Hacker News Reader

Comment by mbrameld | Hacker News Reader

How should they have handled it? Called the police? What if it had been the Dropbox folks playing pickup and a family had rented the field for a birthday party and the Dropbox folks refused to leave? My guess is you wouldn't be criticising the family even though the only difference is the identity of the players. That speaks loudly to your biases.

View on HN

I think they should have played a pickup game with the kids. They could have had some glorious "team-building" experience and built up the community at the same time. Like, get to know the neighbors before they are displaced because rents are going up.

And it's funny, I really was waiting for the cops to show up because one of the Dropboxers had called them. Their desire to avoid having any real interaction with these kids is so painfully obvious that it makes me embarrassed for them.

As far as your hypothetical, it's just that: hypothetical, as is your perception of my hypothetical biases. It's actually hilarious, because in the hypothetical my mind conjures up, I'm sure if we met in some real-life context you would end up calling me a nazi.

FWIW, when I was younger, I knew and hung around with people who are just like the Dropboxers, and was probably like them in many ways. I've gotten to know and work with a lot of different kinds of people since then, so now I would intuitively know a better way to handle this situation than these guys did. Step 1 is to recognize that they are valuable human beings and neighbors. That's where this exchange broke down, so no need to go on to subsequent steps till we get that part right.

These people reserved a field using correct, official channels. Why should they have to change their plans because some other people squatted on the field? Why should the Dropbox people have any moral obligation whatsoever to play a game with people they didn't choose?

Because they are nice people who are willing to make concessions to accommodate others, finding a compromise that doesn't particularly upset anyone, even when they have the right not to do that? Ok, that's not what happened in this case, but I'm sure they are still nice people who just had a bad day.

If I come back from vacation and find that a squatter has broken into my home, should I find an accommodation with him? Compromise on living arrangements? There is no moral obligation to compromise in the case where one party is flagrantly violating the social contract.

And if the squatter had reserved your home to which you'd asserted rights through an informal but generations-long local accepted social arrangement, via some new app you don't have, and a distant home and residence government agency?

Why would you make concessions to a society that didn't make concessions to nerds? Arguably the tax money paid by those workers did more to pay for that field than the tax money from the kids, but even setting that aside, I am tired of being told constantly to play well with others, when they don't play well with us.

mmm.. well..., this happens everywhere outside sillicon valley and it is normally handled playing together. King of the field.

Sometimes bias is justified. These people lived there their whole lives.

They grew there, we flew there.

Localism isn't good either, but a bit of respect and give and take for people who, let's face it, will soon be pushed out of their neibourhoods to make way for tech workers, would be nice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com