Why Did An Angry Man Punch Me?

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2014/01/why_did_an_angry_man.php

by jamesjyu • 13 years ago

64 64 13 years ago

If we're going with noblesse oblige, we have to admit that we're nobility.

Crito5• 13 years ago

Punching random people in the streets is not normal behaviour, that man needs medical treatment and likely needs to be detained until said treatment takes effect.

That is not something that companies like Google are equipped to provide. Not by a long shot. It would not even be legal for them to take that situation into their own hands. The government of San Francisco is the most immediate entity actually in a position to do something there.

If the government of San Francisco needs more money to do their job, then you should be asking the government of San Francisco why the hell they aren't raising that money by, perhaps, taxing Google.

Asking why Google did not do anything is farcical.

trekky1700• 13 years ago

Honestly, even when there's money for medical attention, these people still exist. In Toronto we still have people like that, though from what I heard, less of them. Here, a man like that would've had access to all the medical help he needed at no cost, but there's no way, apart from arresting him and then getting a judge to agree he's a danger to force it upon him. Without revoking his rights, there's really no way to force help upon him. And definitely no way for Twitter or Google to do it.

Crito5• 13 years ago

Absolutely. It is a sad Catch-22 that many of the people who need help the most do not receive it because they do not help themselves, but their inability to help themselves is part of what they need help with in the first place.

Waiting for the inevitable arrest is obviously unsatisfactory, but I don't know how you can improve this process without trampling on rights.

AnimalMuppet• 13 years ago

Well, if he punched somebody, then arresting him is an available option...

falcolas• 13 years ago

why the hell they aren't raising that money by, perhaps, taxing Google.

Perhaps because Google hides most of its income from the US and California governments through various international subsidaries.

And perhaps also because the moment they worked around all these loopholes and actually started to get money out of Google, Google would simply up and move away, making things worse.

Google, Twitter, and companies in general, should have some duty to their communities, if only out of gratitude for providing an environment in which they could thrive. That they don't speaks volumes on their corporate values.

Personally, I think it's a problem with the "profit for shareholders above all else" which dominates the discussions about corporate values.

Crito5• 13 years ago

They may be hiding most of their international income in Ireland or wherever, but San Francisco does not need access to most of their income, do they? Tax the portion that they are able to tax.

If the tax avoidance becomes or is excessive, you refocus your efforts above local government to seek a solution.

"If we increase taxes they'll leave, so there is no point even trying" is a defeatist attitude. And assuming that is how Google really does operate, then expecting charity from Google is ludicrous anyway.

(And you are still ignoring the fact that Google is not in a position to do anything besides provide money anyway. Your local government is the one that can actually do something with that money to combat this problem.)

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eloff• 13 years ago

It's a competitive environment, you take every advantage you can get, because so will the other guys. A public company in case you forgot is an institution designed to create value for share holders. So the fault is not with these companies but squarely on the idiotic governments with their ridiculous tax codes. They deserve everything they get as, to a lesser extent, do the people who vote for them.

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DanBC6• 13 years ago

You assume mental illness and not alcohosm nor drug use? That's a bit of a stigmatising guess.

In the UK there is a section of the mental health act (section 136) that allows a police officer to take someone to a place of safety and hold them there for upto 72 hours. The person has to be in a public place and the pice have to think that you have a mental illness and need care.

In many places in the UK the place of safety might be the local police cells, although there are a few specially built places of safety built near the mental health hospital for easy access.

http://www.rethink.org/living-with-mental-illness/police-cou...

Other countries have similar law.

It needs to be said that peoe with a mental health problem are more likely to be the victim, rather than a perpetrator, of violence.

It is frustrating that people have jumped to the conclusion of mental illness rather than, say, drug use.

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Crito5• 13 years ago

I'm not a mental health professional by any means, but I file addiction and drug abuse under the broad umbrella of things that are in the purview of mental health professionals.

Even if you don't though, Google cannot go around throwing people into drunk tanks.

There is a lot of work in the US that needs to be done with how we handle mental health, addiction, or just plain old drug abuse. Primarily, that work needs to be done in government.

