188. Meritocracy & housing

Problems with meritocracy

Besides the obvious problems (people who don't excel, for instance), another flaw of meritocracy is that, for the big winners, it doesn't stay a meritocracy. Once you're filthy rich it doesn't require that much merit to stay wealthy and to even build on that wealth. Which is not to say that everyone can manage this.

The descendants of the really rich simply become a new class of privilege you are born into -- in the same way that noble families in Europe started out as a kind of meritocracy in a much earlier era. Back when the Roman era was transitioning into the Middle Ages, positions of merit became inherited and a class system came into being. Now it's a system based on wealth (not just land) whereas then it was primarily a land based system. But this could change again.

The never-ending saga

Replacing our bad sump pump should happen next week, on their third visit. Given the difficulty of their getting a truck in here, I would have brought along a replacement pump "just in case." But I don't run the world.

In the end of our alley, there are two gates. One was replaced last year and now the other gate has been patched and repainted. It looks pretty good to me,

On the right.

This is the color of their other fences, so I guess they had some extra paint on hand. I would have painted it to match the rest of this fence, myself.

Profiles in crazy

Earlier today I was sharing a large table at Starbucks. The person on the end to my right was a somewhat disheveled looking older woman (at least as old as me) who sounded normal enough at first, but after an hour or so I became aware that she was probably crazy in a very similar way to someone in my building who imagines herself to be the subject of a huge conspiracy. 

This woman caught my ear as she kept trying to make an appointment for an ophthalmologist. In fact, from what I could hear -- casually eavesdropping while also working on something else -- she may have made several "emergency" appointments for her acute cornea problem. Between making these appointments she was calling regulatory or industry associations to complain about some doctor who had, to simplify, done her wrong. As I said, she sounded perfectly normal most of the time, but got quite emotional while trashing this doctor. 

I really wanted to look to see if she showed any sign of this emergency problem she complained of, but my angle was bad and it would have been too obvious. Insects, and even prey animals, have such an advantage when it comes to nonchalantly eyeing neighbors. No wonder horses don't miss a thing.

The Van Ness corridor

Had a number of things to do along Van Ness today so I got to review the latest crop of new development along Franklin/Van Ness/Polk. There's not one of them that turned out well. The hospital isn't finished on the outside -- and I still have some hope for it -- and there's a smaller building at Clay and Larkin that isn't bad, but the others are so bland that they look like boring commercial buildings even though I'm pretty sure they are all residential. I think they were planned at a time when the need for housing was so intense that the developers thought they would just be wasting money making them look interesting.

In fact, so much new housing has hit the market, or is about to hit the market, that rental rates and condo values are starting to moderate just a bit. Though, to be fair to the developers, this could mean that they are in a better position to drop prices since they haven't invested in features that would appeal to the high end.

Given the fairly desperate housing situation in SF, it's amazing to me how many units are sitting empty. At least one, and possible two of the small buildings on my alley are vacant. Virtually all of the subsidized housing in Chinatown -- and there's a lot -- is being renovated and has been vacant for a year or more. Who thought it was a great idea to do all those projects at the same time? It makes no sense from any perspective except that of the contractors who I imagine are getting a premium for their work.

I'm not saying that there will be a glut of housing on the market in 2018, but I don't see how all this new and renovated housing could fail to alter the market.