>Ro Khanna is my hometown progressive. So..obviously..I distrust the politician representing us.

As someone not from the Bay Area, will you please explain why this is obvious?

> Why can’t he do a better job with our multitude of problems?

Perhaps because he has only been in Congress since 2016 and in that time, the Democrats have been in the minority and mostly powerless to do much of anything

Because local constituents have a front row seat wherein we hear what politicians say and what they do and how they do it.

In any average Silicon Valley town(or college town for that matter) where there are more non voting residents than those who can vote, the policies are geared towards everyone and usually not in the interest of those who are long term residents and have voted and have paid taxes.

So politicians have to deliver for both the voting and non voting constituents, but they have to convince the voters to choose what’s sometimes not in their best interest.

This is the reason most politicians lie or back track. It is a most superior skill to be able to convince people to choose what isn’t in their best interest. In California..and especially the Silicon Valley mega region, politicians of all stripe have honed this skill to a fine art form.

> So politicians have to deliver

Why do they have to deliver for people who don't vote for them? If they're some altruist who wants to do the Right Thing (TM), wouldn't they get replaced real quick by someone who knows who their constituents really are?

But even assuming that they do, why is that so wrong? You make it sound like it's terrible to think about our neighbours, whether they can vote or not.

They deliver promises to people who can’t vote because they spend money and earn money and pay taxes anyways.

An elected politician is not a monarch or a benevolent dictator or an altruistic philanthropist. He is a representative of those who voted for him.

And re: why is this wrong? Because the politicians necessarily have to lie and or fudge facts or back track on promises because there is a fundamental conflict of interest.

A great example of this is California Proposition 1A aka Governer Brown’s bullet train to nowhere. Voters approved $9 billion bond money in 2008. The estimate is 77 billion now. And nothing is done.

That’s money we could have spent locally and to improve our roads and infrastructure. There is no more local governance and only the tyranny of regional governance. We are not homogenized constituents and our needs vary greatly.

Another example is school funding and LCFF..local control funding formula. Which is anything but as it’s a melting pot of school funding and then redistribution. Schools in highly taxed..high density cities are deteriorating with their infrastructure crumbling. With education tied to property taxes, there is so much pressure to create more and more housing stock in Silicon Valley towns that are already beyond carrying capacity. Afterall, a 2 million $ matchbox condo home sold in Cupertino delivers more tax $$$ to the state coffers than a home in Manteca..so why build roads and maintain freeways and create networked public transport to allow the work force to move freely?

I see that you're not a fan, but there are many among us who support HSR and more housing in places like Cupertino. The fact that it's $2 million indicates it's desperately needed.

Though I agree that HSR has been suboptimal. I'd have preferred to have a massive improvement in medium speed rail than a focus on HSR specifically - just make the Coast Starlight take 8 hours from downtown SF to DTLA, not 13, and you'd have a reasonably viable service.

Do you have any example of higher density real estate development leading to affordable housing? High density only seems to stress existing resources and infrastructure while making cost of living more unaffordable.

It’s baffling. And yet, we keep buying the myth of high density sustainability. This year is going to be the year I give up all delusions and stop being naive.

It's a complex question. Higher-density areas are more affordable, other things being equal. They're also a lot more desirable and appealing than the lower-density alternative, and this is what can make them "less affordable" to some, while still being quite easily affordable to others. They have inbuilt gentrification potential. But gentrification is a great thing - it directly translates into a better quality of life! And if it spreads sufficiently, to the point that "higher density" is not a rarity anymore, it doesn't even have to mean high rents.

Can you give an example?

https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/where-is-gent... : it seems like gentrification means displacement of existing population that is lower income. It doesn’t address affordability. Cupertino doesn’t need to be more gentrified by becoming high density. Average condo price was 1 million ten years ago. How is high density in already affordable places more sustainable? Example:Oakland. Oakland was a poorer part of Bay Area and because of its proximity to San Francisco is becoming more gentrified and has even more high density buildings now. It displaces older long time poorer Oakland residents who were already living in a high density town.

Let’s take public school spending: OUSD spends average of $14534 per student. http://educate78.org/much-money-ousd-spend/ ..it’s spending has been increasing steadily as it gentrifies and its population gets displaced. They are always in debt.

http://www.ed-data.org/district/Alameda/Fremont-Unified : I searched for Fremont. The one that is currently being converted to super high density.

This random search re Cupertino public school system and it turned out to be in Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-approximate-per-year-expe... ..

Here is an even more brutal question of someone with $400k and can’t make it by buying a good school district home: https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-survive-in-the-Bay-Area-with... : I had mentioned this elsewhere on HN(diff thread) about how children’s education is now based on speculation because property taxes are tied to public schools and their excellence. Rich parents donate or obtain private coaching classes. (The first answer is what makes it brutal)

I have a few more examples of other cities. But a quick search spits out shocking contradictions which only tells me why high density is a myth and that it was never meant to be a true solution.

This is the corroding of middle class. And this is how pitchfork factories get started.

I don’t know a single example in the Bay Area where high density has translated to sustainability. Or affordability. It only increase taxes and outgoing funds to the tax coffers in Sacramento.

An expected side effect(and probably planned one) is an increase in govt employees ..so basically all the revenue generated goes to the care and feeding of public sector employees that has left ginormous unfunded tax liabilities of these union backed employees. The city manager of san Jose makes 700k and fremont city manager makes 500k. The new one is this guy http://tbrnews.com/news/manhattan-beach-dismisses-city-manag... ... no one in fremont knew that this was the story behind their city manager. Why? Because they were all stuck in grid lock traffic trying to get back home while not being able to participate in the running of their city their tax dollars built. This is the reality of Bay Area.

There are no slum lords. Even the slum lords have to pay the piper. The real winner is the govt. this is the reality of gentrified Bay Area.

One of your Quora links is notorious Internet anger man Michael O'Church. He hates everything about the Bay Area tech industry and so his views are ridiculously flamebaity. His statements have low signal.

I don’t know what to say about that. I figured there were a multitude of opinions in Quora forums.

I voted for HSR. I am utterly disillusioned now. I don’t trust anything coming out of Sacramento now.