It is a different kind of town
A tech Capital
bill gates and Jeff Bezos founded two different transformational technology companies in Seattle Washington. Amazon and Microsoft are two companies deeply rooted in the American lifestyle.
everybody purchases something from amazon and everybody has used excel or learned to type on a windows based computer in school. now with artificial intelligence its easy to see how that technology will be implemented into these two companies in ways most Americans are not even aware of.
but Microsoft and amazon are hardly the only major companies in the Seattle area that have become interwoven into the fabric of everyday lives of Americans.
Starbucks began in Seattle, Costco is headquartered in the Seattle area, Boeing is just up lake Washington, and Nordstroms.
how many people everyday get on a plane built by Boeing with something from either Nordstroms, Costco or both, with a Starbucks in their hand while checking their email in outlook and latest prime order from amazon?
something like that is an everyday normal experience for millions of Americans. all of which get their corporate roots traced back to Seattle Washington.
Seattle is a town that has always been a town built by the "sons of profit"
A Wild Beginning
when I got back from visiting Seattle for the first time I came across an old book called "sons of profit" which is a fun history book about Seattle Washington. based on my memory of reading that book here is how the story of Seattle began.
pioneers along the Oregon trail came across a fur trader along the Idaho/Oregon border who told them about a bay to the north along the coast. When these pioneers arrived in Portland they saw there was a bunch of competition for business because there was about 15,000 people in Portland in the 1840's. so they convinced a sailor who was going to Alaska to take them north in search of this bay.
after surviving a storm and almost sinking they miraculously arrived in the Puget sound which at the time was a forest. two pioneer families built a log cabin, avoided getting killed by rival native Americans, and actually became friends with a local chief named Seattle.
one day a boat saw a fire along the shore at night and decided to lay anchor off their cabin. the captain of the boat hauled lumbar from Alaska to rebuild San Francisco because during the gold rush days it was in need of wood and massive amounts of it. the boat captain was getting lumbar from Alaska but had a proposition for these people who were living in a cabin.
He would give them a cut of his share of the sale of the lumbar in sf if they could get x amount of trees cut down in a two months. these people had zero logging experience except how to build a log cabin, they didn't know how they were going to transport the logs onto the boat without equipment, basically they didn't know what they were doing but took the order anyway and somehow got the order filled. And then that ship captain told his friend, then they placed an order, and before anyone knew it Seattle became a logging town and other people began getting word of the town and showing up with their skills.
the book sons of profits is fascinating here are some other random things I remember from reading that book.
- Jack London's Mom was a psychic gypsy lady from Ohio who stayed in the home of one of Seattle's founders who was from the same Ohio town she was from. apparently she met some guy in Seattle while staying in his living room, and this unknown guy is jack London's dad because she left for San Francisco and then married MR. London.
- the brothel and saloon industry in Seattle were mostly made up of men and women who came to Seattle because the competition in California was too much.
- The glue fire that burned over have their city occurred soon after their fire chief left on a boat to go to a wedding in San Francisco.
- when the railroad decided to go to tacoma instead of Seattle there became a bitter rivalry between the bars and brothels and the railroad. The Seattle based business owners wouldn't allow railroad employees as customers or allow their employees to work in tacoma. and when a rival business tried to open in tacoma they were faced with an unofficial liquor embargo by the Seattle based saloons. eventually this lead to problems for the out of town railroad company because the guys building the lines would often times quit.
- When the railroad laid out the city plan for tacoma it was designed by a fancy NYC based person. it had roundabouts, nice new parks, basically like a modern day suburb. but the townsfolk ripped up the map and drew a grid and built the town like every other railroad town anyway. it was what they were used to.
- The business owners of Seattle wanted the railroad to come to Seattle, but they they didn't want Seattle to be the state capital of Washington. the railroad wanted to petition the state legislature to make Seattle the capital, their thought was that if they were going to be based in one city near Seattle it was easier to control the state legislature. this was not okay with the business owners who were running profitable businesses in Seattle. So they hatched a plan to get the entire state legislature drunk on oysters from Olympia and imported a bunch of booze and women. the weekend before the vote in Olympia the legislature was thrown a gigantic party, a taste of Seattle. believing that Olympia was awesome and like that everyday they voted to keep the capital in Olympia even after taking the bribes from the railroad companies.
Seattle Politics
This video is not Seattle specific, but I posted it here because it touches on liberal problems. Seattle has a problem with homelessness just like San Francisco or Los Angeles. Seattle is also home to some extremely wealthy people who often times don't live in Seattle but kind of do. Kirkland has less homeless than Seattle proper.
This video is an attempt to highlight a political problem, it can be easy to simply categorize people as a "good person" because they volunteer or work to help the homeless. and it could be easy to categorize someone as a greedy capitalist if they don't channel their inner mother teresa and don't go help homeless people out in the streets.
It can also be easy to categorize someone as a good person because they have a college degree or an advanced degree. without really examining if those degrees which produce certain policies are actually helping people or hurting people. If there is a repetitive pattern of policies being implemented that keep making a place worse, then logically someone should come up with the plan of reversing course and doing the opposite to fix said problem. continuing to do the same thing that is not working is kind of also not being a good American.
Somewhere in middle is what I call Sanity.