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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?

#141

Post by agentofoblivion »

fogzen wrote: post #140
agentofoblivion wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are one and the same. Chesa Boudine was largely responsible, and ran on the platform, of essentially not enforcing laws on drugs and theft. His parents spent decades in prison for murder as a result of their radical leftists activism with the Weather Underground. SF is basically the poster child for putting radical leftists in charge.

Getting rid of cash bail, trying children as children instead of adults, creating a unit to investigate wrongful conviction… these aren’t radical policies. Boudin did enforce laws on drugs. Multiple drug dealers were prosecuted during his short watch. And overall violent crime fell during that period as well. Boudin was recalled, despite no real evidence that his policies had significant impact on crime rates. Our el…

Really? So there isn’t open and pervasive drug use? All these videos of herds of people robbing stores, and homeless people straight up saying they can use/sell drugs and commit petty theft without consequence are just lying?

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

#142

Post by bdcravens »

twelve40 wrote: post #136
bdcravens wrote: post #18

Every city has its glory days and eventual decline. It happened to Detroit; it's happening to SF, and eventually it'll happen to other cities (I see it happening to Houston if the US truly uncouples itself from oil)

it's not a given if they get their head out of their ass. SF has so many good things going for it.

It can certainly be a world class city, but often times the call to arms is in the response to a decline to the prosperity of the last 20 years. Odds are that the world has moved on from the conditions that brought that about, and SF has to reinvent itself (or revert to its previous identity)

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

#143

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

agentofoblivion wrote: post #137
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are one and the same. Chesa Boudine was largely responsible, and ran on the platform, of essentially not enforcing laws on drugs and theft. His parents spent decades in prison for murder as a result of their radical leftists activism with the Weather Underground. SF is basically the poster child for putting radical leftists in charge.

Can I assume that you're comfortable being equated with whatever your parents did during their younger years?

Look, radical leftist politics in SF (or anywhere else) would be about:

  1. corporate taxation
  2. minimum wage at $21/hr or above
  3. limiting investment in residential real estate
  4. major investment in public transit
  5. limiting the use of private motor vehicle transportation
  6. reducing the role of national/international brands in city-wide retail
  7. progressive (i.e. marginal) property taxation
  8. pushing CA on a number of issues, such as non-local tax base for education
The problem is that these policies, unlike the ones dealing with issues like homelessness, would conflict with the desires of the wealth & power classes, and thus cannot be enacted. So you're left with "radical" politics basically being about how the city deals with its poorest, most needy residents, without any fundamental change in the wealth & power relationships that would actually be genuinely radical.

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

#144

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

agentofoblivion wrote: post #141
fogzen wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of cash bail, trying children as children instead of adults, creating a unit to investigate wrongful conviction… these aren’t radical policies. Boudin did enforce laws on drugs. Multiple drug dealers were prosecuted during his short watch. And overall violent crime fell during that period as well. Boudin was recalled, despite no real evidence that his policies had significant impact on crime rates. Our el…

Really? So there isn’t open and pervasive drug use? All these videos of herds of people robbing stores, and homeless people straight up saying they can use/sell drugs and commit petty theft without consequence are just lying?

Well, Walgreens have certainly admitted they were almost certainly over-reacting last year to store robbery, and that the statistics are nowhere near as bad as they were claiming.

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

#145

Post by [deleted] »

agentofoblivion wrote: post #141
fogzen wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of cash bail, trying children as children instead of adults, creating a unit to investigate wrongful conviction… these aren’t radical policies. Boudin did enforce laws on drugs. Multiple drug dealers were prosecuted during his short watch. And overall violent crime fell during that period as well. Boudin was recalled, despite no real evidence that his policies had significant impact on crime rates. Our el…

Really? So there isn’t open and pervasive drug use? All these videos of herds of people robbing stores, and homeless people straight up saying they can use/sell drugs and commit petty theft without consequence are just lying?

[deleted]

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

#146

Post by zamnos »

bdcravens wrote: post #61
marcellus23 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities can come back after the decline, too. Look at NYC.

True, given the local industry. NYC has finance, marketing, fashion, etc. What would San Francisco's be? As an outsider, it feels to me like the days magical tech synergy has left, and that work in our industry is unlikely to recentralize.

Outside of tech, there's UCSF, a prominent medical institution, a large part of which can only be done in person and not remotely, as well as Genentech and similar, which is in south sf and not sf proper, but where do their employees want to live? some want suburbia but some also want city living

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

#147

Post by zamnos »

jleyank wrote: post #28
baron816 wrote: post #4

It all comes down to housing. If you make it affordable to build housing, you make housing affordable. If you make housing affordable, then you make services affordable.

I wonder whether homeowners talking about more affordable housing realize that includes their own house likely declining in value….

Does it have to though? Think about startup fundraising rounds. At the very beginning, the founders own 100% of a $0 company. let's say they give up 15% for $150k at a $1mm valuation. 85% of $1mm is worth more than 100% of $0. So then a series B, for another 15% but this time at $10mm valuation. They're diluted down to 70%, but it's of $10mm, which equals $7mm. What does this have to do with housing? Well as a city grows, existing housing can become more valuable, along with more housing also becoming available. So similar to cases where dilution doesn't agree over existing shareholders because they now own a smaller piece of a much larger pie, so too then owners of existing housing also appreciate, rather than depreciate in value.

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

#148

Post by raverbashing »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #23
orzig wrote: post #5

I don’t live there, but as a general rule, people overestimate the probability of “collapse“. Things can be declining for a long time without the dramatic acceleration that merits that term.

> people overestimate the probability of “collapse“ Collapse, in this article’s context, means insolvency. That doesn’t mean San Francisco disappears. But public transit may halt for a while, and the city may have control and assets forcibly removed from itself. In reality, San Francisco is solidly investment grade [1][2]. It can borrow its way out of this hole. [1] https://www.fitchratings.com/entity/san-francisco-c…

"Investment grade" this things usually follow cartoon physics, they are fine and dandy until they look and see they're floating mid-air

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

#149

Post by revelio »

CydeWeys wrote: post #26
ppeetteerr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Just look at Twitter. It's running with a skeleton crew but that's only because a system of that size does not collapse in a day. It takes years for the cracks to show and grow.

I think the specific situation with Twitter is that it takes a lot more people to create and update a system of this size than it does to merely maintain it. They simply no longer have the capacity to make a large new product at this point, but even a skeleton staff is enough to keep the existing product running.

Twitter was created originally by a much smaller team than even the one that Musk still has today.

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

#150

Post by revelio »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #143
agentofoblivion wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are one and the same. Chesa Boudine was largely responsible, and ran on the platform, of essentially not enforcing laws on drugs and theft. His parents spent decades in prison for murder as a result of their radical leftists activism with the Weather Underground. SF is basically the poster child for putting radical leftists in charge.

Can I assume that you're comfortable being equated with whatever your parents did during their younger years? Look, radical leftist politics in SF (or anywhere else) would be about: 1. corporate taxation 2. minimum wage at $21/hr or above 3. limiting investment in residential real estate 4. major investment in public transit 5. limiting the use of private motor vehicle transportation 6. reducing the role of national/…

Those were all hallmark left wing policies up to maybe the early 2000s but nowadays the policy programme is different. When was the last time you heard leftists talk about tax? It's like something from another time, these days it's all about other policies like racial/sexual divisions, control over media and education, "reparations" and so on.
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