Sure, the criminalization of straws has drawn all the attention, because once straws are outlawed, only outlaws will have straws. But like the transgender bathroom bills that weren’t just about bathrooms, the straw ban isn’t just about straws.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has voted unanimously to ban single-use plastic straws, making it the second major American city to do so.
The ordinance outlaws not just plastic straws, but also plastic splash sticks, toothpicks, and cocktail sticks, which would have to include those little swords and umbrellas. Other straw bans typically target food service businesses, but this one will prohibit anyone, including grocery stores and other retailers, from selling plastic straws.
What do they have against those cute little plastic swords to hold your martini olives?
“The negative environmental impacts of single-use plastics are astronomical,” bill sponsor Katy Tang said in a statement. “San Francisco has been a pioneer of environmental change, and it’s time for us to find alternatives to the plastic that is choking our marine ecosystems and littering our streets.”
And like all critical social engineering in the name of environmental protection at the end of a gun, it’s grounded in empiricism.
Like all good straw bans, the text of Tang’s bill mentions the questionable statistic that Americans use 500 million straws a day. This statistic comes from an unconfirmed 2011 phone survey of straw manufacturers conducted by a 9-year-old. Market analysts think the actual number is far lower.
Ridiculous? Outrageous? Do you want to be the person on the Group W bench saying you got busted for criminal possession of a straw, only to have everyone move away from you? Or is this mere misdirection, so while you’re ridiculing the straw ban, you won’t notice their other bit of social engineering, an homage to Heinlein.
New city tech workers dreaming of dining in workplace cafeterias may soon face a harsh reality — going outside.
Two city legislators on Tuesday are expected to announce legislation banning on-site workplace cafeterias in an effort to promote and support local restaurants.
The measure, proposed by Supervisor Ahsha Safai and co-sponsored by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, would adjust zoning laws to ban workplace cafeterias moving forward, but would not be retroactive.
Among the many benefits offered by big tech in Silicon Valley and environs, alongside the orgasmitron, is a free lunch. No, it’s not exactly free, because you have to get a job at Google before you get to enjoy it’s largess, but once you do, there is tofu for the taking.
One might suspect that employee benefits are the sort of things San Francisco supervisors would support, along with union agency fees. But rational consistency is the hobgoblin of the unwoke.
Peskin said the measure, was inspired by tech companies like Twitter and Airbnb, which are widely known to have access to dining in their own buildings, depriving nearby restaurants of the dollars usually spent by nearby workers. The measure has the support of Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association and other local merchants.
If you’re eating a free lunch, what you’re not doing is paying someone else for lunch. Like a member of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association. And they, too, need some love given that Frisco has micromanaged their business to assure that restaurant employees are paid a good wage without regard to its sustainability. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of eating in a restaurant anywhere near Coit Tower, there are charges on the bill that reflect nothing you ordered. It’s your contribution to your waiter’s iPhone fund.
But, Peskin said, it’s a hope to mitigate the “app culture” of workers who are whisked away in private commuter shuttles to work, who dine in their places of employment, and see all their goods delivered to them by apps — depriving them the pleasure of mingling with the rest of The City.
“People will have to go out and eat lunch with the rest of us,” he said.
It’s not that apps that “deprive them the pleasure of mingling with the rest of The City.” They’re just not that into you. And forcing them to go out and mingle by denying them a benefit of their employment and forcing them to pay for the welfare state of restaurateurs is unlikely to create strong and lasting relationships.
And, if we’re being totally honest, nerds love those little cocktail swords.
Should there be such a thing as a free lunch? Not if you own a restaurant with food to sell. Not if your restaurant is compelled to pay staff a minimum wage only by passing it through to customers, making the cost of eating your fish tacos slightly higher than a New York strip steak. Not if you won’t even give the compelled diner a straw in his coca cola.
But just one more tweak and the Frisco board will achieve Utopia. If only those damn techies stop using their apps. You know, the ones they create so they get paid so they can go out to eat at restaurants and make the extra line for employee’s wages. Maybe the real reason they banned cocktail swords is so they won’t stick them in their eye when they see the check.
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