SF's government is uniquely broken | Hacker News Reader

SF's government is uniquely broken

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28 pointsmemish48 comments

He complains that this doesn't happen in europe. What could be different about european cities... If SF were in a european country, the national welfare system would be far better and taxes would be far higher and guns would be strictly regulated.

Blaming SF for national issues is cool though or whatever local one is in.Everyone from all walks of life like to point at what they know, the current president or their town and blame them because it's easy and visible while ignoring the larger picture of the nation or world.

Doesn't SF tick all these boxes? Also the attitude towards taxes, guns and welfare are side to side all over Europe.

Other US cities don’t have this problem. Other Bay Area cities don’t have this problem! SF doesn’t have a problem with gun violence. It has problems with petty theft, organized crime, degradation of public spaces, and homelessness. Considering it’s the richest city in richest state in the country, I’ll lay the blame on SF.

Locked up shelves is normal for drug stores, I’ve seen it all over California to varying degrees.

If that's normal for you then your frame of reference for normal is simply wrong.

The state of things in ca and America might not be pleasing but denial won’t change what is “normal” in the sense of common and standard, not unusual. It’s not a desired state of affairs, but it’s definitely a current normal that is not just an SF thing.

I didn't see any of that in LA when I lived there. Common in NYC though.

The city of San Francisco spends far more on homeless and health services than the entire country of Germany. I don't get where this notion came from that the US/California/San Francisco does not have a welfare system.

Is there a source for that? I don't doubt it, but I would love to be able to cite it.

In the EU does that budget go to recipients or administrators and people working with recipients rather than recipients getting money themselves? Which system applies assistance more directly?

Not aligned with PG politically, but this is spot on.

And this lock up of the hair dye was pre-COVID (2019), fyi.

First the mom and pops got driven out by the chains, then the chains closed down some by the rampant theft. Soon everything will be bought at big box warehouse and Amazon after I barcode my forehead. I still opt for the smaller neighborhood shops to supplement Costco, though.

Coincidental justice: flagrant dude 'shopping' at Walgreen's last year finally gets a staycation but it took a 'viral video' to get woke to shoplifting being a thing in this town [1]

My lived experience? Non-residents are clueless. Slow recovery from boarded downtown. Small businesses, ouch. Dark humor is normalized watching tourists navigate social norms disjointed by ranting mentally ill homeless, outsized tents, needles and excrement from substance abuse as they enjoy our city sidewalks. [2] And the welcoming tourist sign at the usual tourist traps? "If you love it, don't leave it" because of the rash of car smash and grabs [3]

If you're a local that actually goes Outside, and not just live indoors ordering your life online, you know all this. Personally I think some tough love is in order, throwing more money at green vested street sweepers or loitering grouped community engagement ambassadors may look see-what-we've-done-good politically, but long term I think priorities must be placed; 30 yrs of overflowing 'crisis' needs to be triaged. [4]

[1] https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-Walgreens-shoplift... [2] https://www.city-journal.org/san-francisco-homelessness [3] https://sfgov.org/park-smart [4] https://www.youtube.com/c/InvisiblePeople

Context for those unfamiliar: under California Prop 47, thefts under $950 in San Francisco are rarely prosecuted. This has effectively decriminalized shoplifting, leading to an extraordinary increase in shoplifting at stores like Walgreens:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft...

> Context for those unfamiliar: under California Prop 47, thefts under $950 in San Francisco are rarely prosecuted

Prop 47 makes them misdemeanors, but lots of misdemeanors are prosecuted. What makes them not prosecuted in San Francisco is a combination of police refusing to arrest (in part, as a political protest against Prop 47 and to create pressure for greater criminalization) and the DA choosing not prosecute (and these two things reinforce each other, as nonprosecution of what arrests happen leads to even fewer arrests and even investigations, which leads to fewer opportunities for the DA to even consider prosecution.)

Thanks for clarifying this.

Why don't stores hire security then ? It's expensive, but what isn't in SF ? Having a guard or two is quite common in other parts of the country.

They do, now. Many stores in SF malls that formerly had 2 entrances now close one, and post a security guard by the other.

Even if there's a prosecution, a likely outcome is a fine. It's extremely unpopular to lock up indigent defendants over unpaid fines or to actually collect against people who need the money for subsistence calories. Quality of life crimes are effectively only illegal when committed by people in a specific window of financial security (can spare the amount of the fine, but not by so much that it's immaterial).

