[ExI] imaginable wealth

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] imaginable wealth

>...The last time I was in East Palo Alto was in the 80s. It was a frightening place at the time. On July 4, there were definitely more people shooting guns into the air than fireworks. Of course, I still went there defended by youthful indestructibility combined with the insane idea that God wouldn't let anything bad happen to us there because we had white shirts and name tags. Ah the delusions of youth and religion combine to some stupid assumptions. So I'm actually pretty happy to hear it is crawling out of that bleak past. Makes sense since everything around it is bathed in abundance. First time I felt this good about Ikea, I have to admit.

-Kelly

On Sat, Mar 7, 2026 at 9:27 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Those who owned homes in East Palo Alto were not driven out by property taxes.  Many were bribed out by the stunning increase in value of their own homes when Ikea came in... spike

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Something occurred to me after I posted regarding Keith's comment about people driven out by property taxes.  I can make that notion work in a sense, for it is like this everywhere surrounding the SF Bay: it isn't so much that people are driven out by property taxes but that their children cannot afford to buy homes in the neighborhoods where they grew up.  Not even close.  East Palo Alto is a fine example of that phenomenon, but also over here on the east side of the valley where I live.  Only the elite among the next generation have a fair shot at living anywhere near home.  In that sense, it wasn't so much people were driven out, but "a people" or an ethnic group were driven out, in a sense.

Where I live was at one time majority Latino.  When I became involved in the school system, they came up with a perfectly reasonable idea: teach the students English in a bilingual setting: the teachers would speak Spanish while teaching English.  Since we had locals who spoke little or no English (and still do (but their other language is specifically not Spanish)) the program made sense.  The community cheered.  It took us fiiiive yeeeears to get everything together we needed: qualified teachers, funding etc.  But there was a transition happening as a result of the Tesla factory.  At the end of the five years, we looked around and our customer base was gone.  The Latino (never call them LatinX (that really annoys Latinos)) community had fled.  Gone.  Sold out, left town rich.  We were nowhere near critical mass for even one elementary school, whereas six elementaries qualified when we started.  So... it never happened.  The others come in, their children learn English quickly, the parents learn it eventually.  The Indians come already fluent.

Now one can go into East Palo Alto and seldom get killed, or even suffer a non-fatally gunshot wound.  Astonishing transformation!  I can imagine the LDS boys face the usual challenges, where the local amateur harlots make bets to see who can seduce them.  Kelly do feel free to comment or to not.

That phenomenon of the next generation being unable to afford to stay near home is very real.  My logic causes me to extrapolate that everywhere.  With AI taking over plenty of low-end jobs and corporate investors buying up local homes to use them as office space, it isn't clear where that leads.

spike