51–60 of 133 posts
https://missionlocal.org/2021/03/newsoms-experiment-to-get-r... Linked in the article, too. While it's not the only source of the problem, it's still a big reason people get tired of looking around for a can in SF and just toss their litter.
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They do. The government is just ineffective at its job.
That's what happens when people just vote for their party for local government—politicians don't have good ideas or successful policies cause they don't have to to stay in office
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That's what happens when people just vote for their party for local government—politicians don't have good ideas or successful policies cause they don't have to to stay in office
How do local SF elections work? Are they partisan? If so, aren't the primaries where the real action is, often with plenty of choices?
Its sad that 1) so many people just throw trash on the steet, 2) there is no law enforcement preventing this behavior, 3) the city isnt paying any people (in my area the prisoners do it from the jail) and then 4) that it has come down to the residents to come up with their own pool of money to pay for this... every week you read stories of the human feces on sidewalks, public urination, needles left on sidewalks, pub…
From a relatively well-known perspective, that is essentially slave labor. The argument is this: The Constitution's 13th Amendment, which banned slavery, made an exception for prisoners. The obvious path, which many believe was taken, was to arrest many of the same people who were enslaved and use them as slave labor. And after segregation was ended in the 1960s, the US government's 'war on drugs' began the era of mass incarceration, which resulted in the former victims of segregation going to jail in large numbers.
There are arguments for doing it too, and picking up trash isn't hard labor. However, we need to think about who ends up picking up trash for a minor infraction, and who gets a warning and is sent home (I now nothing about your county in particular).
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This is a also a city with a multibillion dollar budget and some of the highest in the country.
I'll be honest in my area I'm out in a suburban part a Florida about 50 miles outside of Tampa and people who are not from the area who are caught doing drugs and homeless people and all this kind of stuff what happens is the cops they tell them I don't want to see you in this county anymore and then what they do is they bring them to a road called county line road and then they drop them off there and if they come b…
This is pretty well-known in a lot of places. Around major cities, the police will send the persons into the city. Then the suburban people say there must be something wrong with the city, with all these problems. Personally, I'd rather be the community that takes care of the people that need it.
> doing drugs and homeless people
I don't equate the two. Even doing drugs is just a vice and now frequently legalized, and I'm sure the locals do plenty (without needing to know the locality). But to the extent that the drugs are illegal, being homeless certainly is not. There is nothing wrong with it or illegal about it. Some homeless people do bad things, and so do some people of every other group, including HN readers, rural locals, and wealthy people in big houses (and measured by total cost to society, there's no doubt which group does more).
I don't understand. I often hear about people making $200k, $300k a year in that city. I know that it's not everyone, but I think there are lots of people like that. Why is this problem not solved by the market? That may make a good YCombinator project, go to San Francisco-based tech companies, ask them (or the people in them) to give you money to clean the streets. Is this because there is no cheap labour in San Fra…
Great question. Maybe markets aren't a functional solution to problems of public commons? I can't think of a community problem where a market-based solution even helped, let alone solved the problem.
While I agree that the market isn't the panacea and God it's portrayed to be, I didn't understand the GP that way.
Your point goes much too far the other way. Most of most community problems are solved by 'free' markets, including food (most food is bought and sold in the market), much of transportation (cars, planes), shelter (most homes are owned by private parties), etc.
I think the interesting question is, where is the market good at, and what are other tools good at?
In Taiwan the locals, usually the elderly, sweep and clean near their own houses or the parks where they congregate. Some do it as part of a neighborhood group, while others clean parks and areas near temples for religious reasons. Good way to build community. On another note, let people read without pop-ups please.
I live in Oakland, CA, just off a major street. When I moved into this place I got annoyed at the litter on the street, until I eventually just started picking it up. The first day, I filled a trash bag travelling just 100ft along the sidewalk. A week later I would fill a trash bag every two or three laps of the entire street. Now I think I fill one trash bag per week. And I just feel better looking at, walking, or biking down my street, and I've gotten good conversations with neighbours to boot.
Culturally, right now, people will keep on littering on American city streets, and you and I aren't equipped to change that. It takes surprisingly little effort to carve out a considerably improved space though, and I find that when I consider it a gift to my neighbourhood and a constant task fighting against entropy (rather than something that can be "finished"), it's easier.
("you" in this context is a general "you", and not meant to be singling another_story out, of course)
I just don't understand why throwing trash on the ground is tolerated. There is virtually no argument for why someone should need or be allowed to throw or leave their trash on the ground. Most of us manage to get clothes on before we leave the house each day, and that's a lot more complicated than just putting trash into a bin (or god forbid, carrying it until you reach a destination which has a trash bin). So there…
Are the people littering mostly civilians or drug addicts?
the real hardcore street addicts really don't do or buy anything but sit in a heap on the sidewalk for hours at at time.
do you mean that casual users just get so ... crazy .. that they feel compelled to throw trash on the street just for the thrill?
the homeless (often drug using) do certainly contribute to th e problem since they do go through the trash and gather stuff they think they might be able to sell or use.
but somehow I don't think that's what you're asking
I just don't understand why throwing trash on the ground is tolerated. There is virtually no argument for why someone should need or be allowed to throw or leave their trash on the ground. Most of us manage to get clothes on before we leave the house each day, and that's a lot more complicated than just putting trash into a bin (or god forbid, carrying it until you reach a destination which has a trash bin). So there…
The real question isn't the obvious, but what we find when, discovering that the obvious isn't working, we dig deeper.
Do you live in a community with these problems? Try speaking to the people there; you may learn a lot. They aren't fools who have never considered the issue; they are intelligent, mostly well-meaning human beings who nevertheless find themselves in this situation.
I'm not talking about the obvious, so please avoid pinning on me the anti-obvious ('I support litter!'). The obvious in this case is an obstacle, preventing us from seeing and addressing the reality.
> I just don't understand why throwing trash on the ground is tolerated.
Tolerated? Come around some neighborhoods and not tolerate it. Who said the problem is our toleration?
> I would impose very strict penalties
This is an understandable reaction to bad behavior, but it doesn't work. Humans aren't so easily pushed around and it becomes a tool for harassing innocent people (e.g., minor drug possession offenses).
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You can stop a junkie from shooting up by imprisoning them, or better yet, putting them through drug rehab. Everything else is not a solution and only exacerbates the problem. There's nothing safe about staying addicted to drugs.
Putting a junkie in prison will indeed stop them, for the time they are in jail. But once they get out, they will return to the life they know. And then you're back with the original problem, but you've now also spent a ton of money to imprison them. Obviously there's nothing safe about being addicted to drugs. But there are certainly methods of drug use which have wildly varied risk levels. Same for other things - d…
Sadly, no. The junkies I knew, back when I knew junkies, were terrified of rehab, not of prison.
One of them told me, to justify behavior that was mystifying to me, "I can still use in prison".