it down. You turn it all the way. No, no, no, no. Turn it back up. Yeah. And just see how fast it responds. Go go you can just you can you can rock it like it's a rocket away back.

unknown 2:32

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah, that's crazy. So um for for those for those listening, yeah, what Noah just said. Uh Sam is basically DJing the the water boiling. Also the knobs come off so you can clean. Oh, that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Uh what's the compliance like on that? Uh that's actually fine. We got that, that was actually really tricky to get right boys, did it?

SPEAKER_00 2:52

I figured. I figured. That's pretty good. And now, okay, the the the main course, how should we go about preparing

Preparing steak

SPEAKER_00 3:00

the steak for free? No, it's fine. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

And so since we didn't have beef tallow in the fridge, because I'm I'm not a true patriot.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Yeah, it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

So so we we don't yeah, we don't use beef towel here. We use butter. We don't use butter, we use uh we use seed oils, right? So instead of seed oils. So instead of seed oils, we're gonna use butter. But you know, butter burns at like 400 plus degrees or whatever. So we don't want the butter to burn. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put the butter in, and I'm actually able to set the temperature of the stove. Put a lot of butter in here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just fuck it. This is this is your guys' lunch. I bought this for you. Amazing. So I'm gonna I'm gonna get the butter up to temperature. I'm probably gonna get it to like 200-ish, whatever where it doesn't really brown. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna be like, okay, um let's just scrape all the solids out. Yeah. Because that's what actually burns. And then we'll have the the the amazing liquid. Um figure out how to pour this out. I guess I can use this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The base actually I probably want more butter because it's easier.

SPEAKER_03 4:02

Put more butter.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

While while we're while we're um cooking the butter, what's like I what's

Recent history of SF politics

SPEAKER_00 4:07

like a like a like a recent like recent history of San Francisco politics? In my mind, I'm thinking like, I'm thinking as recent as pre-COVID, COVID, Chessa Boudine, like all of all of these sort of You want the errors?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

You want the error the Eras tour of San Francisco politics? Hit me with the errors tour, damn it. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Alright, so basically, um uh the old mayor, who is now no longer with us, um, built a lot of offices, but not a lot of houses. So then everyone moved to San Francisco, and then you know, um you don't get a lot of uh rent.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Yeah, businesses moved to San Francisco, basically.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

A lot of businesses, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

You know, such as this former website known as Twitter. Yes. So it's a site formerly known as Twitter.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

There's this little thing from Crop 13. Yes. You can't really get rents from building houses, but you can get rents from offices or from companies locating in their thing with a tax, right? So it's all about taxes. So all these businesses moved in, and then the people moved in to work at these businesses, they had nowhere to live.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

And so And it started in like 2011, 2012, basically, time frame. When people realized that Palo Also was kind of a boring place, that you know, you know, we're not gonna, you know, you're not gonna you're not gonna meet your future wife there.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Yeah, classic, classic. And this and this this maybe.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

So you're gonna move and move to San Francisco, you know, really great place. You're gonna meet your future husband.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

It's like was this Gavin Newsom or Edley at this time, 2010, 2011? Uh sorry. It's Edley, yeah, Edley. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So even even I even I am uh semi-up to date with my with my SF mayors, uh, given that I moved here in 2017. So I only I only caught the London breed era. Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

So basically, there was like a period of time. Ed Lee was a moderate, you know, he was pro-business, but it caused a housing crisis. So it contributed to a housing crisis because then you got and I you know at the same time, you had Uber, you had dating apps, you had all these things that made it a lot easier and more attractive for yuppies to live in cities. And so all the yuppies moved to the city because, like you said, you're not gonna meet your future wife in Palo Alto. So then you so all the yuppies moved to the city, and then nobody had a place to live, and so they all started turfing out uh normal people. So all the artists and the you know the weirdos and like the middle class people just like started moving out.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

The people who the people who created but did not yet ruin Burning Man got displaced. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

I didn't actually think about it like that. Yeah, yeah. Well, we kind of we kind of referenced this when we were speaking with Kylie, right? I mean, you're talking about sort of like I you got there by talking about the the the Oakland punk scene. Right, right, right. And how and how the how the punks were sort of forced out, and you know, all the uh let's let's call it um the strivers, you know, that that figured out they could make easy six figures working for big tech move into the city. I know Ed Lee also, he was uh I I would say he was responsible for the I would say revival, but the area was not ever sort of revived ever. But that mid-market corridor, right, where Twitter, Uber, Dolby is still there somehow. It was it was supposed to be this new.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Look at how clarified that butter is, by the way. I just I just clarify I just clarified the butter.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Yes, so so Sam was doing this while we were going through the errors, but the butter is now good. Uh does this mean we can chuck the stakes on now? We can so set it to 420 degrees, you know, an auspicious temperature. Yes, yes. I'll I'll tag Elon and just see if he can you know get a get a reaction out of him. Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:21

So everybody moved to San Francisco, and there were all these like parties that everyone went to because everything was on Facebook events, so everyone knew about everything. And then so um it got really expensive and everybody got turfed out and they got really mad. And so they were like, well, let's elect progressives because the progressives talked about housing affordability and anti-gentrification stuff. Let's elect progressives because the moderates got us into this mess by being pro-business. Well, the progressives were more like they were far more anti-housing than the moderates had been.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Well, so there's a secret to what was going on with

The rise of the NIMBY in SF

SPEAKER_01 7:48

the progressives is the progress there's this there's this creature in San Francisco known as Aaron Peskin.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Ah Hey, we're gonna get into the Board of Supervisors.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