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bkmartin4• 13 years ago

Why are we pigeonholing companies into financial contributions? Money is not the only way nor is it usually the best way to actually help. It is a tool that is sometimes needed to support an actual solution, but why aren't these companies getting really creative with how they help? Why isn't Google or Microsoft or Oracle or any huge company with billions in R&D trying to figuring out more efficient civil government processes? They could have 10 different programs (not necessarily software, but maybe software) going in 10 different communities to help figure out the most efficient ways to administer services in lots of different scenarios based on that community's needs. Why not have a research program run for efficient education delivery, or helping governments design and distribute public information or, or, or... think of all the numerous ways you bitch about government and then figure out a way to do it better. One small piece at a time. And that is how these companies, big and small, can help make their communities better. They need to walk alongside. Sometimes money is the needed resource, but usually its not.

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Crito5• 13 years ago

Because I do not buy into the popular notion that techies can solve any and every problem. Google doesn't hire a bunch of political science guys or medical guys; they hire a bunch of CS, SE, CE, and mathematics guys.

Why do you think that techies are more qualified to solve problems that people who specialized in those problems are struggling with?

Remember that Google, and the tech industry in general, does not have a monopoly on smart people.

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m4x• 13 years ago

I'm not sure Google specifically needs to be doing something, but the tech community at large certainly could be. Hence the original author's question, I presume: why isn't the tech community doing something?

It seems like a reasonable question. Most tech companies are focused on products for healthy, wealthy people (wealthy enough to buy tech products, I mean. Which is far wealthier than the homeless people living on the street)

What's to stop tech companies creating systems or products that directly help people at the bottom of society? Nothing really. It's a hard problem but that's what the tech community likes to boast about solving.

I know those sorts of products aren't particularly appealing to most companies but they'd be a darn site better for society than facebook is

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imgabe2• 13 years ago

I think it's quite a stretch to lay all urban strife at the feet of tech companies. Twitter's job is to run twitter. They're not a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen or a free mental health clinic or whatever else this author thinks they should be. And if they were, they wouldn't be Twitter, and they wouldn't have the resources to do much of anything.

Why look at homeless people and say Twitter/Google/Apple etc. should fix this instead of the government should fix this or maybe I should fix this?

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k-mcgrady2• 13 years ago

> "Why look at homeless people and say Twitter/Google/Apple etc. should fix this instead of the government should fix this or maybe I should fix this?"

When you vote in government that don't support a strong social/welfare system companies and citizens have a social responsibility. I don't think Twitter should be housing the homeless but doing things like building services inside the business so employees never have to venture out hurts local businesses and the local economy. All businesses should be supporting their local communities, not just tech businesses.

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jerf• 13 years ago

"When you vote in government that don't support a strong social/welfare system companies and citizens have a social responsibility."

Isn't San Francisco pretty "socially aware" already?

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mhurron• 13 years ago

Is it really social responsibility when they say someone else should do something?

They vote in a government to do it because that would increase taxes. They wont do it themselves because that will cost them time and money. Saying Google/Twitter/Company X should doesn't cost them anything but a wave of the finger.

I'm not seeing a lot of responsibility here.

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mojowen2• 13 years ago

Well Twitter did get a large tax subsidy as a trade-off for keeping their office in downtown San Francisco. Those are tax dollars that could've added more beds to shelters or case workers to help out our troubled punching guy.

Now one could argue it's Twitter's "job" to try and extract as many tax breaks as possible and the blame really lies on the Mayor and other city officials for making that deal. Or really blame REALLY lies on voters for electing those people in the first place or not prioritizing higher taxes or higher social service funding.

But I think the point the article is making is that technology companies, like Twitter/Google et al, don't present themselves as monolithic profit machines of the same breed as Exxon Mobile. They're changing the world, right?

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aeorgnoieang3• 13 years ago

Huh? Twitter got a tax break to keep their office in downtown San Francisco. You're implying that they wouldn't have kept their office there without the tax break. Are you saying they would have moved their office somewhere else in San Francisco, but not downtown? If not, how would San Francisco have been able to tax any money from Twitter? [Presumably they're taxing something related to Twitter maintaining an office in San Francisco. If that's not the case, eh.]

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blafunke• 13 years ago

I don't think this is about, or should be about twitter/google/apple fixing social problems directly but about wondering if they're getting relatively free ride taxation wise. My sense is that they are.

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DanBC6• 13 years ago

I agree with you. Does it help if the question is reframed?

This city has some severe problems. It also has an unusual concentration of very smart people and big computing power. Why can't we work towards solving these problems using science and evidence and smart people and big computers?

