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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

I’m not squeamish about urban areas—I lived in downtown Baltimore, Wilmington Delaware, and Atlanta. But you’re missing some perspective. The captain is talking about gangs. The presence of gang members means that law abiding citizens are driven out of these public places. So the folks who are “loitering” typically aren’t up to anything good.

I just met an Uber driver from Germany the other day. He lives in Georgia (the state) now and was talking about how he moved to this town to get away from the dangerous city nearby. He was happy that his kid could ride around on his bike like back home in his village in Germany. I remember thinking it odd because I had never heard a European talk like that. But I suspect they don’t “get it” until they actually live it.

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Hello from a former MD and Wilmington resident too :-)

I moved to Texas in '05 to raise kids.

I got tired of syringes in the playground, and constant threat and danger everywhere we went.

With the tax savings and lower house prices, we were able to buy a great house near a lake, with good schools and a safe, walkable town.

It was a huge leap for us, but one of the best choices I ever made.

I had been hoping for an upswing in those cities, but unfortunately it has regressed. We moved to Anne Arundel when our daughter started school. My job is tied to DC, but otherwise I’d probably move to Dallas.

> I remember thinking it odd because I had never heard a European talk like that.

What did you find odd about that? That a European doesn't want to live in a dangerous city?

Not that. But in my experience, Europeans I meet don’t usually talk about it, because European cities are generally very safe. So it’s not something that is top of mind for them.

That makes sense, thanks!

Here's a radical idea: invest in mental health, food security & education, and community programs to directly combat the source of the gangs and bad behavior, rather than try to control people's behavior.

That is the distinction you've seemed to miss here.

Controlling others' behavior is ineffective at best. It's treating symptoms with pain killers while ignoring the source of the problem. It's weak leadership, and, it gives broken people the ability to manipulate the system to hurt others.

It is not a radical idea. That type of massive wealth transfer is only possible on the federal level, where it simply has no political chance.

All the non federal governments can do is like removing bus stops (or letting drug addicted communities flourish when the pendulum swings the other way).

Welp, we don't have the political capital, guess we can't fix anything, only thing left to do is beat the shit out of poor people in the streets. Society!

The problem is lack of economic capital at the non federal level since there is no way to control immigration.

The solution is canvassing, campaigning, voting, and running for federal office where that change can be affected.

We have been doing those things since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. After government transfers, real consumption of households at the bottom have gone up dramatically since the 1960s. Conversely, many much poorer countries that don’t have that sort of social spending don’t have gang problems like we do. Gangs aren’t an economic problem, they’re a social problem. Specifically, they’re a social problem caused by a vacuum in authority and hierarchy for young men. That’s why Wilmington has a gang problem and my dad’s vastly poorer village in Bangladesh doesn’t.

You've just written a lot of applause lights. What's a substantive proposal do you believe will have a realistic chance of being passed through Congress? If you can't think of one then it may not be as straightforward as you believe.

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