And he's a and he's a kind of a polymorph. But in any event, he started his career. Oh man, I just got butter blasted, but some water in that butter. It's gonna be nice ASMR actually for the for the listeners that can't see what the hell is going on. Yeah, it's just like seeing me just get like take take take something straight to the face. But basically, Aaron Paskin was on the board of supervisors, I think, in the 2000s, but he kind of like transmographied into like this sort of like progressive. Yeah, his actual ideology is NIMBY. So San Francisco kind of pioneered this new ideology, which is the the the coalition they managed to build was like the fusion of the people who didn't want anyone new to move to San Francisco and the progressives, fancy way.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Yeah, so so basically they elect then the progressives didn't build any housing, but so San Francisco politics is a is a two by two graph, right? So normally in the city of the you have social issues and you have um you know economic issues and your standard political compass, right? In San Francisco, you have housing and crime. Yep. And so there's pro housing anti-housing, pro-crime, anti-crime. And so the progressives were anti-housing pro-crime. And so you've got lots of crime, you know, but not no housing. Yeah. And so this is uh doesn't actually sound very good. All right, so so before we had had, you know, sort of anti-crime, anti-housing.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

But then we got um to uh for the for those that are listening, um Stan's just cooked basically the entire first half of two milk 50 fakes uh in about 20 seconds. And it looks really good as well. In butter.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

In butter. And it's not really smoking either. No, it's just in I was actually gonna ask us like, where is you know, where is the ceiling fan here? So because we were temperature controlling this thing to 420, it's not burning.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Yes, that's so temperature fine temperature control. Now, why can this stove do fine temperature control when a normal induction stove cannot? Because we put nipples on it.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Oh that mind if I do it. Right, that's I got it. No, actually, no, it's not.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Yeah, so uh so the the this temperature sensor actually, through some physics stuff that we don't need to go into here, measures the top surface of the pan through the pan.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Um and what that means is when I say 420, it's 420 right there. Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

We're gonna work 420 jokes and 69 jokes in this entire podcast.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

You'll only be able to find them afterwards. That's right. And Aaron Peskin. So you know, Aaron Peskin with the defamation lawsuit, I mean he's gonna have a lot to whirly work through. It's gonna be awesome for his EA to uh to sort through this.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

So Aaron Peskin is kind of this periodic creature of San Francisco politics. But basically, the fusion of so I think Noah's simplifying it a little bit where it's like the housing and crime stuff. Basically, what ends up happening in California is like California pure like persistently incentivizes incumbent state over all other things. So like basically the issue is and this is it's kind of ironic as a you know where all the best startups and stuff like that are also here, but effectively we've made it. So if you've got stuff in the physical world, like even if you've got a manufacturing utility, whatever, you can still do stuff. But if you um want to open a new one, fat chance. You gotta do all this environmental permitting and all sort of stuff. Plus your real estate's more expensive because your property taxes are assessed at data purchase, not cost. And then rent control is the same deal, where rent control is kind of like again, it's a seniority thing, it's not indexed by income. But that's good also has like a state of property tax as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Yeah, we we have an extra percentage point.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

We have well, it's not an extra percentage point, it's like point something. And there's limit to that due to prop 13. Yeah. We do this other thing that's like a parcel tax to kind of pay for stuff. This is all very confusing, and I think not exactly. We don't need to go deep into the narrative of like the tax structure of interest as much as I would love to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Okay, so I'm taking this opportunity here in uh this self-driving bot that just stopped two blocks away from me and made me walk and is now speaking to me in a British accent. Racist wamer. Uh basically I wanted to give a shout out to Cappy AI, your agentic IDE. Rumors have it that Cappy's actually been building itself. So that is how agentic the damn thing is. And you can also make pull requests from Slack. So not only is it building itself, but the non-technicals are also able to contribute. So I'm not actually sure whether that's actually a great pitch for it, but the fact is that the Cappy guys are cracked, and you'll actually probably see them on mobs soon, which is kind of fun. Uh so yeah, go ahead and check out cappy.ai. I am going to put the phone down before I get sick.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Um, so now that this is actually seared, I can actually turn this down to like 225 or something like that, and we'll just let it sit for a while. And I can I can set a timer, set a timer. Oh I I was predicting that I have AI on this thing, which I don't yet.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

So this stove doesn't just let you pretend to like know how to cook, it lets you actually invent a whole new way of cooking things, and you like you basically you learn how to cook better than you did before.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yeah, yeah. Basically, like we we we actually were like, they're like, hey, do you have partnerships with chefs and all the other stuff? Yes, we do. You can actually watch John Kung's video with us, like came out a couple days ago. Yeah. Pretty sweet video. But one of the best ways we've communicated the product is just like, yeah, just like some schlub like me is cooking steaks or whatever, and it's like looking pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

That's it's it's all it's all that I need. Speak, speak to my stove, you know, just temper straight up temperature temperature control. Like, because I don't know shit about fuck. This is how this is how I I generally work. I only know how to cook chicken and rice and ground beef and and pasta, and that's about it.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Stove is basically, until now, it was basically a mature technology where you'd buy a stove based on how it looked in your you know uh kitchen. Well, now you can buy a stove that you know allows you to have people over and pretend to be like the greatest chef on earth. It's it's called stove two.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Stove two bent of stove.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

But but we do think that this is like this is one of these product categories where effectively no one had given it the iPhone treatment because they assumed it was mature, like like phones were before the iPhone. Right. And we just came in and we're like, well, it turns out that it only was tens of millions of dollars to do this, not a billion dollars or something like that. And we also didn't need to have an app store, we didn't need to have an ecosystem. Like, your stove doesn't actually need apps, like there's some options for intelligence and stuff like that, but like you don't need to buy a stove because it runs like New York Times cooking. Like, like no one expects that.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Samsung smart free, just like apps everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

That has already been defamed so that we're like totally safe and like we don't have to build this like multi-sided marketplace. So that was my reaction I had from working at Oculus was like Oculus needed to be inside a bigger parent that could actually like fund the content ecosystem in a certain sense, or they had to have the partnerships that are equivalent. Very tough fight in a new consumer electronics category. This one, luckily enough, does not need that.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Totally, totally. I mean, I mean, you know, if I

