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Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

economist.com

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Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#31

Post by grillvogel »

kernoble wrote: post #18

Reminds me of a Star Trek DS9 episode that takes place in an SF of the near future. "By the 2020s, those without employment, as well as those with mental problems, were moved into the Sanctuary Districts, which would later become no better than slums." https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Past_Tense https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Bell_Riots

Soylent Green also presents an exaggerated but somewhat plausible view of the cities of the slightly distant future(stepping over piles of homeless people to get out of apartments, not the eating people)

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#32

Post by Aspos »

diffset wrote: post #19
LurkingPenguin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Per my own experience SF is not a bad place to live. I have the opposite view. In SF, your risk of the following occurring is non-negligible and in some cases, shockingly quite likely: - Being mugged/robbed - Having your car broken into - Being harangued or even assaulted by someone who is mentally ill and/or under the influence - Witnessing public urination, defecation, drug use and grab and go retail theft - Step…

The homeless and those issues pretty much only exist in the tourist areas near downtown, the tenderloin, soma, etc. The tourists come and see all of that and get the idea SF is some horrible dystopia, but unless you live in those areas, it's not a problem. I lived in Noe Valley for 3 years and never ran into a single problem from your list. SF is so much more than downtown.

Can confirm. In general, unless you actually step into them, human feces are not a problem. Just watch your step and be alert. How difficult can it be?

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#33

Post by systemvoltage »

I'd like bundle Oakland (across from SF on east bay) with this as well. Totally useless government, unbelievably filthy, utterly third world and embarrassingly woke. Yes, I say this as a liberal who's never voted for Republican candidate ever. Portland, Seattle, LA and SF - this is a west coast phenomenon and a policy-induced suicide.

> In 2017 Portland ranked third. Now it has dropped to 66th out of 80.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/06/12/portland-...

Democrats need to get to the bottom of which policies caused the west coast to all simultaneously degrade. May be we should look at other democratic cities and some republican cities and adopt their policies.

Let's start with criticizing our own policies. By pointing fingers, it ain't gonna solve itself.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#34

Post by zaphar »

runarberg wrote: post #15

What is the point of this article? The bulk of it is explaining that things are bad in SF, and that the city government is to blame. Sure I’ll buy that. But then it makes a leap of logic by claiming—or rather insinuating—that the reason for why they don’t fix those issues is because they are dysfunctional. As for why it is dysfunctional. Well: > As it is, the city has been safely Democratic for 40 years and seems all…

I mean it's hard to argue that it isn't the voters fault. Whether that is because they are not electing a conservative enough mayor or not isn't the point of the article.

Vote in non-corrupt officials who are willing to clean house and you start to make a dint in the problem. Ideology is irrelevant as a qualification for the candidate. The fact that they choose largey based on ideology rather than integrity is the problem.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#35

Post by flyinglizard »

ahmadss wrote: post #12
hamburgerwah wrote: post #11

A lot of my family has lived in SF for decades, all of them have moved out in the past 4 years. It's a monstrous dystopia now. The ultra rich completely insulated from the human misery sprawled out in every direction around them while their peasants toil away as tiny ants looked down upon with pity from their gleaming towers.

sounds like Mumbai or Karachi or any other large city in a developing nation. sheesh.

No, it’s actually crazier in a sense. The contrast between the populations, the “virtual fences” created across main streets where you have chaos in one side and first rate everything on the other, seeing all the crazy on the backdrop of Twitter and Uber buildings and ultimately recognizing the futility of a place so rich destroying itself like a misdirected, spoiled trust fund brat. It’s the city that had everything going for it other than a common sense. I love SF but get it the fuck together.

The article touches on why that won’t happen though. Voter demographics won’t allow that. It’s either radical and young liberals which would go for every insane policy or the old and entrenched.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#36

Post by muh_gradle »

diffset wrote: post #19
LurkingPenguin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Per my own experience SF is not a bad place to live. I have the opposite view. In SF, your risk of the following occurring is non-negligible and in some cases, shockingly quite likely: - Being mugged/robbed - Having your car broken into - Being harangued or even assaulted by someone who is mentally ill and/or under the influence - Witnessing public urination, defecation, drug use and grab and go retail theft - Step…

The homeless and those issues pretty much only exist in the tourist areas near downtown, the tenderloin, soma, etc. The tourists come and see all of that and get the idea SF is some horrible dystopia, but unless you live in those areas, it's not a problem. I lived in Noe Valley for 3 years and never ran into a single problem from your list. SF is so much more than downtown.

The dysfunction is definitely not isolated to just certain neighborhoods in SF. It goes beyond the tenderloin now.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#37

Post by shuckles »

runarberg wrote: post #15

What is the point of this article? The bulk of it is explaining that things are bad in SF, and that the city government is to blame. Sure I’ll buy that. But then it makes a leap of logic by claiming—or rather insinuating—that the reason for why they don’t fix those issues is because they are dysfunctional. As for why it is dysfunctional. Well: > As it is, the city has been safely Democratic for 40 years and seems all…

I agree. I think the only explanations it gives are that the city has no middle class and politicians try to solve national problems with local solutions. Neither are root causes in my opinion. The former is explained by a lack of new home building which is a statewide and national problem and the latter is explained by the fact that the San Francisco political machine generates a lot of national political candidates! The city is hugely over-represented in national politics. I have no clue why, and the causes of both are probably more explanatory than whatever the article provides.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#38

Post by nemo44x »

San Francisco is what happens when so many of your citizens are rich enough to opt into private everything and not have to deal with the effects of or take seriously the policies of the people their money puts into power. It’s a type of oligarchy and plutocracy where the patrons can pay to be seen and “adored” by the political class for social standing but can opt-out of every policy choice.

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#39

Post by [deleted] »

TMWNN wrote: post #4

>As it is, the city has been safely Democratic for 40 years and seems allergic to choosing a Bloomberg-type figure from one of the big tech companies to try something different. San Francisco is what New York City would be like if it only had the UWS, Village, and Wall Street/Midtown. To put another way, if the Bay area had been unified a century ago as "San Francisco" including the Peninsula and East Bay, things wou…

[deleted]

Re: Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional

#40

Post by kelnos »

hamburgerwah wrote: post #11

A lot of my family has lived in SF for decades, all of them have moved out in the past 4 years. It's a monstrous dystopia now. The ultra rich completely insulated from the human misery sprawled out in every direction around them while their peasants toil away as tiny ants looked down upon with pity from their gleaming towers.

Er, what? Anyone who has walked through SoMa or the Tenderloin or the financial district or... quite a few other neighborhoods knows that no one here is "insulated from human misery".

Also what "gleaming towers"? We have, like... 5 of those in the entire city? Most residential stock is low-rise or SFH, and the rich certainly mostly live in the latter (see: Pacific Heights and parts of the Sunset).

I'll be the first to not only admit, but scream, that SF has a ton of problems, but you have not characterized them correctly at all.

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