Santana Row the Future of Silicon valley?

If you haven't been there, you might like it more than you thought.

Santana Row is a collection of shops and apartments, as high as seven stories. In a word, "upscale". Brooks Brothers, for example. I went a long time without setting foot on the place. Kind of missed the old Chinese buffet they tore down.

But lately, two recommendations.

1. Maggiano's is a winner. Excellent food, excellent bread, excellent dessert, all you can eat (but not literally a buffet).
2. Pizza Antica. Really good thin crust pizza, meaning you might be able to eat a medium all by yourself, but it's good stuff.

Both have excellent service. You pay more, but you come away believing that the price/performance ratio was pretty good.

Rosie McCanns Irish Pub and Restaurant offered some of the worst service I've ever encountered while paying $5/beer, but it saved us money. A lot of money. We went home.

But restaurant reviews aren't the topic here. Do we expect more Santana Rows? Would you like to live in Santana Row? Would it be like living in San Francisco or Manhattan?

First off, what it's not: well connected to trains/BART/etc. What it does have is ample free parking. You're expected to arrive by automobile.

Some point out that it's a phoney city. Fully agreed, it's phoney. But it's not that different than some parts of San Francisco, parts with no low rent buildings within a block. So if your followup to "so what" is "I miss the economic diversity", or "I like to have people of all kinds around", then observe that real cities have places you'll find that, and places you won't much find that.

Prices are much like SF prices. For $1M you get a nice pad. Couple of bedrooms, couple of baths.

But the real question here is "are we seeing a vision of the future". I think we are. I think we will see more Santana Rows. Not all the same, some a bit more down to earth, but all stretching 60-70 feet into the air. Making intense use of real estate. Ground floors retail, everything above that residential.

But not so fast. In an era of automobiles and Walmart, who needs all that retail? Sure, an area the size of Santana Row can support 25 odd restaurants and bars (if you can call them bars). But one wonders: is Brooks Bros. really making it? What about those other boutiquey things? You can bet that even if they weren't making it, FRT (the REIT which owns Santana Row) would be slow to show them the door and try to fill the store with, um, what?

Lots of local retail is based on one thing alone: local convenience. Local convenience is maximized when people can live their lives without an automobile, and spend the money they would otherwise spend on an automobile on local convenience.

So I predict that the isolated, eventually connecting islands of 70 foot development will represent the future of Silicon Valley, the transition will be slow, and may well be still in its infancy twenty years from now.

Evolution in Action

Surely anyone dumb enough to voluntarily enter an area saturated with uncontained gasoline is volunteering to not reproduce?

Iraq: the basic equation

The basic Iraqi equation is pretty simple.

There is a minority of Sunni who have oppressed the majority Shia for a few decades now. They enforced this oppression by killing any Shiite who opposed them.
The Sunni are out of power.
The Americans are in power, but as soon as they leave, the Shia will be in power.
The Shia fully intend to rid Iraq of Sunnis, by starting to kill them while allowing most to move to Syria. That this intent would be realized seems the most likely of several possible outcomes of the US ceding power in Iraq.

It's not clear that this is a good thing, a bad thing, nor a goal worthy of a war.

It does seem clear that both the Sunni and the Shia understand what it takes to end the violence, while the US continues to refuse to accept reality. One or the other side must be in control, this sharing stuff is fiction, and both of them know it.

Steele's insight

Dr. Helen reviews White Guilt, here.

Here's the quote which caught my eye:

Oppression, says Steele, does not push people to rage or revolution. "Anger is acted out by the oppressed only when real weakness is perceived in the oppressor. Anger in the oppressed is a response to perceived opportunity, not to injustice." This makes sense: people who act out angrily usually do so when there is no threat of being punished and every indication that their anger will get them what they want. This is not always such a bad thing, of course, but black anger and the responding white guilt is not the psychological dynamic of freedom. It is a deal between the power hungry left and black leaders who care more about being thrown a bone and offering fake opportunity to their followers than they care about freedom, autonomy and excellence.

This is truly insightful, independent of the rest of Steele's thesis.

Start with the basic principle underlying Steele's point, which is not dependent on any distinction between "civilization" and "oppression". Or "good parenting", for that matter.

Both civilization and oppression constrain behavior. People don't like constraints on their behavior (they like constraints on everyone else's behavior). If and when the authority behind such constraints is perceived as weak, violence occurs. Violence against oppression, or violence against civilization, all the same.

Bush left of center, losing support

GW Bush has positioned himself left of center, causing a massive loss of support.

On issue after issue after issue:

1. immigration
2. deficit spending
3. budget control
4. the drug war

GW Bush has adopted the leftist/anti-libertarian position.

The country simply isn't with him any longer.

Just what is the ideal marginal tax rate?

In this column, Charles Whelan takes on the notion that decreasing tax rates can result in more revenue for the government.

His argument goes like this: if taxes were 99%, or even 70%, or maybe even 50%, the theory would be good, but since the marginal tax rate is 36%, that's already low enough that lowering it any lower does not much expand the tax base.

Whelan offers no analysis whatsoever that 36% is low enough, rather he appeals to the fact that it's not 99%, or as high as other places, as being proof that 36% is plenty low. Bogus logic.

Well Mr. Whelan, I'd like to suggest that the ideal marginal income tax rate, the rate which will maximize government income, is around 25%. Somewhere short of 30%. That's the rate at which industrious people will attempt to maximize their income regardless of taxes. Do I have proof? Not. But as a taxpayer, this is how I feel, and I'm generalizing my feelings to other productive people.

That's more proof than Mr. Whelan offered.

$5 Gasoline vs the Riff Raff

Given a choice of $5 gasoline and a 25% reduction in traffic, as compared to $2 gasoline and a slighe increase in traffic, my natural thought is to take the convenience. After all, the increase in gasoline price doesn't really affect me. It would at $10 I suppose, but pretty much anything short of $5 or $6 won't make much difference either in how much I drive, or my standard of living.

Given the wailing I read, I suspect that there are people who would drive less given $5 gasoline. With them gone, more space on the highway for those of us remaining. Good.

But back to the core of economics. Prosperity, ultimately the prosperity of all of us, is derived from ongoing transactions. Traffic is, to a huge extent, people travelling to those transactions. Fewer transactions, less prosperity.

$5 gasoline AND a loss of prosperity, that's not what we need.