[sudo-discuss] Bubble

[Matthew Senate]

Most excellent responses, folks!

Apologies for delay, but I'd like to reply to ya'll as I've been pondering
the bubble/burst over this week.

Responses in-line below.

p.s. "Bubble/Burst" might be a good theme for an event or art show about
this topic...

p.p.s. Found some interesting opinions from "the crowd":
https://www.quora.com/What-was-Silicon-Valley-like-after-the-bubble-burst-in-the-early-2000s
(last updated ~1.5 years ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2231352 (~4 years ago)

On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 7:42 PM, Autonomous <autonomous666 at gmail.com> wrote:

> You know, I have been building basic shelters for as long as I can
> remember. When I was 13 I built a treehouse on a vacant property nearby my
> home with debris found on construction sites. It became a clubhouse for the
> kids in the neighborhood, then runaway kids started to show up and spend
> the night there. They would tell stories of how they needed to escape from
> their parents who did absolutely awful things to them. I didn't know what
> else to do except lend an ear and bring them food and water. As strange as
> it may seem, my treehouse was the only place of refuge these kids had.
>

This is a powerful story, thank you for sharing. It encourages me to
remember that when we commune, we will be surprised by what confluence
occurs; we will grow from the stories, perspectives, and lives that we
reveal to each other.


> I attached a few photos of a property in development in San Rafael, called
> "Woodlands Sanctuary", and a photo of another property located further
> north called "Juniper Sanctuary", which will be developed next.
>

Thanks for sharing the photos too, I appreciate that the sacredness of a
"sanctuary" has an essence more powerful than the "tiny house",
"ecovillage", or even "commune" rhetoric folks today may use for atypical
or non-normative forms of shelter.


> On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 3:19 PM, Brandon Curtis <brandon.curtis at gmail.com>
>  wrote:
>
>> It sounds like you SHOULD teach a seminar on the subject.  Or at least
>> write something up!
>>
>> * -- Brandon*
>>
>>
Hard to beat a direct request like that ;) Indeed, hacking on shelter as a
resilience strategy (more robust to economic recession than wage-slavery)
would be an amazing workshop opportunity!


> On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 10:15 PM, johanna faust <female.faust at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> "all the decadence and avarice now will seem like a hazy impossible
>> dream"
>>
>>
I dwelled on the same sentence, Faust ;) it's poetry!

On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 11:02 AM, Praveen Sinha <dmhomee at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>
I can't thank you enough for this message, Praveen.

Others not on this thread have also expressed similar sentiments to me in
person ;)


> The dotcom crash left silicon valley with a 30% unemployment rate in the
>>> tech industry for about 6 long months.  The shape of a new crash could be
>>> very different.
>>>
>>
This is a very intriguing space for theorizing. Here's a guess, I imagine
three primary clusters of layoffs, firings, or hiring freezes:

(a) the "bootstrap" sub-sector, consisting of the many vague, absurd, small
startups that make up something like the "long tail" of tech employment in
the bay area. Many of these companies will file for bankruptcy and new ones
will not find funding to get off the ground for some time.
(b) the "opulent" employers, especially companies chasing the mega-corp
front-runners like Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. Some of these
employers will simply fire folks and down-scale (a la austerity) in attempt
to maintain Chief-level and manager-level salaries, so they may ride out
the recession as long as possible, perhaps even survive long enough to
re-hire in several years. Other companies will bottom-out entirely and file
for bankruptcy, which no one will expect until it is too late. E.g.
*Snapchat*... just saying...
(c) the service industry employers who serve one or both of (a) and (b) or
perhaps have some other contingency within the tech sector in their
business models. E.g. Workplace / lunch catering companies.


> - crisis: be prepared for a bloodbath: As much as no housing sucks, it
>>> sucks much much more to have no avenues for income.  A crash means that you
>>> and your boss are laid off, and so is everyone else... But also the people
>>> that were funding your company have dried up and closed shop and are out on
>>> the street as well.  And the people funding them are cutting their losses
>>> and closing up shop.   The wealthy patrons that funded your pet projects
>>> are now in the same boat as you are.  The rich and powerful people that you
>>> hated, and likewise they hated you -- now you are both clinging to each
>>> other realizing that you are in the same boat and dependent on each other.
>>> Everything will be inverted -- all the decadence and avarice now will seem
>>> like a hazy impossible dream.
>>>
>>
Very intriguing how co-dependence and resiliency may be laid bare here as
you suggest. What does reconciliation look like in this context? And what
of building trust?


>  - challenge: be prepared to reposition your funding sources:  for a
>>> hackerspace, all your tech patrons may be dried up for an extended period
>>> of time.  However, it may be a good time to leverage in other industries
>>> somehow, like biotech or health care
>>>
>>
Hear that sudo? We better start kissing ass to CCL! :P ;)

The most obvious strategy that came to my mind to be robust to tech income
(salary / wage income) from our supporters via online donations (
https://gratipay.com/sudoroom) is to prepare to start offering direct
services like computer repair with the extra volunteer labor we may gain as
people go between jobs. We could learn a lot from the Free Geek
http://www.freegeek.org/ and Repair Cafe http://repaircafe.org/ models.

Also, Marc's project of digitizing those two vending machines we already
have in the space could provide a great way to sell products either that we
create ourselves (for donations to sudo) or products we can acquire in bulk
at low prices (economy of scale) and sell to ourselves and the wider local
community with some reasonable margin. E.g. pre-installed pirateboxes,
micro-usb chargers, unique hand-made hacker jewelry, etc.



> - opportunity: you'll have a flood of really smart and talented people
>>> that now need new opportunity.  Do as much as possible to develop this
>>> human capital in creative alternative ways for the long term.
>>>
>>
Certainly this is something we can improve / streamline with sudo,
especially as we refactor our membership process: (this is an un-official
work-in-progress for a potential change to our current membership process)
https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Articles_of_Association/Future_Membership#Section_2.1.0_Process_for_becoming_a_member


> - opportunity: landlords will start dropping rent as people start leaving
>>> the bay area in droves because the rent is always too damn high.  If you
>>> can ride it out, and if you can get your funding positioned right, there
>>> will be lots of golden opportunities to acquire stuff.  For example,
>>> noisebridge was able to get it's current place during the peak of the 2008
>>> crash
>>>
>>
Thinking now about viable transport and storage systems.


> - opportunity:  we didn't have bitcoin and timebanks with wide acceptance
>>> the last couple of times......
>>>
>>
Curious about more of your thoughts on how bitcoin specifically may play
into alternative transactions. Do you think a tech crash would deflate or
inflate value of bitcoin overall? What of other and yet-to-be-created
crypto-currencies?


> - major challenge:  Crashes suck, but you can live through it.  A crash +
>>> ongoing natural disaster = bad shit.  If a crash and extended water crisis
>>> happen at the same time, we could be living in a totally different reality
>>> this time next year.  That said, I can't think of any better people that
>>> I'd want to live through it with!
>>>
>>
In terms of water, ya'll should read this:
http://californiawaterblog.com/2011/05/05/water%E2%80%94who-uses-how-much/
and perhaps this too http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1087

Urban, and specifically residential / non-business use of water is
EXTREMELY LOW compared to Big Agriculture's extortion$$$. Where are the
state-sponsored regulations of corporate water usage?? Obviously we know
who is really in control here.

Foo bar...

Love and solidarity,
Matt
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://sudoroom.org/pipermail/sudo-discuss/attachments/20150402/53c67f25/attachment.html>