Why A Bunch Of Rich Techies Got Mad At Me On SF Twitter

If you read BAS, you may have seen my article, “It’s Time To Ban Self-Driving Cars In San Francisco.” For whatever reason, this piece pissed a lot of rich people off. 

What rich people am I referring to? The rich people at GrowSF and their followers on Twitter. 

If you don’t know what GrowSF is, let me inform you. GrowSF is a pro-business lobbying group that bought The Bold Italic, which is a publication where you can find some of my old writing. It really sucks because TBI had some great articles back in the day and that’s where I got my start as a writer way before Bay Area Memes was a thing.

But if you love The Bold Italic, fret not because the same TBI greatness can be found on Matt Charnock’s (the former editor for TBI) new webizine, Underscore_SF.

The first tweet came from the co-founder of GrowSF himself, Steven Buss:

For whatever reason, banning self-driving cars has become the Progressive meme-of-the-month. They literally believe we should never improve our material conditions and treat autonomous cars w/ zero-tolerance while giving grace to drivers who kill dozens. https://t.co/8RLpweYPvC

— Steven Buss 🥑 🌐 (@sbuss) June 14, 2023

The tweet got over 200k views and many in the comments characterized me as a rabid communist who hated progress and wanted to see San Francisco turn into a fentanyl-fueled Monster Truck derby where human operated vehicles competed against each other to see who could kill the most pedestrians…which is true, but that’s not what the article was about.

The reason why I don’t want self-driving cars or fully-autonomous vehicles to become the norm is because these vehicles are an enormous economic threat to people who drive for a living.

Nearly 5 million people in the United States drive for a living, and there have been numerous reports that have concluded that self driving cars will eliminate the majority of these jobs.

I don’t want that to happen.

The United States lacks basic social safety nets that many other countries have in place that are designed to give workers a ‘soft landing’ when dealing with unemployment. When these workers find themselves out of a job due to the rise of autonomous vehicles, they will undoubtedly be left in the dust. How do I know this? Because that’s what America does, it leaves people in the dust. I don’t think the average Silicon Valley lobbyist really understands the world outside of the bubble they have made for themselves.

I do understand that less drivers on the road would ultimately mean less traffic accidents. That is undeniable, and I recognize that as a positive aspect of self-driving vehicles. I’d be a liar if I didn’t, but what this will accomplish is more profit for corporations as this will lead to a cut in their labor costs and more desperate workers who will be willing to work for less as a result of reduced scarcity in the labor pool.

Some other guy with a following tweeted the article and called me a parasite.

The publisher and author of this article are parasites using scare tactics to sabotage San Francisco’s economic recovery.

Their goal is to manufacture false outrage and throw up roadblocks to progress, all so they can continue to profit from the city’s misery during its… pic.twitter.com/SBsXofa2Vy

— Pete Skomoroch (@peteskomoroch) June 14, 2023

I find the use of the term “parasite” deeply ironic considering he is advocating for artificial intelligence – a technology that is being designed to maximize profit, take jobs from workers and further empower corporations to dominate the globe. He went to MIT, so naturally he cares about people who didn’t have parents that forced them to take piano lessons. I know Pete went to an Elite college, but allow me to educate Pete on the definition of the word parasite. According to Oxford, a parasite is “an organism that lives in or on an organism of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other’s expense.”

Are you sure it’s not you, Peter?

I don’t hate the technology. If the general US population could access high quality education without putting themselves at the risk of bankruptcy so they could compete in the economy, I wouldn’t mind. If we lived in a system where your healthcare wasn’t inextricably tied to your employment, I wouldn’t be against self-driving cars.

The only way that record-breaking levels of unemployment could be sustainable is with a universal basic income or UBI. A lot of forward thinking people in Silicon Valley and even former presidential candidate, Andrew Yang, ran on a platform that stressed the need for UBI in response to artificial intelligence.

But this is America, and America doesn’t do those things.

America is designed to produce desperate workers and record profits. Self driving cars and artificial intelligence are just going to make it worse.

But what do I know? I’m just a “parasite,” and they’re just millionaires who have no problem driving us off a cliff as long as they never have to actually be the ones behind the wheel.

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Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.

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