SF Faction breakdown and inclusionary zoning

SPEAKER_00 14:25

were to if I were to even segue back into our into our topic here, kind of a little bit like SF politics. Again, I'm sort of thinking about you know uh our Louri, right, and sort of what he's what he's been doing with the city. Almost feels like to me that the machine has, well, the the San Francisco machine, San Francisco political machine, and I mean, if I were to even just tangent slightly off of that, people should probably know that that that San Francisco has been a democratic majority since its inception, right? In its entirety.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yeah, yeah, because it was like, it was, and and like the the various factions in San Francisco are all very various flavors of Democrats, period, I think. Like like a like a super majority. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I think there have been Republican district supervisors and stuff like that, but I think like but like historically I don't I I think that's 100% correct. The other piece of it is um the other piece of it is like a lot of the like OG Democratic constituencies like exist here in some sense, or exist in the broader Bay Area, like uh it's it's not the same though, because we have we have some blocks that other places do not have.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

We have a couple different things.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Like Berkeley communists.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

We have a few Berkeley communists, but but I mean they they they live in they live in like you know, Hayes, they live in basically like our neighborhood. So um so but um they're NIVs. They're NIMVIS, but but the people who don't really conform to the standard blocks are uh the Asian people who live in Richmond Sunset and in the south part, like the Excelsior and and Stonestown and places like that. They are um if if if you think of housing and crime, they are broadly speaking anti- very anti-crime, moderately anti-housing, because housing brings crime when you have inclusionary zoning. So when you have every, when you say every new apartment building must include some percent of people who can't pay for an apartment can't possibly pay for an apartment, new apartment means crime. And so if you're if you're a one-issue crime voter, you become anti-housing automatically. So inclusionary zoning becomes this poison pill.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

So what happened was when the progressives started getting more power in San Francisco and like and they had and the Board of Supervisors had like a progressive block, one of the key things they wanted to push was this inclusionary zoning thing. And there's a couple reasons for it because they were their constituency was kind of this left nimble alliance between them and like Pascan.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

If you increase the old money, old money white people who used to be super live back in the 70s and are now just like rich people who have like you know $10 million houses. You can't build that tree in your backyard because it blocks my view.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Yeah. The New York version of this is called Mark Ruffalo. Um defamation's galore.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

Defamation suit galore. Sorry, I got media insurance. Mark Ruffalo and Aaron Peskin have not been romantically linked at all.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

But they do, they do, they are starting to look very similar if you look at Mark Ruffalo in latest videos.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

There's like a phenotypic convergence between all the like lefty guys where they have like this like you know wild hair. It's like, yeah, it's it's it's like like I've just been to Burning Man. It's like I just came back from Burning Man. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Um, okay. Continue, continue. Okay. We're not going to allege anything about anyone. No, it's nice. Apart from saying that certain people are objectively nimbies. But uh and you know, and and even and even just in case it's all a joke, we're talking about sort of you know NIMBian Minecraft. You know, they're like that's why Dean Preston didn't ascend to like the highest level of this.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

He was not mogging. He's too clean-cut. He was not mogging in their cards. He doesn't look like he's been like managing his gray water for a week, you know?

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Well, and and and you know, he's he's like a proper he's like a proper trust fund child now.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah, well, so so it's interesting. So basically what ended up happening was the kind of like deal that the Left NIMBY, the Left NIMBY Alliance made was you can sound incredibly progressive by saying, oh, the this housing needs to be uh in some cases they were arguing for like up to 50% affordable housing in order for it to get permitted. Totally. Um but then once you do it above a certain point, it doesn't pencil. Like it doesn't like the the developer can't make money. And you know, of course, all the rhetoric is like developers are making tons of money from the tech boom, you know, it's really bad. I'm like, yeah, developers build housing and then more housing lowers rents. Like, yeah, sorry. So like the problem with this was this coalition was actually pretty durable because everyone kind of agreed with this, because the the progressives didn't want the tech people to move in. And because of because of rent control and prop 13, they actually couldn't in a bunch of cases. Like if you look right now, you look in Zillow for for spots in like lower hate, there's basically nothing for there's basically nothing for rent now. And like the couple spots are like seven grand and there's like a hundred people show up to them. Yep. And so it's like it's atrocious.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

And they all they all pay with anthropic stocks.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

And and they're all they're all they're all just buying the house with anthropic stocks. But basically, but basically what's going on is is is effectively this alliance meant that we can prevent the new tech people from moving in. The big thing that we're worried about was those people moving in and voting as well. Because if they if they go vote, they can flip supervisor races as well. And so which is kind of what happened in the last election. And then the second thing.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

Because they were worried that tech people would be, get this, pro-housing anti-crime, which is diametrically opposed to the old money white people who are behind the live on a hill, so they don't care about the crime.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

They don't care about the crime, they drive, they drive, they drive, and they and they don't take transit because they drive. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

They don't take transit because they drive. Um, they essentially they they don't think of themselves as using crime to try to push tech people out, but that's kind of what it became.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Yep. Okay, so I just wanted to take a moment here after six glasses of wine to introduce the newest mod sponsor Langfuse. Langfuse is the number one open source LLM ops product there to help you continuously improve your AI applications. Right? Prompt management, uh, observability, observability comes with tracing, all of these different sorts of things. You can actually do it with uh Langfuse. I'm very, very happy to have them on board with me because they are awesome. And Clement, the founder, already invited me to his wedding. Uh so to that I say I don't really know. But you should use Langfuse,

The rise of the YIMBY in SF

SPEAKER_00 20:11

and if you don't, you're a fucking idiot. Yeah, right. And I mean, so I so I'm kind of thinking, you know, like I mean, if I were to sort of almost further emphasize the axes, and this is this is actually um, you know, what what some in the city have also described it to me as it's it's more so like like leftist versus moderate and yimbi versus nimby, right? Kind of kind of like you know, the the the the axis or the compass that you were sort of alluding to. This is what um this is actually what uh you know I've actually spoken with uh Supervisor Cheryl about this, for example. So and obviously, you know, he was up against, I believe, somebody named Brooke Jenkins. Uh this was just last month, and I I think he won. Not Brooke Jenkins. So not Brooke Jenkins, it's Brooke Jenkins, the DA. It was um, I forget the name. This is again defamations.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

What racist?

