Comment by quartz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by quartz | Hacker News Reader

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The second paragraph for both your links tries to compare the cities in terms of apples-to-apples by population:

NYC: "However, compared to other communities of similar population size, New York has a crime rate that is noticeably lower than the average. This means that for comparably sized cities all across America, New York is actually safer than most according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis of FBI crime data."

SF: "Importantly, when you compare San Francisco to other communities of similar population, then San Francisco crime rate (violent and property crimes combined) is quite a bit higher than average. Regardless of how San Francisco does relative to all communities in America of all sizes, when NeighborhoodScout compared it to communities of similar population size, its crime rate per thousand residents stands out as higher than most."

Edit: having lived in both (currently in NYC) I also want to point out the two cities are incredibly different in almost every way. It's really tough to compare data across the whole "city" between the two because of the differences in geography, population density & distribution, types of crime, history & expectations, and overall city governance.

Crime in East Coast NYC/Boston/DC and West-coast-cities (SF/Seattle/Portland) is very different.

The remarkable thing about SF and Seattle, is that crime is highest in high desirability/high-foot-fall areas. Many folks I know all go to downtown SF/Oakland/Seattle for work, drinks, dinner, concerts and public events.

At the same time, it seems impossible to park your car on the street in any of these neighborhoods. I thought it was an exaggeration, but "every" person I know, who has parked their car for a week in one of these neighborhoods, has had their cars broken in. It's shocking.

On the other hand, the high-footfall / popular parts of east coast cities are fairly safe. (Pickpockets are an exception). For better or for worse, a person would never accidentally find themselves in a bad neighborhood in NYC, Boston or DC. (Bad neighborhoods aren't always correlated with race or poverty. Sometimes it's just a self fulfilling prophecy) This means that violent crime on the east-coast has very little spill-over outside the communities ravaged by it. IE. The average stranger is safe.

In that sense, west coast's 'open drug market in the most important parts of the city' policy is a uniquely west coast problem. It really doesn't affect other cities in the US or elsewhere in the same way. The unique incompetence of west coast politics is squarely to blame for the dilapidation of their cities. This is not endemic to cities at large, and cities around the world should actively distance themselves from the sort of accusations that get flung at 'all cities', when it is meant to be targeting west-coast cities in particular.

There is a lot of violent crime spillover in popular areas of East coast cities. Experiencing it is just a matter of time spent. It is also easy to accidentally be in a bad neighborhood in many. Which just depends on how close to the margins of good neighborhoods that you are willing to explore. A lot of desirable amenities tend to be near these edges, when they want to serve younger people. It is true that there aren't open air drug markets in the desirable parts of East Coast cities. There are, however, street robberies and murders.

This comment is written as if the one it replied to said something wrong. It didn't and this comment does nothing to add to the debate, instead it just obfuscates. Downvoted.

The solution to open air drug markets is legalization and regulation. Make opioids and stimulants available at a low price in dispensaries and the gangsters will leave, and people won’t have to steal to support their habits.

I mean it’s good that we have stopped throwing addicts in jail, but we’ve just exposed another layer of the problem.

> it’s good that we have stopped throwing addicts in jail

Is it though? The streets are a lot safer with the addicts safely contained elsewhere, not stabbing random people.

We really should be regulating theft in general.

What if SF started a Thieves Guild, and only registered, properly trained members were allowed to steal from people? (and only after showing their Thieve's Guild registration card first, of course)

> What if SF started a Thieves Guild

I think the politically correct term is "politicians". Or, for more distinguished members, "Congressmen".

If you're going to have crime, it might as well be organized crime, right?

I do miss Terry Pratchett.

I used to think this way. I’d happily get into legalization/decriminalization arguments, secure in my knowledge of statistics from other countries and the trump card of “muh Portugal” ready to be tossed out at a moment’s notice.

Then came this brave new world of “atomized social leftism” - this highly destructive political chimera that somehow successfully subverted leftist class consciousness into a twisted parody of individualist libertarianism, while still maintaining the absolute moral certitude and zealous fervor of a revolutionary.

This is not the same left-wing ideology responsible for building Euro-style social democracy (of which I long admired). This is a homegrown American political monster wearing the skin of a revolutionary leftist but designed to serve the interests of international elites. Compare modern Antifa with the Seattle anti-WTO riots in the 90s for an illustrative example.

I live in a West Coast American city that has decriminalized hard drugs nearly to the point of de facto legalization, while “soft” drugs like marijuana are fully legal and psilocybin is on the way.

The results have been disastrous. Property crime has skyrocketed, gang violence over hard drug profits has shot the murder rate up by xxxx%, human beings wander the downtown in broad daylight moaning with visible skin sloughing off their bodies like we’re in a zombie movie.

