"The Similarities in the Language Used When Referring to the Homeless and How Trump Refers to Immigrants"

"Dunsky has witnessed Venice's transformation from a battleground for gangs to one that boasts several Michelin-starred restaurants. A self-proclaimed progressive, Dunsky says he fears that recent gentrification has altered people's sympathies. 'There is a fever of money in Venice that has nothing to do with its past. Whatever progressive elements were historically here have dwindled, and they're being replaced by tech money.'"

Scott Johnson and Peter Kiefer at The Hollywood Reporter describe, in regards to homelessness in Venice, "residents who complain about the problem and then go on to criticize every proposed remedy."

"A Big Middle Finger to the Local Community"

"He didn't realize it at the time but the community was also undergoing drastic changes as tech companies moved in on the boardwalk, inciting protests against rent increases, gentrification, and displacement. Snapchat had started operating out of a bungalow on Ocean Front Walk two years earlier, and by the summer of 2015, the company had acquired tens of thousands of feet of additional office space nearby, including a $25,000-a-month penthouse apartment overlooking the street vendors and homeless encampments.
"The multi-billion-dollar tech company began the process of relocating from Venice to Santa Monica earlier this year, but to Saguy, who is himself a tech entrepreneur and the founder of a mobile app publishing company, the damage had already been done."

Jennifer Swann at Los Angeles talks with photographer Dotan Saguy about his exhibit Venice Beach, Last Days of a Bohemian Paradise.

"The Slow-Motion Exodus Seems Set to Continue"

"Oakwood's transformation unfolds largely unseen by the 150,000 tourists who throng the carnivalesque boardwalk of buskers, drum circles, painters, bodybuilders and exhibitionists every weekend.
"Guests at the Airbnb properties which now sprinkle Oakwood can see the building blitz but the glass and steel stucco boxes are indistinguishable from the others popping up across Venice."

Rory Carroll in The Guardian discusses demographic change in Los Angeles.

"America’s Serrata"

"The impulse of the powerful to make themselves even more so should come as no surprise. Competition and a level playing field are good for us collectively, but they are a hardship for individual businesses. Warren E. Buffett knows this. 'A truly great business must have an enduring "moat" that protects excellent returns on invested capital,' he explained in his 2007 annual letter to investors. 'Though capitalism’s "creative destruction" is highly beneficial for society, it precludes investment certainty.' Microsoft attempted to dig its own moat by simply shutting out its competitors, until it was stopped by the courts. Even Apple, a huge beneficiary of the open-platform economy, couldn’t resist trying to impose its own inferior map app on buyers of the iPhone 5.

"Businessmen like to style themselves as the defenders of the free market economy, but as Luigi Zingales, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, argued, 'Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition.'"

Chrystia Freeland in The New York Times compares the present-day United States to fourteenth-century Venice.