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aeorgnoieang3• 13 years ago

Are you claiming that smart people aren't already working on solving these problems? Or that they're using something other than "science and evidence and smart people and big computers"?

Do you not think you might be an asshole for implying that, because these problems aren't already solved, no one is working on them? Or that anyone working on them isn't smart?

Maybe these problems are HARD! [They, in fact, are. Witness all of human history.]

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dasil003• 13 years ago

I'm all for tech companies giving back more and helping with community building, but I don't see that a bunch of tech-obsessed individuals with autistic tendencies are going to be best at solving the incredibly serious and deep-rooted social problems we face in this country.

I totally understand why tech people are a lightning rod for frustration in a place like San Francisco, but I don't see tech as the cause or the solution of these problems. That's not to absolve tech people of responsibility—I think everyone with money in this country has a responsibility—but it's just that we can't do it alone.

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bdamm• 13 years ago

The point is that technology is supposed to be helping make the world better. However it clearly does not work very well, or very fast, in the case of personal conflict. Could it? Perhaps, but let me ask a few similar questions.

How quickly did mass literacy change society for the better? How quickly did public education change society for the better? How quickly did the printing press change society for the better? How quickly did antibiotics change society for the better? I'm sure it wasn't fast enough for many who perished during the transitional points.

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theorique• 13 years ago

Connecting the dots between an act of a single mentally ill individual in San Francisco (1) and the tech businesses and workers that have moved in within the past few years, is a bit of a stretch.

No, make that an enormous stretch.

I get that it's supposed to illustrate the disparity between the nouveau riche and the people left behind. But this is something for individual families and/or the state to solve. Google, Twitter, or Oracle do best when they are left to focus on their core business. If you need them to contribute more to "society" than they already do, raise corporate taxes and pray they don't move to Austin.

----

(1) a city famous for decades for the extreme and outlandish behavior of its homeless people

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carsongross• 13 years ago

Alrighty, Tom. What, exactly, do you want the tech companies to do?

Reopen the mental institutions? Maybe under private management? California closed them when Reagan's budget slashing lined up with the counter-culture's "Who are we to judge them?" mindset.

Give this guy some money and see how it turns out?

Hire people to reason with him?

It's easy to see there's a problem. The answers to these problems are harder, and certainly less popular, than asking the tech community to "fix" them.

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DanBC6• 13 years ago

80s style insane asylums were abusive and were rightly closed.

The lack of suitable community treatment and smaller, better mental health hospitals is the problem, not the closing of horrible institutions.

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dmm• 13 years ago

What have you done in your neighborhoods that helps people like this poor man?

Fascinating attitude. I can certainly understand the desire to help the clearly insane but being subjected to random violence is absolutely unacceptable. Who would subject children to such an environment? I guess the people putting up with this are young people without families or dependants?

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brandon272• 13 years ago

People are jumping over the fact that he singled out tech companies but I think he did so because he was talking about San Francisco specifically.

While Twitter doing more in the community may not have prevented this incident from occurring, I think the overall idea is right. Corporations should give back to their communities. Corporate influence is huge, corporations are members of their communities and have the power to effect real change.

I also think it goes a long way for company culture when the company as a whole is genuinely focused on giving back. A lot of people rarely feel the joy of giving because they don't know where to start. They're intimidated. If the company you work for provides a platform for you to be able to roll up your sleeves and help people, that can be incredibly rewarding. Everyone benefits, including the company who gains credibility and good will within the community.

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gress• 13 years ago

Because instead of getting away before he was in punching range, you stood there and took a photo?

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billyjobob• 13 years ago

Have you seen the TV show 'Arrow'? They solved the problem of their inner city ghetto in quite an original way.

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philbarr• 13 years ago

Seems to me that if he had enough time to take his phone out of his pocket and take a picture so that he could blog about it he had enough time to turn around and run in the opposite direction. That's worked perfectly well for me a couple of times.

Was he waiting for someone to send him a tweet: "leg it!" ?

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memracom• 13 years ago

He did say that he was a big strong fellow and that the punch didn't bother him. What bothered him was that incidents like this are a daily occurrence in a city with the largest concentration in the world of people who want to do things differently and solve problems.

Either few people bother to read the article or he really is right that the people of HN don't really care about solving hard problems, just the easy get-rich-quick kind of problems.