SPEAKER_00 21:00

This was for my district. This was this was Pac Heights and Cal Hollow.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

The the the pro housing candidate won in the in the in in in in Pac-Hights. Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

So but you know, it was it was along that axis, right? Because they were both fairly moderate, but it was the it was the Yimbi versus NIMBY axis that was essentially at the polls.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

Versus versus being pro-crime, anti-crime, or like voting on the inclusionary zoning thing versus not. Right. So the other thing that's going on with a lot of this that's like really, really interesting was like, so the organizing history of this was there was no actual coalition organized around this in any modern American city until the Yimbi movement basically started around San Francisco. And so effectively, effectively, like San Francisco is a vision of the world's future and especially America's future. And so these problems were being discussed in San Francisco in like 2012, 2013. Um and and like now we're nationwide, and like the these debates exist in New York and Boston and all those other things as well. And Australia, even like it's like the same, it's the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

And like really bad.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

And so And so what ended up happening was um there was a so the so really this kicked off in in there was like SFEMB and all this other stuff where they were starting to make some progress, but there really wasn't a coalition put together. The pandemic and the tech people who stayed behind to fight really made this actually this actually moved the needle. And this is like the real sickos. And the the real siccos who stuck around. So like I this was like this is like Sachin and Steven.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

So here we get to like basically my college friends. Yes. Like Sachin Agrawal. The grow Gro SF.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

So you know, um, uh a MAGA a MAGA extremist, as these these people call them.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

They were, according to the they were just as just as the um just as the uh you know rich rich white people of the marina had feared.

SPEAKER_00 22:49

Sorry, Sam, uh for those listening, uh Sam is now cutting the New York strip steak, which we just cooked in what, how many minutes? And it's like it cooked it in butter, cooked it in.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

I guess it's fine.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

I didn't sous veed it though, but that's a that's a pretty decent medium rare to me. I mean it's better better than what I've ever done ever. Uh and I just eyeballed it. I usually do this cheating by sous-vitting it ahead of time. Totally, totally. I mean, uh I mean it looks pretty pretty perfectly cooked to me if you're going for a medium rare.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

I'm also not using a knife properly just for you know cleaning a different clicks.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

That's okay that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

We'll we'll clip that up, zoom right in on it. Hanson Lee is gonna be really mad at this video. He's gonna be like, you didn't let it sit for exactly the right amount of time, and then we'll have to I don't give a flying fuck.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

We we wait we we just cook steak in like 15 seconds in butter. So don't mind if I do. Um but yeah, all the college friends. So Sachin from Grow SF, of course, Gary Gary Tan stuck around.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

It's it's funny because when I was a freshman, I think he was a sophomore, um uh at Stanford, there was this phenomenon where everyone would always quote the Tupac song Hit 'em up all the time. And he got in big trouble for doing this on Twitter.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Yeah, yeah, he death threats.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

But yes, so it's like death threats because it, I mean it's a song of death threats. But um, so so they they're kind of right about that. But um the the it's an inside joke from those years at Stanford. Yes. Uh because everyone would always just quote hit him up about everything and anything all the time that year.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

I I remember they they um I I forget I forget what it was, but there was the somebody even made like a caricature of him, put him in the racist cartoon. What was it like the the tentacle cartoon? The Asian octopus controlling the world. Chinese octopus, yeah. Like then this was only what 20 through 2023? Like this was this was not that long ago. This was like maybe even 2024.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Racism

The progressive overreach in SF

SPEAKER_01 24:33

is worse even than death threats.

SPEAKER_03 24:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

And by and by the way, by the way, the other thing that's crazy is like a lot of the the the the the co so the the reason this coalition reset was basically COVID, the the the the left NIMBY coalition overreached. And so they like so with her chess it was DA, but then additionally, during COVID, a couple things happened, and some of them are not very widely talked about. So this might actually be like scooping the story. I think so. Don't mind if we do. Oh, I was gonna say this is a good thing. I made this mistake.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

I mean, don't mind if I do, don't mind if I do.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

So basically what's going on so basically what ended up happening in 2020 was um so like the BLM protests, all this other stuff, um but a big piece of it was because Chessa was DA at that time, even before the protests and stuff like that, traffic tickets started getting less and less enforced. Like like the police were actually the police were actually being like, well, why do I even need to do this? Because like they're not gonna prosecute for whatever. So they stopped doing, they stopped doing like pre-tactual stops. The police commission also was like, there were there's people on the police commission, which is a point has to be approved by the supervisors as well, that were like basically basically like up in the police's business. And there was a lot of confusing thing on like whether to blame the mayor, the supervisors, the police commission. It doesn't really matter, but effectively there was kind of this like shadow, like like there let's just say the police weren't arresting as many people as they probably should have been. Of course. And this was kind of a widely acknowledged thing, being like, like they could actually just go arrest more people, but like there was, you know, maybe those people were getting put back onto the street afterwards. I don't know, it's complicated. Right. And was it it was it was also true that the police force was really running thin, no? And the police force was really running thin because it's like, well, you're not gonna live in San Francisco during COVID because there's like it's a city, and like what are you gonna do? You're commuting from Walnut Creek, and you're like, well, I can just join Walnut Creek PD and that's nicer. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

And and like and so there were There was also anti-police protests at the national level that made police sort of you know unpopular.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

And if you're the most liberal city in America, of course that's gonna feel more tight, you know. And so all of these conflated things mean that meant that effectively what had to happen bought like that the thing that started things started improving before this, but like 2024 election improved things massively, but like five things had to happen at the same time that like allowed unlocked kind of the boom or what Gary Tan calls like the boom loop or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

I don't know that it was that. I think winning the board of supervisors for you know moderates pretty much did everything.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yep. The issue is if we look at right wing we see right wingers complain about stuff on Twitter about San Francisco because there's a bunch of like right-wingers that still say that San Francisco is a total like the way.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Yeah, like like yeah, like wasteland, you know, shooting the streets. Yes, okay. Yeah, yeah. But put put put whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

