In reply to Cynthia.

Off topic. Also, not a logical argument.

In reply to FullTimeDriver.

I still take cabs and swear by the YoTaxi and Flywheel apps. Two obvious benefits: the drivers don’t need to listen to a GPS robot voice to direct them and we get to ride in the red-carpet lanes that Uber and civilian drivers can’t.

In reply to raymullensf.

How do you figure SF sold out to tech companies when this city spends more than any other in the US on vagrancy, and addiction while simultaneously shoveling heaps into nonsensical partnerships and go-no-where sports teams?

“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

― Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks

Selling out to tech happened long ago…tax credits to Twitter (hey, isn’t the mid-market area revitalized?) was the shark. Short term it brought the tech locusts who pushed out folks without the casino-like salaries.
Well, the party is over, and the cleanup begins. Unfortunately, politicians just want to throw the next party to get reelected, not clean up things.

As a career cab driver, I took offense at Mayor Breed’s comments praising emerging technologies and supporting Waymo and other AV companies.

Although I do not oppose technology, I do oppose Waymo, and Uber & Lyft, providing taxi services in San Francisco without paying into the “Medallion System” cab drivers had to since 2010.

Mayor Breed conveniently forgets that her predecessors at Room 200 — Mayor Newsom and Mayor Lee — brought forward and carried out a “Medallion Sales Program” charging cab drivers $250,000 for the privilege of driving a taxi.

Because of City Hall’s unconditional support of Uber & Lyft, medallions lost value, the “Program” failed, adversely affecting the entire taxi industry and trapping medallion buyers with unpayable loans.

Who cares about the cabbies!!??

In reply to Gary.

An entertaining presentation of the perspectives in play. Best news writing I’ve seen in a long while. Thanks.

Best piece yet Joe. Thank you for these sharp insights.

In reply to Howard Williams.

Howard,

I think the firefighters are anti-tech and I was one and no fire company is going to be deterred by a vehicle stopped in the middle of a street, manned or driverless.

Thanks for your shot of 3 Waymos directly under my windows in the Carlins Vets building.

I had been wondering if it was the same vehicle going around the block.

lol

These vehicles aren’t practical is the truth I’ve learned from watching the development of Musk’s FSD (full self driving) which is in its 12th iteration now and almost got him killed in a demonstration ride he had the balls to show to the Public a few months back.

Musk is coming from a completely different angle and wants a car that can go driverless in the outbacks of Siberia and he already has 4 million of them on the road awaiting a tech update.

That thing twirling atop a Waymo costs over a quarter million.

And, it only knows SF neighborhoods.

Y’all watching tech with awe like me ?

Elon says he’s going to stop selling cars in 10 years and just lease them and each vehicle will be on the road 6 times more hours and you can have a new one at your door in minutes like the slave driven Ubers and the first one will bring (in Ten Years) your rented Jeeves style robot whose intelligence you can dial daily as appropriate and can unstop your toilet or service your jet or give you a colonoscopy.

I’m drifting here …

Bottom line is that (knock on wood) none of these vehicles has had a serious accident thru their own fault.

Ever scraped a garage door or tapped a bumper ?

If so, you can’t say the same.

In reply to Niners.

Niners,

A. Philip Randolph ain’t what he used to be.

Oft times, smart political opportunists simply overwhelm the top echelons of respected organizations and use the groups ‘sheeps clothing’ to completely redirect the mission of those enterprises.

Or, you can simply ‘rent’ the name and its positive aspects.

Last election cycle we had the SFPOA making donations to political candidates and issues with money not from their membership.

Frankly, very little irritates me more than this False Flag thing.

While respect for the cops in this town has pretty much tanked for good reasons, firefighters still have a good reputation.

Because firefighters still do the work they were hired to do.

Just like in 1849, when something catches fire they go put out the fire.

Our SFPD cops are so political that they stop arresting the bad guys on order from their union who hates a new DA.

Firefighters may be as conservative and bigoted as the cops (note Engine #36 still trailing a giant American Flag which will certainly be in the way when they ‘pull a skid’ on a serious fireground) …

but, they are able to separate the job from the politics.

Ain’t your handle copyrighted ?

lol

go Niners !

h

First the obligatory statement that I do not endorse destroying robotaxis. I do endorse destroying their privilege to run all over San Francisco or any other city and treat us as guinea pigs for their profit seeking experiments. Robotaxis are a combination of 2 major technologies: automobiles (transportation technology) and computers (communication tech). Autos in significant numbers have been around for about 120 years. For the first 50 years, they were seen as boon with few costs but now we see that they have wreak environmental and social havoc. And yes, this includes electric ones. Computers have been around in significant numbers for about 40 years and in the last decade we have seen them cost us on “social” media and cost us environmentally with the problems of the minerals needed to produce them and the disposal after their planned obsolescence renders them useless. Unregulated and unwanted surveillance is another problem, one which Waymo’s owning corporation Google/Alphabet has been guilty of doing. And so now we have these 2 problematic technologies (autos in transportation and computers in communication) being COMBINED and traveling around with little or no regulation.
Waymo is owned by Google/Alphabet and their robotaxis run on Google’s AI. Recently Google’s AI portrayed Asian and Black people as World War II German soldiers, women as Popes, said misgendering Caitlin Jenner was probably worse than nuclear war and didn’t know if Hitler was worse than Elon Musk.
So that’s the same “intelligence” that’s driving SUVs around San Francisco.