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maxcan2• 13 years ago

What did xyz do to help this man?

What did he do to help himself? Unfortunately, its damn near impossible to help people who won't take the first couple steps themselves. I'm all for helping people who are taking some kind of initiative but being stymied by bureaucratic indifference, harsh economic reality, or some other circumstance. Unfortunately, it seems like most of the advocates for the poor and homeless in SF expect tech companies to fix everything by paying even higher taxes and eliminating shuttles without expecting the "victims" to take any initiative themselves.

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jmcgough• 13 years ago

Considering his strange outfit, it's entirely possible that he's mentally ill (or, alternatively, he doesn't like people taking pictures of him). The article doesn't give any real context.

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maxcan2• 13 years ago

This applies even all but the most extreme cases of the mentally ill. Outside of involuntarily confining someone and throwing away the key, if someone with limited mental illness or addiction doesn't want to get better and take the first baby steps on their own to doing so (even just stepping foot in a clinic for example) then no amount of resources will help.

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mrpoptart• 13 years ago

http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/The-crisis-of-homelessn...

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mdakin2• 13 years ago

An angry man punched him because a critical mass of humanity continues to choose dystopia over utopia.

All of the specifics and examples in that article really are just symptoms of dystopia. The phenomenon of mentally ill people running around on the streets punching people is merely just a symptom of dystopia.

If you want to blame something-- it's not tech companies, Google, Twitter, etc. It's human nature in general, and it's the dystopian beliefs and behaviors of a group of assholes+morons alive on this planet right now who collectively pull humanity towards dystopia by their actions and behaviors in the world relative to the other humans they interact with.

Humans on this planet at this moment in technology-time have all the technological know-how to create a world-wide utopia-- theoretically, it could be done in a matter of months. Unfortunately, there is a critical mass of humans who prefer to live in dystopia. And there are many in that critical mass who are willing to kill other people who disagree with them. So dystopia is what we have at this moment in time.

Free will's a bitch when there is a critical mass of dystopian assholes+morons on a planet. The behavior of that critical mass of dystopians has a sort of spooky action at a distance for the rest of humanity, even those who are not directly connected/interacting with the dystopians.

I can't wait for dystopian actions, behaviors, ideas, models, philosophies, religions, corporations, and governments to die, finally.

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eeeeaaii• 13 years ago

"Why are our cities suffering from the same problems that every other city faces?"

I don't even know what to say to this. How can the author even be asking this question?

Here's a basic outline. It feels weird typing this because it should be obvious, but here goes.

Northern California cities are cities just like any other. There are people of all income levels doing all sorts of different jobs, or not doing any jobs. There are a disproportionate number of tech workers in that region, but other than that it's pretty much the same as anywhere else. People are still people are still people. The reason a shirtless man randomly punched you is because he was crazy. The more people you have concentrated in a small area, the more likely you are to meet up with a crazy person when you're walking down the street (that's just statistics/probability). I live in NYC, a much bigger city, and I see crazy people all the time. When you see someone not wearing a shirt in public, babbling or shouting, hanging around on a street corner by themselves, etc., etc., they are most likely crazy. If you see a crazy person, stay as far away from them as possible and do not make eye contact. Definitely do not engage with them in any way (this includes taking pictures of them) because it will provoke them. Welcome to city life!

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DanBC6• 13 years ago

I'm having trouble reading this thread with its stigmatising views of "crazy people", compared to other HN threads that are supportive and urge people with me tal health problems to talk or to seek help.

Well, some of the attitudes displayed here are precisely why some people feel unable to talk about their depression or paranoia or hallucinations. Some of the attitudes here are why people do not disclose their MH problems to emoyers even though US law provides protection.

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aeorgnoieang3• 13 years ago

I think it's pretty rare for someone to have problems similar to the person you depicted and also be employed. And despite legal protections, who would want to employee or supervise someone prone to taking off their clothes, wandering the streets, and punching people? Why is it wrong for others to not want to be around such a person?

Sympathize with everyone!

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bkmartin4• 13 years ago

That's not true at all. I have a good friend who is treated for "bi-polar" (not the real term) disorder. He had an issue a couple of years ago. Granted, he didn't hurt anyone, but he wasn't stable. He got treatment and is a highly functioning member of society. He holds a full time job, has a wife and a child. Just because someone isn't completely disabled 100% of the time so that they are institutionalized or homeless (and should be institutionalized) doesn't mean they don't have real mental health issues. Its not an on or off switch. In fact, you wouldn't even know this person had an issue if you weren't told.