There's people who basically say that like, you know, you know, the place still sucks. I mean it's it's significantly better, to be very clear. Of course. But yeah, Mike Mike Solana, not satisfied. I think he's uh he's he's he's coming around. He's coming around, he's coming around. He's coming around.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Have you guys uh run into him recently? I haven't seen him since well actually I I uh he was at the enhanced games, but we didn't run into each other there.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

But I didn't see ice tag debate. Of course. Which I I won resoundingly. Yes. I would like to note everyone.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yeah, I think I'm wrong. Yeah I I showed I showed the Pirate Wire's Christmas steak. We cook, we we we we cook some stuff. Good. Also, also with a new term coming around called strange maxing. Because like we're you have to be strange. Like basically we went from woke to cringe to now strange. We went from woke to base to and we're not gonna call it cringe anymore, we call it strange.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

This is actually one of your one of your predictions, Nora, in a in a recent Mots episode that you did talking about uh how uh San Francisco is weird again. I think I think the only the only the only thing that I think is challenging that is all the strivers coming back to work at the AI companies. Uh it is there's like I feel like there's like a there's like a tension in the city now.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

You mean the you mean the insurance companies?

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Uh that's another

The weirdos in SF joined the AI labs

SPEAKER_00 28:23

defamation lawsuit, right there, don't you? No, I think I think um, yeah, well I mean my my theory on this, and you know, it does actually tie to the topic that we're talking about, right? Is of course, you know, the the AI companies they are now printing, right? It is very, very well known that you can go ahead. It's almost, you know, it's like the it's like the t the Fang of the of the 2010s.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

And so except more decentralized, I would argue more decentralized. Like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like anyone can start, not anyone, but like certain people can start their equivalent of a Fang directorate. Right. And and that's actually and it's and it's more federated, and I think it's actually more interesting for that reason. It's like it's like it's like even though there's like open AI anthropic also.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

The labs have not simply replaced the uh you know the like Mag 7 or whatever, the Fang.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

It's like it's like everything is kind of weirdly orthogonal, and like you can build a total business off of the Chinese model. So it's like I I I honestly think that it's like it feels like there's less of a like, oh, the Google bus is here. Yeah like there is not a single thing like that. It's like it's it's it's not like open AI has put up like a giant tower next to Salesforce. Like there's not like a there's no calling card like there was 10 years ago. I I kind of wish they would.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

They should, but but bring the cranes back. It's poetic justice because basically the um in the 2000s it was Weirdos who ruled everything. Yeah, and then the corporate as drivers. I know. This and the the corporates came in and muscled the weirdos out. Yeah, and all the weirdos who stayed joined Anthropic as revenge and destroyed all of corporate America and the world as revenge for being pri you know, for being like priced out of San Francisco in the 2010s.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yes. Do you I mean do you think that that also, I mean, I'm thinking again, the 2010s, right? Those that came to work for the Fang companies, do you think that that actually made a difference to San Francisco politics at the time? Again, I'm thinking if those that are transient, right, those that are transplants in a city and don't intend to stay in a city, they're not exactly incentivized to vote. And as far as I know, I mean, again, not having voted before because I can't, uh, which is which is totally fine, by the way, for those at the NSA listening to this. Disenfranchised the Australians. Yeah, like I legally can't. Um but but it but if I but correct me if I'm wrong. Oh, thank you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is it is like kind of difficult to vote in SF, no?

SPEAKER_01 30:28

I mean it is like a complex, I mean I feel like a board of supervisors,

It’s hard to know what you’re voting for

SPEAKER_01 30:30

what there's only it's it's very easy to vote in San Francisco, like they'll mail you a ballot and it's like they're they're pretty good in terms of being like pro helping you vote. It's not easy to know what you're voting for. It's not easy to know what you're voting for, and like the ballot propositions and all this other stuff is like it's a confusing mess. And so until like GrowSF basically made a voter guide that like explained this and was like digital native and got to the right people, and it turns out that you could actually run an internet-centric campaign. They still literally mail their voter guides though, and I think that's what that like you have to do that. There was this voter guide called the League of Pissed Off Voters that people were like, Well, I'm pissed off because the city sucks. I'm gonna vote for Aaron Peskin, Dean Preston, and Chessa Bootin. Oh, yeah, yeah. And and so that that voter guide was like one of the key like the so basically the the the the left NIMBY's had organized and for the same reason you're describing, like you know, this is a nature of transients, all that other stuff, it took till COVID for the for the other faction to actually organize.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Yeah, to see to see that stuff really go down the road.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

And then the other thesis is they had to organize with kind of the their peers who were the anti-crime um folks who maybe maybe their kids were tech workers or whatever, like you know, Asian folks on the west side, stuff like that. And so that coalition, too, as far as it goes has held, so they had to flip the board of supervisors, they then which then had to fire the police commission, yeah, and then they also had to swap the mayor out, not because London Breed was necessarily a left NIMBY or anything like that, but because that was gonna be the signal to the police force that like things had changed and thus, like, and thus and they also had to get rid of the DA. So it was like four or five different things. They also they also had they also got rid of, they uphold the funding from all the nonprofits that were being they were paying like homeless people from around the country to move here.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

They didn't pull all that funding. They pulled a little bit of the, they pulled some of the funding.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

I'm laughing at just like the concept, the concept itself, that the idea of a of a non-profit throwing homeless people.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Number one issue in California, in just general, is it has a seniority force first set of policies on tax, on housing, on all this other stuff. But then we have open borders. So like it's it's like it's like it's like we don't have like what like in China they call it the hooko system or whatever. We don't have open borders, we have open borders in San Francisco, so like anyone can move here. So yeah, you you make it impossible to build housing and move here. The only people who move here are like the junky, non the non-junkies recruited by nonprofits and anthropic members of technical staff. Yes. And like, and no one else can move here at all.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

There's no middle class.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

Totally, totally.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

And and and you know like I know my uh guy cutting my hair told me like he was applying for the affordable housing complex down the street in like in like in Lower Haight. And he was like basically the prep the preference stack was like, do you have like health problems, which includes like addicted to fentanyl? Yeah, versus like I work down the street at a barber shop.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

Yeah. So no wonder people don't want you know new housing in low density neighborhoods because inclusionary zoning says you're gonna get a lot of those people.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Yeah, which makes it, which makes it unsafe.

