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San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

sfchronicle.com

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Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#121

Post by rcarr »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #113
rcarr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t even imagine what it feels like to get downvoted for telling people about your friend’s murder. Mgarfias, I have given you my upvote as a counter. To Hacker news, you need to sort yourself the fuck out and get some empathy.

I didn't downvote (I try to never do that). But responding to a statistical observation about crime levels in NYC that were particularly bad in the 70s and 80s with a single personal ancedote about their friend's murder in 1994 just seems ... totally not relevant. People were murdered in NYC in every decade since it was founded, and will continue to be so, as they will in every other significantly sized city. Noting…

Right well imagine you’ve just walked into a bar in real life and everyone is having a conversation about crime in the city and a stranger sat in the corner says that their friend was murdered in the 90s. Would you really respond with:

> Wow. They were almost the last person murdered in NYC! Stats say murder in NYC ended later that year.

Probably not unless you wanted everyone in the bar to look at you with disgust. In fact, the entire tone and topic of the conversation would probably change to accommodate this new information. If you wanted to say something, you’d probably say something along the lines of:

“Jesus, I’m sorry to hear that. Do you want to talk about it? What happened?”

If someone is sharing something sensitive like this and you don’t think it’s relevant, just don’t say anything. Add something constructive on another comment. What have you gained from that comment other than potentially upsetting another person? I don’t think anyone is thinking “oh I’m really glad he stepped in there otherwise that one thread on the online debate would have got really off track”. And I don’t think mgarfias is going away from this thinking, “well he really opened my eyes to the fact that my anecdotal experience is not the totality of existence, my entire stance on New York City is changed now.”

Honestly dude, there are unlimited threads on every post. Every thread does not have to be a direct argument or counter argument of whatever is stated in the original content. We can just all talk and be humans going through life together.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#122

Post by Ekaros »

ravenstine wrote: post #9

Let it burn. The only way out is to let competition thrive and thereby create pressure to revert the cost of living insanity.

I think one reasonable solution is literally this. Would allow rebuilding whole thing from fresh, with much higher density and maybe in general as high rise buildings.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#124

Post by bioemerl »

carapace wrote: post #93
godzillabrennus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that San Francisco does not have the population density of Manhattan is a testament to the impact of NIMBYISM.

SF is roughly three hundred years younger than NYC.

Is that relevant for the amount of houses they can build?

I feel like if you were truly motivated they could have had over New York's population by now if they were to build homes and skyscrapers. It doesn't take 100 or 200 years to build a skyscraper, they could simultaneously start like 20 of them every year.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#125

Post by baremetal »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #111
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out the arrogant shitting on the rest of the planet by authoritarian techies in the Bay Area has some mild consequences about a dozen orders of magnitude less than the shit it has sprayed on everyone else. If "Flyover Country" has ever been in your vocabulary for a nanosecond, you deserve all that's being heaped on you and 1,000,000x more. You can't abuse humanity, tell them it's for their own good, and then…

1. I was born in "flyover country", I know what the great plains looks like and understand their economic struggles. 2. Again, huggingface open source meetup was the OPPOSITE of authoritarian tech bros. It's literally the people trying to democratize and keep this stuff available to the masses. This post here is the resentment I'm talking about. The reality is that the average HF event attendee has done far more to h…

Between pandemics, inflation, food scarcity.. I'm not sure the world is leaving non tech bros behind.

And I am a tech bro who moved to rural and bought the farm in 2020.

I support you HF guys though. Also if you want to get into clubs in SF, at least when I use to party there extensively in the 00's you either:

A) Go to a rave style club that lets anyone in

or

B) You wear nice "preppy" clothes. With a fresh haircut.

I've been turned away from clubs for not having a button down shirt on. Dress code is a real thing.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#126

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

agentofoblivion wrote: post #118
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is there in SF politics that you consider "radical"? I mean, I can't disagree that the evidence supports the idea that recent policies there have been ineffective in addressing many of that city's most pressing issues. But "radical" ?

Are you being serious? SF is as much, or more, known for radical left wing politics than it is tech. They basically give homeless people free money, make it legally hard to clear camps, and don’t enforce laws of open, hard drug use and petty theft, leading to the obvious consequences. Basically they make it easy to be a drug addict on the street, and hard to be a police officer, and then wonder why crime and homeless…

I am being serious.

You're describing a highly proscribed area of city governance.

Radical left politics generally involves much larger issues, chiefly relating to economic and power relationships between different groups with a society. At least. What's going on in SF has essentially nothing to do with that at all.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#127

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

kevingadd wrote: post #110
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Home value does not (generally) matter to you day to day if you plan to actually live there. Until you retire or for other reasons find yourself living on a fixed (and possibly diminished) income, while property taxes based on home value continue to rise.

That would make your home value going down a good thing, wouldn't it?

It would, indeed. Hard to get that timing right, though.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#129

Post by mansion7 »

agentofoblivion wrote: post #89

One question that’s always top of mind when I hear about the insanity of SF: why on Earth are people with radical, proven ineffective policies voted in time and time again? Whenever I hear from tech people, they think it’s crazy. So if tech has overrun SF, why haven’t the politics become more moderate? At least one of my assumptions must be wrong.

Check out who tech companies and employee PACs almost exclusively donate their money to.

Read the many articles about steps tech companies and employees have taken to promote their own political causes and candidates while stifling opposition. How they had practically had to bring in grief counselors to soothe their tearful employees after their chosen candidate lost in 2016.

There's nothing moderate about it. They are getting exactly what they voted for, schemed for, and paid great amounts of money for.

Re: San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?

#130

Post by rhaway84773 »

rcarr wrote: post #121
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't downvote (I try to never do that). But responding to a statistical observation about crime levels in NYC that were particularly bad in the 70s and 80s with a single personal ancedote about their friend's murder in 1994 just seems ... totally not relevant. People were murdered in NYC in every decade since it was founded, and will continue to be so, as they will in every other significantly sized city. Noting…

Right well imagine you’ve just walked into a bar in real life and everyone is having a conversation about crime in the city and a stranger sat in the corner says that their friend was murdered in the 90s. Would you really respond with: > Wow. They were almost the last person murdered in NYC! Stats say murder in NYC ended later that year. Probably not unless you wanted everyone in the bar to look at you with disgust.…

Except you’re not walking into a bar where you’re a highly visible patron among maybe 10-15 others.

You’re reading a comment thread where no one even knows you exist and/or are reading the particular comment thread.

This is the equivalent of writing a letter to a newspaper’s editor in the old days (with less friction).

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