The substation is also going to be a public park.

Herein lays (lies?) the flaw in developers to buy their way out of providing affordable housing.

It's bad enough that the 'developer fees' are so ridiculously low that few, if any, developers will ever include truely affordable units in their projects. Now we learn that developers aren't even paying the token fees unless the city conducts a costly audit to hold them accountable. Developers can convienently 'forget' to pay their fees, lamely say 'oops, we forgot' and get off paying no more than the paltry fee they should have paid in the first place.

Please tell me there's a mechanism in place to impose a fine on developers who don't pay the fees they know damn well that they're supposed to be paying?

At least interest on the money that they developer held back?

Perhaps they should pay for the audit that uncovered their theft of public funds?

This wouldn't be an issue if our faux-progressive City Council and Mayor would simply REQUIRE developers to include affordable units in their projects - PERIOD.

Your use of big words yet again bites you in the hind end, Charles. A zaibatsu by definition is family controlled with a holding company on top and a wholly owned banking subsidiary. I don't think Amazon fits any of those parameters.

But of course, your desire to sound intelligent has always Trumped any desire you might have for accuracy.

Regarding Amazon and grocers, while I'm sure you can find homeless folks who used to work inventory or be word processors, to say that automation and innovation creates homelessness is one of the most bazaar generalizations I've read this year; and I'm not sure whose free time you were referring to Charles - but if Amazon can provide a better and faster grocery shopping experience that's also cheaper, so be it.

@5:

But it does create unemployment (which, in extreme cases leads to homelessness), and a general lowering of worker earnings, since automation more acutely impacts otherwise well-paying jobs in manufacturing and other technical industries where the economic trade-offs of transitioning from human to robotic labor tends to be more cost-effective - one reason why it's unlikely you'll be served a Big Mac by a robot anytime soon, owing to the very high cost of automation on the front-end.

And another thing to consider: it's not just an all-or-nothing proposition, as there are at least some aspects of almost any job that can be automated to some extent; perhaps, not 100%, but maybe 20%.of a job, which in turn would either mean less work for the human, or consolidation of tasks previously relegated to several humans, down to maybe one or two, but which, in the end would still result in a net loss of employee hours.

NPR's "Marketplace" has been airing an ongoing series directly related to this issue; you can listen to a podcast of some of the previous installments on their web site.

Wow, i knew that conservatives like @2 would show up and say that taxes are evil and should therefore not be collected when i read the times story. next step is a conservative mayoral calling for a building moratorium.

@4, the irony is a pedantic reading of a Wikipedia article is still superior than anything CM writes. The whole point is that he fails to rise above even the low bar of the Wikipedia test.

4
You always seem crabby.
Have you tried caster oil?

@7 - Thx - as long as we say don't say that automation/innovation should be constrained to prevent homelessness, especially when these technologies alleviate global warming because of efficient energy use and fewer automobile trips to the grocery store.

@10: castor oil. casters are swiveling wheels on the bottom of furniture, typically chairs.

@9: if you don't like CM, there's a simple solution: stop reading him. personally, I enjoyed the comment on the Griffey sculpture.

@6 I read that yesterday, it was a good piece. Too bad no one local is covering the story.

@12, Slog readers deserve to know how sophomoric CM's writing is and deserve better than what he spews out on a semiregular basis. Even a quick scan reveals internal inconsistencies and absurd notions.

@14, funny, but lacking in substance. The latter is a hallmark of CM's work.

@16, still lacking in substance. Charles' detractors outnumber his proponents. You know full well the troll here is who you see every day in the mirror.

@17,

In the absence of fnarf, blip is one of the (and more likely THE) most astute and knowledgeable commenters on the slog. Disagree with him as you like, but to call him a troll only undermines whatever credibility you may have brought to the table to begin. You may want to stop digging.

@18, I find numerous people more knowledgeable than either one, and I used to spar with fnarf back before they were a slog poster, back when the P-I had a non-Facebook comments section and a print release. Heck, COMTE, who has said some downright ridiculous things in the past, is smarter than either one. Bailo was smarter than fnarf.

B-b-bbut we've always been at war with West Asia...
--
@3 - Well if yer gonna get all techy-nickal about it, zaibatsu's are specifically Japanese too. An important point that you missed mentioning. But really, if you've read any cyberpunk novels you might understand that the term has been generalized --especially in the English usage-- to mean "ginormous, unassailable corporate behemoth", which definitely applies to Amazon. :>P
--
@11 - Since corporations assume zero responsibility for citizens, and will fire them merely to save the corpo's bottom line, an automation-contracted labor market will result in poverty and homelessness. What would solve the issue? --since corporations regularly shed workers whenever it suits them-- is for the government (which is allegedly how citizens collectively provide for their common needs) to provide extensive & freely available worker retraining, AND/OR a basic minimum income so that when people lose their jobs, as many inevitably will, they are not thrown upon the spikes and swords of the "free"-market all by themselves and treated like a corporate cat toy.

But the government, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Plutocrats Inc. (LLC), doesn't want to help citizens stay afloat, get retrained, have enough, provide for their family; and would rather have the citizenry --desperate to avoid the growing underclass of unemployed-- begging for any shit-wage they can get. Or on heroin. Or in jail, where they will work for pennies and hour.
That is completely within Amazon's interests.
--
@17 - " Charles' detractors outnumber his proponents"
[citation needed]

@19
Barf.

@20: Re-read what you wrote and then ask yourself would you want to be the business owner and expect to stay in business? Then please do shed bitter tears for displaced clerks the next time you use the self-service checkout.

Hey, speaking of Amazon, here's a relevant research project for a newsie:

Does Amazon use prison labor for anything?

Microsoft has, for shrinkwrapping software boxes, even airlines use prisoners as on-the-phone ticket/travel assistants. What does Amazon use prisoners for?

@22 - I know exactly what I wrote, and I said nothing about the morality or financial acumen of a business owner's decision, in a hostile marketplace, to shed workers and automize in an attempt to escape being bulldozed by the Amazaibatsu.

Are you suggesting that corporations should be allowed to run roughshod over their workers, or potential workers? Do we, as a society, find it in our mutual benefit to prevent avoidable homelessness? Will America EVER Be Great Again if we have a permanent underclass? Or are we still trying to escape the 18th Century?

@25, ah yes, the old "It was just a joke." line. Ever the last resort of a backpedaling troll.

#4
I'm coming into this late with you, Libertine...why ARE you on a cybervendetta against Charles? What, in short, did he do to you?

@27, there are a few things.

One, his writing style is sophomoric at best, reminiscent of someone trying to use big words to impress teachers and/or inflate column inches.

Two, he claims to be a Marxist while spouting non-Marxist ideals and chiding socialist candidates, stating that their ideals are too out of touch with the political norm for them to be electable. As someone who is very familiar with local and national Marxist coalitions, Charles is conspicuously absent and his ideas unsupported.

Third, Charles is internally inconsistent, and contradicts himself. Recently, he was caught opposing his own position from roughly one year ago.

In short, Charles is a horrible writer, a hypocrite, and a liar. Seattle, or any town in the US for that matter, deserves higher quality writing than he is capable of. In fact, while I did not coin the phrase and find it demonstrably false, Charles is known as The Stranger's affirmative action hire.

There are only two members of The Stranger staff I take issue with. The other is Dan Savage for his every 3 years or so transphobic comments.

Is that clear enough?