SPEAKER_02 33:23

Yeah, basically, oh you know, um drug addicts, homeless people, and just poor people in general have been used as a sort of a political football by one group of rich people who wants to, you know, muscle out uh even you know another group of richer people. And it's also it's it's terrible.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

It's basically a like getting the seniority bias, like basically the issue is like we're dealing with like a systemic seniority bias effectively. Totally. And this is and so like rent control, rent like rent control again is like a seniority policy. We should probably just be like, cool, you make under this amount of money in San Francisco, here's a check. Like that would be a much more efficient system than the rent control system. Absolutely. Um, like like it's like I'm not I'm not like anti-welfare state, I'm just against anti-inefficient welfare states like

Mayor Daniel Lurie

SPEAKER_01 34:05

that. And so pro what works? Pro what works, yeah. And so and so a lot of these things had to flip, and then Lurie had to be like, he was liked by the nonprofit people because he was a successful nonprofit executive. Yes. And that was another key piece where like he brought another leg of the coalition in that was not the like grow SF coalition. And it was kind of like the competent nonprofit people that actually gave a shit. Yep, yeah, versus kind of the extractive guy. Because like the you know, nonprofits are not all evil. You know, and so he brought that to the table as well. And I think like, and he's now survived like multiple like critical elections in turn in terms of interns of the city.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

His approval rating is historically high. It's like it's like 70 something percent. It's crazy. It's like he's like Assad.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

It's Assad numbers. The real risk to Lurie, though, is that it's just hard to explain all of these moving pieces and like one or two supervisor seats flip because again, they're district level. Um, there are um weird dynamics with like organized labor in San Francisco. It's like kind of funky because it's like we don't actually have a lot of union members in the city because they all got pushed

SF unions

SPEAKER_01 35:05

out by housing prices.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

That was gonna be, and that was also gonna be my my my question to basically finish up because I know we I know you have a hard cut uh union.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

No, if you're joining the other end, yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Yeah, but you know, we yeah, to to even just like even just very briefly touch on the the unions, right? I mean, you do you're like like that is that is a big thing here. I mean, even thinking about tech comp uh tech companies trying to throw events at Moscone, right? And all like all all sort of like the the the union red tape that comes with it. Uh and you've mentioned this before on Twitter, right? It's like a lot of these, they just they don't actually live in the city.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

They don't live in the city, they don't live in the city, and it's often a hereditary appointment. Like it's like your dad was the head of the union, you are now again, organized labor is actually fine. It's just like the the big issue is like the big issue with a lot of this stuff is like basically calcifying organizations calcify, and then the incentives are effectively like okay, you're not seeing an expansion in your membership because you're not incentivized. Like the Carpenter Union, on the other hand, is incentivized to expand their membership. They backed California forever, they've backed a bunch of the housing reforms, all this other stuff.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

They want to recruit more people to their union because California wide unions are kind of flipping to a pro-development. Yeah, it's a recent thing.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Like if you're like the provincial boss of like a San Francisco union, which is membership is shrinking, your incentives are much more of a like make sure I keep getting my slice of the pie. Totally. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 36:20

Um there is basically a civil war within unions. Yeah. Um and the statewide, the pro-growth unions are kind of winning, but citywide, the anti-growth unions are kind of winning.

unknown 36:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Yeah, that's that's basically it. Though in San Francisco, it's it's a little different because they also don't live here. And so at a certain point, they can't drive voters if they're like there's no union members for them to convince them.

SPEAKER_03 36:37

Yes, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Um, this is the opposite situation in Oakland. Oakland has the opposite problem because they all moved to East Bay, and they moved to like East Bay and South Bay, and so Oakland is it has a different set of constraints that San Francisco has in terms of all this other stuff, all this other stuff. But we that's a probably a complete other episode to talk about what's going on with the episode. You can talk to you know, talk to you know folks downstairs about you know their experiences in in uh in Oakland and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 36:59

Absolutely, but I mean I've been spending a bunch of time there recently. It's great. I like I love I love Oakland, but so do I, so do I.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

But but you can talk, but it's like it's like San Francisco from four years ago.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Sam, we better let you go. No, we can continue for a bit while we eat steak. Absolutely. Yeah, there's there's a couple of other things. I'll get that GJI off of you. Um thank you, King, and thank you for letting us know.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

If you guys are still going for another 30, I'll be uh I'll be just walk up the walk up the stairs, King.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Thank you, thank you. Okay, so I'm out in a pretty spot right now, and I just think that this place needs a little bit more technology, and so what better thing to introduce to this pristine land than black box AI? Coding agents all in one spot. You can spin up up to 15 agents all in one try. You can run between uh clawed code and codex, you can use clawed code to actually code your stuff and codex to review all of these workflows are available in one place. You can use the VS Code extension, you can use the CLI. All of these sorts of things are stuff that you can do in blackbox.ai, trusted by over 30 million plus uh developers worldwide at Blackbox.ai, go ahead and improve your productivity. Write some code with them today. They support the show, they do push-ups and shit. So do I, so do I. That's why I partner with these people. Partner with all the founders that just do push-ups. Anyway, go check them out. I'm gonna go um play some golf or something. Unemployed, by the way. Okay, so I just wanted to check in here while I'm merging lanes. Uh so there's that. What a what a perfect way to time it. Um the newest sponsor is actually circleback.ai, your company brain making meetings memorable, making meetings memorable. So if you don't know anything about circle back, well, they basically transcribe all meetings, right? They put it into nodes, you can then send off automations afterwards, connect it to your linear all of these different sorts of things, and they automate it for you. I know for me, uh, it's been very, very helpful having like a follow-up automation. As soon as my meeting ends, whoever I was in a meeting with, it drops a follow-up email for me, and it just saves me a bunch of time. And we like that because time is money, and money is what circleback.ai is paying me now. So, very thankful for this. Uh thankful for circleback. Welcome to the mod army, the mod empire, one might say. And uh yeah, that's that's about it. I'm gonna focus on the road so I don't crash and die. All right. And then and then he was gone. I mean, we we you have you have lunch or your breakfast here right in front of you.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