If removing “robotaxis” from the streets seems more important than doing anything substantive to prevent or prosecute people from setting them on fire is your move, then we’re all doomed.

In reply to Niners.

Sir or madam:

Welcome to realpolitik.

JE

But you can kiss the fire fighters union’s ass any time you like. Lol

Only in San Francisco. Robotaxis are bad, but no one blinks if a bunch of hoods vandalize, arson and film it. Absolutely no respect for our city.

Ah yes, yet again “Big Tech” is being used as a red herring and/or scapegoat for this city’s impenetrable taste for complacency and haphazard distractedness. I agree that if an emerging technology is wreaking havoc it should be regulated or removed, but (so far as it seems) the reporting has made it pretty clear that AVs are not causing any incredible compromise to public safety or the efficacy of the fire department (who seem to be more concerned with their huge ass trucks being able to climb over curbs than the safety of cyclists and pedestrians). If anything, we San Franciscans need fewer organizations telling our political leaders to “pick a side” and we need more nuanced debate on issues that affect the average San Franciscans. Call it a gaff, a tone-def statement, or a pragmatic apology to this city’s largest industry; it amazes me that the firefighters union et all seem more concerned with the soapbox or being recognized than the violence, crime, and genuine safety concerns of their constituents.

Could our city’s crime be down, because we stopped bothering reporting it or expecting restitution ages ago? A city in recovery is a convenient narrative for the ruling class to sell, sell, sell… what is left of a city (and society) mostly picked over.

As is the narrative currently pushing Artificial Intelligence (AI), a technology only the ruling class would fully embrace in a society sans real democracy. Will their be a “later” to deal with its consequences?

I recently wondered what had become of Luke Thomas, an admirable journalist who became a naturalized citizen after 9/11. He made some very prescient comments in an interview years ago about the direction San Francisco politics was headed: increasingly conservative.

See: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nSm0IiQLHHA&pp=ygUuTHVrZSBUaG9tYXMsIFNGIE9ubGluZSBGb2cgQ2l0eSBKb3VybmFsIEVkaXRvcg%3D%3D

The novelist Anne Lamott’s father Kenneth Lamott, from his vantage in the Bay Area, was more precise about the future of our state in his 1963 book, Anti-California: Report from Our First Parafascist State.

“[W]ar is literally the health of the state,” he declared; we are governed by charismatic buffoons so “clownish it is hard to take them seriously as politicians… but who are not reluctant to use their tremendous powers.”

Like Nixon, or Reagan, they are cultivated by Wall Street and a ruling class that wants nothing to stand in the way of their obscene and destructive profits.

If anything the ruling class believes now is that Democrats and demagogues need not foil their plans for plunder. Thus we get a Newsom waiting in the wings, a Trump too easy to love or hate, and well-healed interest groups and union bureaucrats incentivized to keep us from “looking behind the curtain.”

Waymo is a distraction. So too was the Teamster’s “historic” contract last year. The pitiful improvements it promised mean nothing to all the UPS workers who are now losing their jobs to warehouse consolidation, robots, and AI.

A week ago, a chagrined security guard at a drug store I often visit told me the shelves were bare because a team of six had hit them the day prior. Yawn. Let’s talk “come back.” (That’s all I see lately on search engine news for San Francisco.)

Soccer stadium on Market Street anyone?

I can’t really blame the mayor for all the problems in our city. She was just a fresh face in a long line of clever and obedient politicians. She helped save lives at the onset of COVID. Oh. Let’s talk “come back.”

Or: let’s discuss capitalism.

When it comes to supporting hardworking firefighters who are concerned about public safety, and pedestrians and bicyclists who have loudly complained about near misses with self-driving vehicles, or supporting wealthy investors and their latest wealth-growing scheme that was imposed upon us San Franciscans without our consent, a scheme that has an objective to take money out of the pockets of middle-class working people, such as taxi drivers and Uber/Lyft “giggers,” and moves that money into the bank accounts of the already filthy-stinking rich investors, Breed will choose always choose investors.

Why? Because they are the only group that still supports her, and they’ve been pretty successful in outspending any other group in elections to ensure that they get their way. The lesson that Breed is going to learn is that this group of investors are unable to disagree in a civil manner and will turn against her for the silliest reason.

That nobody in SF city government has asked State lawmakers to introduce a bill to enable self-driving cars to be ticketed for violations of the law in California is just one example of the disdain the mayor and others have for San Franciscans. I note that Arizona passed a law in 2018 to allow police to ticket registered owners of self-driving vehicles.

As far as our city’s reputation, if the mayor and her staff would stop with the nonsense of trying to make San Francisco into a “world class” city, because we already are and it is a ridiculous objective, and instead focus upon making San Francisco better for those of us who live and pay taxes here, she may actually gain some support.