NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/november-2020-voter-guide/
I’m doing something a bit different this election… I teamed up with an incredible group of techies to launch the Tech Worker Voter Guide!
We did candidate outreach and performed deep research into every ballot prop. If you live in San Francisco and work in tech, then check out https://techworkers.vote!
We are pro-tech, pro-jobs, pro-immigrant, pro-growth, and pro-progress.
If you want to build the future, then we first have to rebuild our institutions.
NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/its-time-to-legalize-building/
Marc Andreessen is right: it’s time to build. The majority of us really want to live in a society with adequate housing, incredible medical technology, beautiful high rises and clean, fast, and reliable transit systems. So why don’t we have it? It’s not as simple as just not building, it’s that our institutions don’t allow us to build.
Ezra Klein sums it up well in Why We Can’t Build:
The institutions through which Americans build have become biased against action rather than toward it. They’ve become, in political scientist…
NEW: Looking for my latest San Francisco Voting Guide by Steven Buss? Check out the Tech Worker Voter Guide, which I helped create!
NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/pissed-off-at-the-pissed-off-voter-guide/
If they are so pissed off with the state of the city, then why did they endorse nearly all of the incumbents running in the upcoming March 2020 election? I guess I’d be pissed off, too, if I kept voting for the same people misgoverning San Francisco year after year!
I’m running for the SF Democratic Party County Central Committee (DCCC) which means, among other things…
NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/march-2020-san-francisco-election-guide/
NEW: Looking for my latest San Francisco Voting Guide by Steven Buss? Check out the Tech Worker Voter Guide, which I helped create!
Here’s how I’m voting in the March, 2020 San Francisco election.
San Francisco
DCCC AD17
Vote for all:
Austin Hunter
Bivett Brackett
Kristen Asato-Webb
Mick Del Rosario
Mike Chen
Nima Rahimi
Shaun Haines
Steven Buss
Tami Bryant
Tyra Fennell
DCCC AD19
Vote for all:
Cyn Wang
Jane Natoli
Kat Anderson
Mary Jung
Mawuli Tugbenyoh
Nadia Rahman
Seeyew Mo
Prop A: Yes
Prop B: Yes
Prop C: Yes
Prop D: No
Prop E…
Tired of innumerate elected officials mismanaging the city?
Support my campaign for Democratic County Central Committee.
NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/san-francisco-supervisors-are-eating-the-golden-goose/
San Francisco just passed an increase to the fees on new office construction and it’s being sold as “$400 million for affordable housing.” In fact, of the $400 million, only $154 million is new revenue, and it’s spread out over 20 years. That works out to only $8 million per year in new revenue (or about 30 units of subsidized housing¹).
This comes at a cost of $300 million to GDP and over…
NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/november-2019-san-francisco-voting-guide/
I will use my San Francisco Voting Framework to give you recommendations for the November 2019 election. The numbers in (parenthesis) are the voting principles I’m applying to my endorsement.
If you think we need this kind of rigorous analysis in the Democratic Party, then please support me: Steven Buss for Democratic County Central Committee.
San Francisco Ballot Propositions
A: Yes — Affordable Housing Bond (10)
B: Yes — Department of Disability and Aging Services
C: No — Vapor Products (7)
D: Yes — Traffic Congestion Mitigation Tax (1, 4)
E: Yes — Affordable Housing and Educator…
NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/san-francisco-voter-framework/
I have a general voting framework for ballot props which works most of the time. I’ve developed this framework over several elections and it is now fairly stable:
- Prefer to vote for new taxes, preferably without a set-aside
- Vote for groups that don’t have a strong lobby (youth, disabled, homeless, low-income people, the environment)
- Vote for social policy change in ways that agree with my values
- Vote for things that price externalities
- Vote against things which increase needless or unhelpful bureaucracy
- Vote against things which infringe upon rights of…
NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/explaining-the-broken-housing-politics-of-san-francisco/
Have you ever wondered why old buildings look like the building on the left, but new buildings look like the one on the right?
NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/software-was-eating-the-world-now-landlords-are-eating-everything/
tl;dr: Landlords are taking $1 of every $8 in venture capital investments due to well-organized NIMBYism that has captured San Francisco housing regulations in their favor. YIMBY has moved public opinion. Tech must now get involved.
In 2011, when Marc Andreessen wrote “Software is eating the world,” the average seed round was about $500,000¹, and the median rent was about $2,600.² As of EOY 2018, seed…
NEW: I’ve moved my blog. Find this and more at https://www.sbuss.dev/post/2018-november-general-election-voting-guide/
This is my longest-ever voter guide. Not only do I justify my positions on propositions using my voting framework, I explain those choices in depth. Every ballot prop position is justified by some of my 10 voting principles, eg if you see (1, !2) that means the prop satisfies voting principle 1 and undermines principle 2. Here’s the tl;dr, scroll down for detailed explanations.
Statewide Props
YES: 1 — Authorizes bonds to fund specified housing assistance programs (1, 2)
YES: 2 — Authorizes bonds to fund existing housing program for individuals with…