I'm good, I've been eating the steak. You've been standing over there not getting some steak. Why don't we switch positions? Wait, can we switch positions? Does that confuse the viewers? Like he was over there, now he's over there. Totally fine.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

Um the listeners can't hear it, and that is fine. Um it's amazing steak. I can't ask my questions when I'm when I'm when I'm doing it. Pretty good. You you have you have the rest. I know you gotta eat like 7,000 calories a day. It is very true. I mean I've gotta I've gotta maintain my arms somehow. Yeah. And this is just this is just how it works. Now I'm trying to I'm trying to think of um you know where where we can tangent from here because I wanted to get into some of the union and and the non-profit

The rise of non-profits in SF

SPEAKER_00 40:10

stuff is pretty interesting, but it's also not really what um it's just also just something that I don't know as much about. Um and so it's like it's like I I feel like I feel like a lot of that that discourse tends to sort of it kind of borders on conspiracy sometimes, but also like a lot of really weird shit's happening, and a lot of like, you know, city city government dollars go there, and and you know, is there any sort of like angle to help better understand the nonprofits in San Francisco?

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Yeah, well, I think you have to understand the rise of the nonprofits, of nonprofits as an important part of the progressive world uh since the 1980s. So basically, we had this large bureaucracy in America, you know, inherited from World War II and um and the and the early Cold War. And so then, you know, um uh um conservatives were like, let's cut this, let's cut this bureaucracy. And then liberals, who were what we used to call progressives, uh liberals were like, um, you know, well, uh we want jobs and we don't want to work in shitty corporate America. So essentially a bargain was worked out, although it wasn't an explicit bargain, but it was an implicit bargain was worked out where uh governments, you know, cut, we had small government, government fired all their people and then brought in outside nonprofits to do all their stuff. So instead of having you know a bureau of blah blah blah that does stuff, we hire this nonprofit that says we're gonna do X and Y and Z. And so then, but this gives um this gives all the the liberals jobs. And so um, you know, these nonprofits at the city level are providing all these city services. So instead of helping homeless people, instead of bureau of helping homeless people, uh, which basically got yelled at and protested all day and blah blah, there's a great short story about this called Mau Mauing the Flat Catchers about the 70s, and it's set in San Francisco and it shows how the it illustrates the this shift. Okay, and so um basically how how governments and why governments outsourced it, because you know, otherwise there'd be crowds in front of City Hall attacking City Hall basically every single day. Give us our stuff, give us our stuff. And so they're like, okay, no, go talk to this nonprofit. So basically, government outsourced its stuff from the nonprofits. The nonprofits didn't necessarily have the competence to do this, and they their incentives weren't necessarily aligned, so there was some corruption, there was some, you know, there was like some illegality, blah, blah, and there was some just sheer incompetence. Some people just paid out their executives. It's it's nonprofit, but without profit, you can still pay a high-ass salary, million-dollar salary executives, whatever. So this was worst in San Francisco, but it happened to some degree all over the country. That you had this um if you watched movies in like the 90s and and 2000s, and you had this person, you know, this like young liberal person, uh, like, oh man, I just hate corporate America, blah, blah, blah. I want to follow my dreams. Well, what's your dream? Work for a nonprofit. It's always work for a nonprofit. That's the dream. That's how you escape the grind, that's how you escape the suit and tie corporate culture of the day, was you go work for nonprofit. And so there was this devil's bargain uh of basically inefficient and sometimes even corrupt outsourcing of core government functions to people who didn't know how to do those functions. Yes. Um, you know, there were some, of course, competent nonprofits, but they're they don't have to be, isn't it? And so then that's the backdrop against which all this is happening. And so when you talk about the groups, a lot of people talk about that as lobby groups that like Mackenzie Bezos is contributing to. But but originally the groups were were these nonprofits who provided these local government city services. Yeah. And so um they became a power block in and of themselves because at the city level, you have a small enough populace where you really don't have to blanket the airwaves with ads and stuff like that. The way you get votes is by knocking doors and by telling your friends, hey, come out and vote because turnout's low and you don't need that many people. And the key races are actually local races, like supervisor races. So traditionally, city politics is actually corrupt in every country because you you know these the exact people who are voting for you. It's called clientelism, political scientists call this clientelism. You can pay people. Directly to vote for you. So the classic, the classic uh you know, group of these are construction workers. Yes, in every country, the construction workers will actually come out to vote for you, and there's a lot of them if the city spends money on construction projects. Yep. And that's that's every city you go to in the world. Like that's Japan, that's everywhere. Um, but in San Francisco, because you know, in in these blue cities, these progressive cities in America, because we'd outsourced all these core government functions to these you know social nonprofits, we had this additional layer of clientelism where basically your San Francisco like homeless service uh nonprofit could actually contribute money to the campaign war chests of you know these people, uh the you know, candidates who then use city money, direct city money, to the people who are contributing to them. So it's the circular kind of auraboros of of funding. And so you got structures like this and more informal sort of buddy-buddy, you know, good old boy structures. Um, and so then that's the that's the sort of backdrop.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it makes sense. And I mean, uh even if I'm thinking, you know, I mean, even if I just think back to the the because you're talking about politics at the at the city level, right? Uh I think it's also important to note that that San Francisco, I think, is one of two cities in the US that actually has a board of supervisors. I believe the other one is in Massachusetts. But don't quote me on that. Uh and again the theme is defamation. So I don't think I don't think uh I don't think a a city can can uh you know file a defamation lawsuit against me, but I don't I don't it's a bit they can, they won't, but but um oh they can.

