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Comment by mathattack | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of subtext behind zoning in Palo Alto, some of it between people who still want to live in the 1970s version of the city.

In this case, the issue is what happens to non-tech businesses in downtown. When there are a large supply of small and medium professional services business, the bars, restaurants, barbers and small shops do well. The Palantir employees tend to eat in their own cafeteria, and are perceived to purchase less from the local businesses. This is why there's an element of the population that prefers smaller businesses whose employees go downtown during the lunch hour.

The city does have space though, they just choose not to build on it. Another research park could be built and zoned for. (As could more housing)

The article also doesn't quote the many Palo Alto residents who like being a short commute to work, rather than taking Caltrain to SF for tech jobs.

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> The Palantir employees tend to eat in their own cafeteria

If that is a problem, then the zoning laws should restrict cafeterias, not job functions. The more specific and direct that regulations get, the better things tend to be.

I go the other way. I don't want to restrict too much land usage. Just open more commercial space.

Except that's a very transparent solution to a problem which doesn't belong to Palantir or their employees, aka the food being served down town either isn't good enough or isn't served fast enough for Palantir employees to voluntarily choose it.

Everyone except the businesses would justifiably riot.

There's also an issue of tax distortion. In the tax code as written, it's a deductible expense to provide an onsite cafeteria, and employees don't have to count it as income.

But if an employee goes offsite to get lunch, they have to buy it with after-tax money.

So when the business buys them food, it's effectively at a 1/3 discount to what they'd have to pay after-tax out-of-pocket -- more when you consider sales taxes and bulk discounts!

So it's not exactly a level playing field there either.

The employer also generally gets more time from the employees. (Saving $5 on lunch isn't nearly as valuable as saving an engineer 15 minutes of time)

I think this is largely about Palantir, there's been a lot of backlash as they've been slowly taking over the city. Their presence is at least an order of magnitude bigger than any other company downtown.

> The city does have space though, they just choose not to build on it.

Oh, where? I don't drive around much down there but I haven't seen empty lots just lying around like I have in e.g. Sunnyvale (the corn palace plot).

Look up.

Also, like any city in the US, there is a ton of land dedicated to the storage of automobiles that is unused a great deal of the time.

Ah...memories. I lived down the street from there for a few years, 20 years ago. We would take a walk in the evening around the neighborhood, always wondering if we'd see excavators moving into the corn field.

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