(I&#x27;m not the author of that article, just a friend of mine)<p>I expect that if the tech companies were deeply involved in encouraging development and mass transit, then a sizeable percentage of people in SF and elsewhere would decide that this is bad. Most of the press would focus on individual personalities with bad optics and on sub-issues that involve sacred victims, since those are the kinds of things that the readers want to hear about, and &quot;tech companies are villains who do bad things&quot; is an established narrative that it&#x27;s easy to understand new events by; public opinion follows naturally.<p>And if that&#x27;s not the case, one of my takeaways is that there would be <i>something else</i> that people decide is intolerable about the tech companies. The issue is not the issues; the issue is the narrative, into which a limitless number of stories can fit.