It's funny because it's exhausting. The "transplant" debate — the endless, circular argument about who belongs in San Francisco and who's ruining it — has become so pervasive that we've apparently started projecting it onto inanimate objects.

But underneath the joke is a real and deeply unserious conversation that the city keeps having instead of addressing actual problems. Blaming newcomers for displacement is the political equivalent of yelling at clouds. People move to cities. That's what cities are for. The question isn't whether new people are showing up — it's whether the city is building enough housing to absorb demand without pricing out the people already here.

Spoiler: it's not.

San Francisco approved fewer housing units per capita than nearly any comparable city over the last decade, while simultaneously watching rents climb to levels that would make a Manhattan landlord blush. The culprit isn't some 26-year-old software engineer from Ohio. It's a bureaucratic approval process that treats every new apartment building like a constitutional crisis, a permitting timeline that stretches longer than most tech company lifespans, and a political establishment that would rather perform outrage than reform zoning.

As one local put it, "Even the traffic cones are transplants" — and honestly, at this rate, the cones might get permanent residency before a new fourplex gets approved in the Sunset.

If San Francisco actually cared about displacement, it would make it easier and cheaper to build housing at every price point. Instead, we get vibes-based blame games and a regulatory environment that practically guarantees scarcity.

Stop blaming people for wanting to live here. Start blaming the system that makes living here impossible for everyone who isn't already a millionaire. The cones didn't cause this. Neither did the transplants.