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baremetal

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Please don't use HN for ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My apologies.

I am working on my self-control.

Thanks. Me too.

>Liberals made their bed, now its time to lie in it.

Crime being rampant in US in stark contrast with ANYWHERE in EU is a good hint that it is actually not because of "dem liberals", but rather a direct consequence of troubled people being left without any support in poverty. They find a way.

Social policies aren't only there to help people in need, they're there to make society as a whole safer.

I’m not going to pretend anything is a simple obvious cause/effect — but in the case of SF, you’d be hard pressed to find a city that bends over backwards more with social policies. So I’m curious why unlike the Europe comparison, SF and LA are some of the worst places here in terms of people still mired in poverty and also doing crime. I think plenty of people really are helped by those policies and move on in their lives, but also that plenty of others take advantage of the “liberal guilt” atmosphere, which makes administering punishment very uncomfortable, to do lots of crimes. I see it as an unintended consequence.

And officially, I guess I don’t mind it. I left SF, and if the current residents are happy with the current results, they’re free to continue.

>you’d be hard pressed to find a city that bends over backwards more with social policies

That really doesn't mesh together with the extremely restrictive building code that makes housing crisis so much worse.

Are you saying people breaking into cars and stabbing people are doing so because they can afford say, $1800 in rent but can’t find a place under $2900? Because if the city could drive rents down that far across the board by encouraging new home construction, I would consider that a wildly successful outcome. But even then I don’t think it would change almost anything about the crime and homelessness problems.

I think the criminals are mostly either desperate addicts who have no chance at turning it around unless they had serious help with their illnesses, or, just callous criminals who could change but prefer doing crime to working. And it doesn’t even take that many — especially of that second group — to make everybody miserable.

Edit: just want to clarify: I am absolutely in favor of a “build, build, build, build, build” housing policy. Despite everything I said, it would still make lots of things better including improving density, making transit make sense.

I am saying that this is of course a complex issue with many driving forces behind it, but housing crisis is definitively a major part of it.

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I would argue half a thousand of other comments blaming abstract "liberals" for known shortfalls of US policy is the more logical recipient of this remark.

Sure, it comes thick and fast from all sides - but it's also the case that everyone always feels like the other side started it and did worse; and that the mods are scolding the other side less than it deserves.

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