And the despairing response to this from most of my “lefty” acquaintances has been “well this is all because we haven’t fully legalized hard drugs” - as if that was a coherent argument for why we shouldn’t just abandon the decriminalization experiment and return to the former status quo that didn’t have these problems.

Even marijuana, an extremely mild drug (as far as such things go) that has been legalized, resulted in the literal cartels rolling into the southern half of my state and taking over production.

I find myself increasingly thinking that “American democracy” is a failed system and we just haven’t realized it yet. Wile E Coyote confidently running in mid-air over the abyss with a cloud of dust under his feet labeled “It’s the Wokes/Racists”.

If you want an Euro-style social democracy, you [Americans] need to understand its foundations. First and foremost, there is a society, and everyone is part of it. If your fellow citizen is hurting, then you are hurting. Hence a comprehensive social safety net, clean food, universal healthcare, well trained police, fair voting, access to justice (I could go on) are understood to be essential and inviolable, and available for all citizens.

An interesting thought experiment would be to see if any US state could (or even might one day) meet the criteria for joining the EU (the 'chapters' iirc).

https://neighbourhood-enlargement.ec.europa.eu/enlargement-p...

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

I fundamentally agree with all this. Scandinavian style social democracy has been the apple of my eye since I first graduated high school straight into the War on Terra.

My concern (which I hesitate to fully express, lest my Hispanic ass be labeled a “white supremacist”) is that Euro-style social democracy is incapable of surviving waves of economic migration unseen on the continent for literal millennia.

Either the right wing is correct and the migration itself will be overburdening the social structure to the point where it collapses - or the right wing is wrong about full collapse, but the stress fractures from mass migration are enough to put the Prophets of Privatization in power and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Indeed. Immigration is the big test for European social democracy, though I'd argue that so long as the social contract is respected, and economic rewards are evenly and justly distributed, then we should be ok. If people have good jobs, affordable housing, and a future for their children then they are much more amenable to accommodating outsiders. Unfortunately this is not how things are working out right now - Europe has been badly affected by wealth concentration (driven by zero interest rates? Offshoring? Financial engineering?) just as the US. For example in Portugal house prices and rents have exploded in recent years, and who are they blaming? Digital Nomads, when in fact AirBnB is facilitating lucrative short term lets for those (often Portuguese) landlords able to take advantage.

Note that some places in Europe have already seen large scale immigration since WW2, usually from their former colonies - e.g. UK, France, and Portugal again.

The same arguments were made 100 years ago that the Irish, Italians and Chinese would never assimilate in the US. I was in Paris recently and saw multiple groups of young people of mixed races hanging out as friends. I asked around and confirmed that yes this is a new positive development in the last decade or so.

Kids don't care about race or ethnicity. It just takes a generation or two.

Every libertarian has been saying this and it is just not true. The gangsters switch to harder and more addictive stuff, and the libertarian escalation chain continues. "Just legalize it all, bro."

I'd rather not have downtown be monopolized by people consumed by addiction, which is what your solution would directly cause. The myopia libertarians have about the mean self control of the population in question seems to know no bounds. Not everyone can just "do some opioids" once in a while and be fine (I suspect the % of the population is that can actually do this is approximately zero).

I wish someone would meme the concept of Chesterton’s Fence into the public consciousness.

Whole lot of “I don’t know why this fence is here, but it’s gotta go” behavior ripping apart thousands of years of collective/cultural moral development - and the proffered alternative is an abysmal mashup of Alister Crowley and early 2000’s internet libertarianism.

Most remarkable is how “Do As Thou Wilt If It’s Consensual” has become the dominant ethos of even the left. Back in my Occupy days, we used to joke a lot about the goal being Star Trek style “gay luxury space communism” - I guess they figured “one outta four ain’t bad”.

The spirituality of libertarianism tends to be on the hollow side (as evidenced by other “just let them die, bro” comments elsewhere). I learned long ago to consider libertarianism to be little more than an attitude about trying to satisfy one’s own vices and not a serious attempt at any sort of governing philosophy for society.

Somehow the lessons we learned from making alcohol illegal have been completely forgotten.

<< "Just legalize it all, bro."

At the end of the day, it really should be just that. Legalize, standardize and actually enforce it ( because as it turns out, legalization did fuck all to that with exception of medical grade stuff ). Then let people do what they have always done anyway. And the freedom still ends precisely where I and my property starts.

I suffer no illusions. People will die. But they are dying anyway. We might as well make them die in a predictable way ( and by their own choice ).

So yeah. Legalize and then enforce it bro. It is not rocket science.

The second doesn't follow from the first.

Allowing people to buy and sell doesn't mean they must be allowed to do it openly on the streets or freely cause trouble.

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