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San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

nationalreview.com

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Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#181

Post by asveikau »

boringg wrote: post #166
asveikau wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very few kids/families, I am raising my kids here and disagree with your assessment. There is a pretty good community of families here.

Census is dated. I can vouch there are a lot more families now in the city. Hospital baby birthing rooms are filling up - there is a legit surge of babies in the city right now.

The crowd arguing with me might say that a bunch of those babies will move to the east bay or similar by school age. And many will. But it's still a very good place to raise kids and grow up.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#182

Post by true_religion »

bilbo0s wrote: post #114
ihm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking around Pacific Heights gives me that feeling… How to stop it and create a city where anyone can live: - build world class public transit - double the number of houses but decommodify the housing market as much as possible with lots of social housing and controlled rent increases

I don't know man? I'm not too sanguine about the possibility of either of those things happening in the United States. Public transit has always kind of gone nowhere in this nation outside of the great coastal cities and Chicago. And as for the housing proposal, I can already hear the howls of " SOCIALISM!!! " that will be raised by certain very powerful interests and political parties.

Cali is a progressive state. Is socialism really that feared there?

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#183

Post by jonathankoren »

zzzeek wrote: post #101
danso wrote: post #2

For those who are wondering, given the publisher, no, the essay is not simply a rant against rent-control: > True revolution would involve curbing the authority of the San Francisco Planning Commission. If Democrats in the city or in Sacramento actually cared about the poor or the environment (density is green), they would enact a land-value tax and establish a redistributive policy to align the interests of the city…

yeah this was odd, it goes into a typical "meh DEMOCRATS ruin everything" but then he calls for new taxes, a redistributive policy and however vague "strong government housing policy". Doesn't sound very free markety ?

Most of the article was simply stating the obvious about SF, but the end was very weird. When the National Review starts calling for a land-value tax and a “redistributive policy”, I’m sorry, but I’m going to call this disingenuous trolling by the author, because these are not policies the National Review honestly advocates for.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#184

Post by KirinDave »

refurb wrote: post #173
KirinDave wrote: post #133

This is a National Review opinion article offered as a news piece (as they are wont to do). It features a seamless conflation of SF's problems with Silicon Valley's somewhat corrosive lobbying effects on the urban expansion problems of SF, as if they're the same thing. It suggests that San Francisco's housing problem is NOT directly at the feet of the folks who own the majority of the property, and instead implicates…

This is a National Review opinion article offered as a news piece What? National Review doesn't do news, it does opinions. And it's pretty upfront about being conservative.

People cite them as news precisely because they don't clearly label themselves as an opinion provider. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the word "opinion" never occurs on their site or printed media by accident.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#185

Post by tntn »

asdf21 wrote: post #135
ihm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walking around Pacific Heights gives me that feeling… How to stop it and create a city where anyone can live: - build world class public transit - double the number of houses but decommodify the housing market as much as possible with lots of social housing and controlled rent increases

>How to stop it and create a city where anyone can live I'd say if "building a city where anyone can live" is the highest goal, that's an issue in and of itself. Would you want to work for a company "where anyone could work?"

You would prefer we segregate people into cities based on some measure of worth? No thanks.

What do you have in mind? The stanford elites get to live in san francisco, and the less-elite get shipped elsewhere?

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#186

Post by justin66 »

atom-morgan wrote: post #22
dawhizkid wrote: post #10

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…

How is it that so much aggressive political rhetoric related to race and the tech industry is coming from this area if there are very few African Americans there in the first place? I live in Atlanta where the minority population is much higher all around and I don't get the sense at all that there's rampant racism or discrimination. Is this problem unique to the Bay Area or is this largely white guilt?

> I live in Atlanta where the minority population is much higher all around and I don't get the sense at all that there's rampant racism or discrimination.

When you say "minority population," are you referring to white people or some other minority group in Atlanta, or are you referring to black people, who constitute the majority ethnic group in Atlanta?

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#187

Post by kerkeslager »

apexalpha wrote: post #93
kerkeslager wrote: post #67

The elites of SF and many people on HN are caught in this loop: 1. Companies don't take personal responsibility when they do antisocial things, claiming they can't be blamed, since they are just following incentives in order to compete. 2. Companies follow incentives, and lobby government to incentivize the behaviors that make them the most money (even if those behaviors are antisocial). 3. Government, influenced by…

Coupled with the standard MBA phrase "companies are a-moral". Disconnecting them from any community they serve, work in or deal with.

Well, I tend to agree. Companies are amoral.

Where I disagree with the MBAs who say this is the underlying belief, that companies can't be blamed for their actions. They can and should be blamed for their actions.

When an individual behaves amorally, we put them in jail. When a company behaves amorally, we say "companies are amoral, we can't do anything about it!" If companies really are amoral, then we should treat them as a threat just like we treat amoral people as threats.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#188

Post by pelemele »

asveikau wrote: post #53
dawhizkid wrote: post #10

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…

> very few kids/families, I am raising my kids here and disagree with your assessment. There is a pretty good community of families here.

San Francisco — where drug addicts outnumber high school students

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/philmatier/article/San-F...

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#189

Post by tjr225 »

jostmey wrote: post #4
cobbzilla wrote: post #3

“Up and down the city’s disorienting hills, you notice homeless men and women — junkies, winos, the dispossessed...“ Did the author ever actually walk in SF? The homeless mostly stay in the flats, the hills are fine (and higher rent of course).

I don’t even want to visit San Francisco anymore. Why would the writers want to? I’m making a point about how bad it’s become in San Francisco relative to the rest of the US

Just as a counterpoint to most of the comments here, I find San Francisco to be unique, charming, and beautiful. I have been there ~4 times in the past year and have had a great time every time.

Posts and comments in threads like these cause me to not want to participate on internet communities as my experience in reality seems to not match up with the cavernous anxiety taking place online.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#190

Post by bilbo0s »

wccrawford wrote: post #157
sbzodnsbd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A black friend of mine lived in Savanah, ATL, NYC and in the Midwest. She said that you find just as many racists everywhere, but she “appreciates” the (urban) Southern racists ones more because they don’t try to hide, so she knows where she stands.

I have to wonder... Do all the southern racists hide it less... Or are there so many blatant racists that the coy ones are a lot harder to detect? I'm sure there are plenty of racists everywhere, but I do find it hard to believe that there aren't more percentage-wise in the south.

I think you're asking the wrong question with the "more" or "less" type thinking.

My own view is that everyone is prejudiced. But people are different. Some are prejudiced and loud mouthed. Some are prejudiced and liars. Some are prejudiced and just quiet. But everyone is prejudiced, so does it matter if one is more loud than the other?

I mean, if you go into a room full of pregnant high school girls, sure, some are loud mouthed. Some are liars. Some are quiet.

But there are no virgins in the room.

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