I do think we should consider one point - SF has an open border with a country of 330 million that has no comparable welfare state. Imagine if you transplanted Stockholm, city only, to the middle of the US. Swedish style welfare and government benefits would be available to anyone who moved there, from regions that do not contribute financially to this welfare state.

I think it would all fall apart pretty fast.

Now the disclaimer - I bring this up as a point of discussion, and I think it is a factor. However, overall I agree that San Francisco's government is profoundly dysfunctional, and I suspect that left-leaning European cities in terms of economic policy and government benefits are actually much more aggressive with law enforcement than SF.

Having a super dysfunctional police force, or justice system generally, is hardly unique to SF. I'd even say it's normal.

In a lot of places, what the store would do would be to pay a local gang or mafia to protect the store.

In the interest of adding another data point, the situation in Seattle is pretty similar, albeit not quite as bad in my experience. It occurred to me last month while walking around SF that Seattle politicians would be wise to pay attention to the situation in SF and try to learn from it.

My local Caesar's Pizza has bulletproof glass. With a slot shaped to slide out a pizza box.

Even in the photo I can see things not under lock.

And in basically every store I've ever been in that sells perfume, the bottles are stored behind a counter or within a locked case.

Are we really making a case for regime change based on a photo of one aisle in a store tweeted alongside an obvious exaggeration?

s/SF's/America's/g

I mean, this is what happens when you have a two-party system and one party is so rife with grift and corruption that the government becomes little more than a ponzi scheme to line the incumbents' pockets.

But you daren't oust those incumbents, because the other party is the same... plus Nazis.

There are also people that exaggerate everything into either A) Woke B) Nazis.

That's all I see on Twitter. Slightest conservative view, may be want to promote apprenticeships, hard work ethics and desire to have a solid rule of law? You're a Nazi. Want to promote unisex bathrooms and climate change measures? You're straight up woke, soy boy from SF that wants to ride on Vespas and reads CRT books before bed.

These people are the problem.

The fact that you think this indicates you are part of the problem.

I see plenty of conservative view points on twitter that no one complains about. What I see is occasional bouts of people making sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, or just generally bigoted comments. Then claiming that people calling them out are attacking them because they're conservative.

    Noun

    bigot (plural bigots)

        One who is narrow-mindedly devoted to their own ideas and groups, and intolerant of (people of) differing ideas, races, genders, _religions_, politics, etc. [1]

Set the pyre ablaze; you shall burn for your hypocrisy and self-righteous heresy [2].

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bigot#English

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30634872#30636389

not sure why you highlighted religions. Something being a "religion" isn't a get out of bigotry free card.

I didn't make any comment suggesting a narrow minded devotion to any particular viewpoint. What I called out was the claim that making the "Slightest conservative view" -> "You're a Nazi". I live in the Bay Area, I work in tech, and there are plenty of conservatives at my office who somehow manage to talk about their beliefs without being called nazis. The classic case of people accusing some "conservative" of being a nazi is when a racist, homophobe, transphobe, etc makes a racist, homophobic, or transphobic comment and gets called out for it.

Re [2] I appreciate that you went trawling through my comments and then linked to me ... questioning whether libertarian members of congress were really uninterested in governmental overreach given the strong push for christian laws? Seriously, you went to the effort to trawl, why that particular comment?

What are your thoughts on Sam Harris, and in particular his positions on Islam [1]? Are you aligning with alt-right ideology?

How is Christianity, or any religion for that matter, germane to the linked discussion?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/28/alt-ri...

    But it may be said that very little proof is required in a charge of this nature, since it takes very little argument to expose a person's guilt; for it is said in the Canon de Haereticis, lib. II, that a man makes himself a heretic if in the least of his opinions he wanders from the teaching [...]

    - Malleus Maleficarum

I'm unsure what my thoughts on his positions on Islam are - it's sounds like he feels he went into islamophobia territory, in which case I'm going to take the headline as implying he got out of whatever extremist alcove he got trapped in and that he thinks that that is a good outcome.

> How is Christianity, or any religion for that matter, germane to the linked discussion?

The comment you dug up was using the example of libertarian ideologues protecting people from encroachment by the government. Libertarian politicians in the US are a conservative bloc and fairly consistently enforcing their conservative beliefs on others, so I was calling out the inaccuracy of "Outside of a few ideological libertarians".