If you don't like sympathy, maybe you could try some empathy. I'm sure your high horse won't mind if you get down off of him for a while.

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DanBC6• 13 years ago

Do you want a list of people with severe and enduring mental illness? Let's start with John Nash because he has an easy to watch Hollywood movie about him.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Beautiful_Mind_(film)

Your ignorance of severe mental illness ("I think it's pretty rare for someone to have problems similar to the person you depicted and also be employed.") is exactly why people with severe and enduring mental illness suffer stigma. You see someone who may for all you know be experiencing their first episode of psychosis or their first episode of drug induced psychosis but you have already written them off as someone unable to function in society and unable to work.

A person who "is prone to taking their clothes off" can be an excellent employee. Emoyment makes them less likely to being prone to taking their clothes off because they have some routine and can afford the meds.

You obey the law because it's the law. In the US it's the same law that prevents you discriminating against people in wheelchairs - so you open yourself up to some really lousy publicity if you break that and make clumsy comments about it.

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southpawgirl• 13 years ago

I spent only one week in SF: I found the vibe horrendous. The existence of a caste system based on ethnicity and culture is incredibly evident just by taking a stroll in the city -- it was disturbing, and it made me feel unsafe (please note that normally I live in a rough London area, I am no shrinking violet).

I agree with the author of the post that successful entrepreneurs have a social responsibility towards the territory; otherwise they are just exacerbating the tension between 'classes'.

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mdakin2• 13 years ago

I've been by the bay for going on seven years and I'm just now starting to perceive this caste-system aspect of the place. I perceived it first as something that I call "dynastic culture," which is, I think, how it shows up on a individual basis. But when you collect together in the same place a bunch of people whose consciousnesses run "dynastic culture," you end up with a caste system emerging at the more macro scale. Anyway, I suspect I would enjoy corresponding with you. If that's mutual, my email is mpdakin at Google's service. Cheers!

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owenjones2• 13 years ago

Another "What have tech companies done for SF post" huh. I still don't understand when it became the obligation of private companies to do anything other than run their companies to the best of their abilities?

Situations such as this is why people formed a government that is able to tax corporations and people to fund homeless shelters and public housing and drug rehabilitation programs.

Clearly there is a MAJOR societal problem in most of the United States, but I don't see how people can lay it at the doorstep of Twitter.

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bkmartin4• 13 years ago

Its about being a great LOCAL corporate citizen. That is what the issue is about. There is a huge problem for lots of people in San Francisco, rent prices. People are being displaced at an alarming rate that would be much worse if it wasn't for some rent controls that were put in place. People are angry, they are being forced to uproot from a place they called home for many years. Who's taking their place? Well paid people working for the tech startups. Who do people then blame for their problems? Tech startups.

Now, the question becomes... do the tech startups get involved in the conversation and try to find ways to help the inevitable gentrification that is happening hurt those pushed out less than it otherwise would? Or do they just take the line the everyone is responsible for themselves, quit crying and get a better paying job!

There are real people being hurt by Silicon Valley, for no fault of their own. And lots of these people are very hard working people who just want to live in a nice place like everyone else. But because their 40 hour weeks only clear them a couple hundred bucks after taxes they get pushed out to some other area that is probably more crime ridden and dangerous. Other posters are correct, you get a very clear economic class system happening.

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owenjones2• 13 years ago

Well from what I know about SF rent-control-policies, (which is becoming an annoyingly large amount due to the influx of these posts) is that San Fransiscans have been historically hurt more from these policies than helped.

You raise valid problems, which I would again say are the traditional responsibilities, and the reasons why, we have a government. Corporations historically have had TERRIBLE ethical and moral compasses which is why we need things like Child Labor Laws. I completely understand why people are mad at SF tech companies, but I think the rational place to direct their anger is towards the government that is not looking out for their interests.

To think that Twitter is somehow equipped to tackle the SYSTEMIC societal issues the US face is baffling.

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freerobby• 13 years ago

After reading this article I have a pretty good hunch about why the man punched him.

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Why Did An Angry Man Punch Me?

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