Hacker News Reader

Comment by buss | Hacker News Reader

The agglomerative effects of cities are real and extremely positive, both in terms of technological innovation and cultural progress. Cities tend towards liberalism and breed new ideas. Advocating that we collectively abandon the Bay Area and try again someplace new would result in a massive destruction of wealth and human potential.

There is no universe where bootstrapping a brand new region with world class universities and infrastructure is cheaper than just fixing a broken bureaucracy.

View on HN

I would not call SF infrastructure "world class". It is nothing compared to big cities of almost any other developed, and many still developing countries. Compared to EU and Asian biggest cities it's next to not existing.

It’s embarrassingly bad. Potholes everywhere, poor transit options, no police, no resources for homeless....I could go on.

No homes for the homeless. The city government’s budget for 2019–2020 is $12 billion, including $300 million on homelessness. A lot of that money goes toward programs to prevent people from becoming homeless, though we don’t quite know the effectiveness of it. Mayor London Breed has promised to improve accountability there.

The major problem is NIMBYism. It is extremely difficult to create new homes for homeless people. Even trying to build a new shelter, there is a lawsuit filed by nearby landlords trying to stop it.

NIMBYs also make market-rate housing expensive, and make transit difficult to expand. Thus, the pay scales that the city can afford are not high enough to fill the vacancies in SFMTA and SFPD and other agencies.

>There is no universe where bootstrapping a brand new region with world class universities and infrastructure is cheaper than just fixing a broken bureaucracy.

I think some tea got thrown in a harbour once in an argument about almost this exact point.

Heh, SF has its own little version of American Exceptionalism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com