It is a little strange that drinking in public was more offensive than walking naked and pooping on sidewalks... but whatever
All three things were illegal. All three things were frowned upon.
What you are actually saying is that there are many people on the streets of San Francisco who are otherwise excluded from American society and therefore have almost 'nothing to lose.' Those people often break laws, largely because the social contract has excluded them from the benefits of society (for example, knowing you have access to indoor plumbing).
This article is about a change for the fortunate ones like you and me who do feel like we get a fair shake from the social contract and therefore follow most laws (I assume).
Upgrading my windows to be double-paned without city approval should not result in a greater punishment from the government than attacking someone on the street.
What I am ultimately trying to say is that the large majority of people on this forum see the symptom of a broken society (homelessness and drug addiction) and for whatever reason, refuse to believe that a complex network of problems is actually the thing that should draw our 'hacker' focus.
Like sure, you clearly had a negative experience with permitting that caused you to have an expensive fine and feel resentment that other people do 'worse' things 'scot-free'.
Would fining a homeless person more money actually solve your or the city's problems? No. The person would just not pay, because again, they have nothing to lose.
Ultimately, I think where we agree is that the idea of law needs to evolve to include both punishment and state funded / enforced humanitarian care.
The reason that I think this will never happen in America is because we are an inherently vengeful people with a dark history of race-based hatred and a fundamental disdain for paying taxes that fund public goods.
I agree with the statement if you mean that you should be punished more for the latter than for the former. But if you mean that you should be punished less for X and someone else should be punished more for Y (where Y is a greater crime than X), there simply are not enough details to know if I agree. I might think that you should be punished more when you are in a position to profit from the actions and therefore be more willing to continue despite the punishment (e.g. a restaurant owner refusing to make up the minimum wage difference for a server who didn't make enough in tips) whereas the other person committed their crime from opportunism in a desperate situation (e.g. a homeless person who robbed an unfortunate individual for money, including causing some minor injuries). If the same person were to commit both crimes, obviously the latter is worse; if different people commit the crimes, I'd be interested to know more about the perpetrators if I was asked to pass judgement.
> The complaint is that laws are structured in a way that only affect people who have something material to lose.
This is how it should be. Society should be structured such that every member of it has something material to lose.
In most districts it is not illegal to time travel with a newborn wolf whelp.
Also poop on sidewalks.
It was wild how the vibe changed over the course of 2 or 3 blocks towards or away from Valencia.
But yeah, SF handles homeless issues poorly and spends a tremendous amount of money doing it. And you don't have to be a "get those people out of my sight and that's all I care about them" kind of person to think that SF has been doing a bad job.
I live in Texas, we're typically very hostile to homeless people in our cities. We have anti-panhandling signage everywhere, spikes under overpasses, anti-homeless benches, very few shelters, and we arrest homeless people for panhandling all the time.
The result is that the city appears to not have that many homeless people. But they're all pushed to specific overpasses and highways where they can live without persecution. Many, I'm sure, either move to cities that better accommodate them or die.
Point being, if I was homeless, I'd want to be SF. Not Euless.