SPEAKER_02 45:30

I have a I have a friend who's a lawyer who'll do that for them. Oh really? Yeah, he's a city city

The board of supervisors and veto power of development

SPEAKER_02 45:35

lawyer, but I didn't want to attempt fight. Um but yeah, so so um I guess the point is that um San Francisco politics is a little weird because we have essentially regional fiefdoms, and this is not actually a law on the books. We have board of supervisors, but we have this unofficial rule whereas each supervisor gets veto power over development in their district. Yep. That is not a rule of San Francisco, that is an unofficial uh thing. And we used to have citywide supervisors who would dilute this because everybody in every district could vote, but instead you have each district votes for its you know supervisor. So suppose you want to build more housing, you know, in San Francisco, each supervisor says don't build it in not in my backyard, they're a NIMBY. Um even the even the more you know moderate pro-housing supervisors tend to you know be colder toward housing projects because there will be a huge backlash if these housing projects that are mandated to be like 50% below market rate and bring a bunch of the you know drug people into their into their district, there will be a big backlash. So they have they structurally have to be NIMBY because of the way things are set up, but because it it interacts with this sort of like gentleman's agreement among supervisors to give local veto power. So that's why it's especially toxic in San Francisco. Um San Francisco is a balkanized city. Yeah. More than New York, more than you know, you you hear about these cities from like the early 20th century where you'd have like, here's the Italians in this neighborhood who vote for this, here's like the Poles in this neighborhood who vote for this. Well, San Francisco used the structure of its politics to remain like this, essentially. So it's it's still, you know, like like you know, the groups, blocks that are associated with various neighborhoods, they they control their supervisor and their supervisor votes for their parochial interests, and then it basically becomes horse trading amongst these parochial interests.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Absolutely. And I mean, even if I, you know, I think to sort of wrap up the conversation in a bow a little bit, because we kind of started with, you know, how did all of this happen? A little a brief sort of a recent history of SF, I think back to the to the London Breed days, right? Because I mean, I feel like the things, the things that London Breed said are maybe with an exception during COVID, sort of like Black Lives Matter, like that sort of era. Um, the things that she said and sort of like the the policies that she would espouse were it's pretty it's actually pretty similar to Daniel Laurie. It's just that she didn't have the board of supervisors to do anything. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 47:57

She didn't have the power, so she got blamed for a lot of stuff that she would have rather not have happened.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

Yes. But yeah, she didn't have the power. Yeah. And so, and you know, and this was this was actually only something that I learned recently, where it was like, no, actually, the the flipping of you know some of these district supervisors in the previous election has been so important to Daniel Lorie's success. I mean, obviously, you know, Daniel Lorie takes a much more pro-business stance. I mean, very publicly, I mean, he's got his old Instagram reels, right? I mean, I think we've all sort of seen the Daniel Lorrie Instagram reels. He's kind of new media god, as we might say. Uh, but you know, like like yet he's been able to get a lot of this stuff done because of his board of supervisors. And I think that's sort of the emphasis, right? It's the emphasis on all the different layers. It's Bilal Mahmoud.

SPEAKER_02 48:39

Yeah. You know, that that Bilal Mahmoud defeating Dean Preston was a landmark event in San Francisco politics. Dean Preston was kind of being groomed to be the successor of um, he's the one that puts in planter boxes in Hayes Valley.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

He put all the planter boxes. I assume he was the planter box guy.

SPEAKER_02 48:55

Right. He was very um, he was like the most, the most left nimby guy imaginable. Yeah. And, you know, wanted to be this power broker kind of like Aaron Peskin, and was defeated by a guy with the support of sort of like moderate families pissed off about crime. Yeah. And, you know, maybe some tech people, but then um I don't think that was a huge part of Bilal's coalition. Yeah. But then essentially, yeah, just a bunch of pissed off people. So, so um the the kind of the rich old money white people who would, you know, came as hippies in the in the 70s, bought houses and sat on the houses until they were worth $10 million. Yeah, those people all very strongly supported Preston like they support Peskin, but they failed. And so, you know, things reached a boiling point where people actually came out and voted in a city election 2024.

SPEAKER_03 49:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 49:38

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I think that is a it's a decent, it's a decent spot to wrap. Of course, you know, we talk, we go through these timelines because you know, SF is uh pretty good and we're actually big fans. This is got like one of the one of the last episodes we did, which talked about how good SF was. Um I mean, well, before we ate uh uh great Sichuan food. Yes, yes. Also pretty good. Also pretty good. But um, yeah, really, really good place to end up. Hopefully, you know, hopefully we actually learned something this Mott's episode, other than me just sort of rambling and uh cracking jokes and you know showing people tweets. Uh I mean maybe we learned stuff from the tweets as well. Yes. I wouldn't be caught dead though. You learned that the impulse stove is a very good stove. Yes, thank you, Sam. Thank you, thank you, Impulse, for actually having us. I mean, he's just gone and uh uh showed up on another podcast. So, you know, that's that's the nature of uh distribution nowadays.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

Impulse stove. Wait, isn't he going to MTS right now? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:27

It's the Moss Mott's MTS convergence. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was on I was on their show on Friday. So I mean it was uh it was it was absolutely delightful. I still haven't been on. I still have to go on.

SPEAKER_03 50:36

Yeah, go on.

SPEAKER_00 50:37

Go chat with uh yeah, yeah, see if you can see if you can chat with um Gabriel in the afternoon. Australia Australian Gabriel. Australian Gabriel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you get along with the code. Who I met the other day on the street. Yeah, good, good.

SPEAKER_02 50:47

Uh yeah, so so basically what we learned today was the impulse stove is very good. Do not outsource your state capacity to nonprofits.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

Um, you know, the the the uh the political compass of San Francisco. And because because most most people who are listening to this uh happen to be happen to be inhabitants of San Francisco, maybe that actually helps us keep the city uh in decent shape. Who knows? Uh Mots Mots uh Mots wins again, as I would say. Anyway, you've been listening to another episode of Members of Technical Stuff? We'll go ahead and see on the timeline again real soon. Oh I love it. Okay, so naturally I can't have fun without making the bag. So this is a shout out to superpower.com. They can't have a millionaires get two hundred dollars. And of course we can get your lots of diagnosis. All of these other things they do in one particular hand.