Personally, I agree with you: religion should not be a part of people's day-to-day lives outside of interpersonal relationships. No one's religious belief should have any impact on the rights or ability of anyone else. The problem is when people try to claim that legally recognizing the existence of different cultural groups is somehow forcing them to change their religious beliefs, and more importantly failure to acknowledge those other groups is not a direct attack on rights of the victims.

I think promoting unisex bathrooms might merit that label lol, that's more than a slightly left view.

SF does not have a two-party system.

SF at this point in time exists solely to explain why you should have an n-party system, n > 1.

I don't think this is a party issue as much as a broader cultural issue because in my experience you can extend 'America' to 'The Americas' rather than the United States specifically.

What Paul Graham is using that picture for is in my experience visible across the entire American continent and uniquely so. I've been to poor countries (comparably to the US) in the ME like Jordan when a quarter(!) of the population where refugees. It's just as corrupt of a place as anywhere else, but there was little fear of violent gun crime or violence in general as you have in bad parts of cities across the Americas.

You're pointing to the two party system, another commentator is pointing out that SF is a one party dystopia, PG is lashing out at the far-left but in Vietnam they have a literal one party communist government and that country feels perfectly safe so I really don't think political details is where the problem's at.

It’s all of California.

That is in no way unique to SF (though I had to go private browsing to see because Paulg blocked me), not even CA specific.

This is more of paulg's libertarian anti-government nonsense, wherein he ignores the fact that the economic policies he favors lead fairly directly to the poverty that results in these scenes. The "uniquely broken" part of this is that the extreme poor live next to the extreme rich. In other places, the poor are aggressively policed away, and that's what paulg would considered "fixed". In other countries with functional social welfare systems you also get less of this - but paulg is vehemently opposed to the concept of "people not starving and freezing to death".

Where is another place where all the products are locked up like this? I've been to cities all over the US and haven't seen this anywhere else. So, I think it is actually unique to SF.

This is just a picture of what looks like the makeup isle. A lot of inner city stores that carry that stuff have it in a case since its easily pocketed and sold to a beauty store down the block.

Makeup is only the left half of the photo. The right half is just the lotion aisle, which is also locked up. I've never seen this anywhere else before.

I've seen this is multiple places in the Bay Area (not just SF), and then also Boston, and Vegas. Weirdly not NY, but I haven't walked around that much of it.

Those are just the high urban density places in the US that I've been to. PaulG does not like SF, he has made that clear on numerous occasions, it isn't surprising that he looks for the opportunity to pass off this shit as being an unnecessarily complicated where cost of living is pushed to the stratosphere, while the monied don't pay reasonable taxes.

NYC.

I used to live in LA, never saw any such lockups there.

OK hot take. This isn't a complex problem. It seems like this is a combination of:

- nice weather

- lots of rich people (income inequality)

- lots of poor people (also income equality)

- favorable law enforcement regime

So given that, is it any wonder what rich people want? More enforcement. The other options are an actual taxation system or a brutal winter; 50/50 on what they'd prefer haha.

Is bloody cold here. San Diego I get, but here?

SF sits at around 65 degrees all year round. I get it's not a tropical paradise, but it's certainly not cold compared to most places in the US.

Exactly, go to Colorado, the Midwest or north east and experience real cold.

Okay yeah, that shit is miserable but SF is pretty unpleasant. I mean, it's 55 F / 13 C in SF right now and 47 F / 8 C up here in Piedmont not that far away. An across the board 18 F / 10 C wouldn't be uncomfortable and San Diego is much nicer for that.

Though, of course, Hawaii is the dream. Pity no one likes to really work there.

SF is cold because they don't seem to insulate or heat any buildings. They build them like they are in San Diego.

I did joke that SF was the "coldest city" I've ever visited. It is 60 degrees outside... and 60 degrees inside, everywhere.

Now that was when I was couchsurfing with friends in their downtrodden Manhattan-level rent apartments. Considering the rents, the lack of insulation and heating by the landlords was of course scandalous if there was ACTUAL cold weather.

... I lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the time. It was probably -20 that day in Minneapolis, an 80 degree F difference.

Lol I came to say the weather in SF sucks.

No, it's perfect. If you love outdoor physical activities it's perfect. Biking and running with dogs, perfect. Try running 5 Mike's in 90+ degree sunny weather and you'll quickly ask for 60-70 and a few clouds.

The weather here is amazing if you enjoy doing things outdoors, if you enjoy sitting, lounging and looking out the window, it may not be so perfect.

The bar is "won't kill you if you can't get out of it", so places like SF are good, places like Iowa are bad.

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