Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

dustin-godevais.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 229 posts

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#211

Post by seanmcdirmid »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #209
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to make affordable housing available, make a car-optional lifestyle more viable, etc. Yes, but that won't solve all our problems. We have to distribute out the hot places to live, we can never make enough affordable housing if everyone wants to live in a few select cities. Having lived in Europe, I don't thing they have figured it out either (except for the car-optional lifestyle).

If you solved all our problems, they would magically be replaced by new ones. "Oh, I'm so bored . It is a tragedy!" "My orgasms aren't as fantastic as porn movies imply everyone else has. It's not fair! Whatever shall I do?" Etc. But, I mean, some kinds of problems are better to have than others.

> We need to make affordable housing available, make a car-optional lifestyle more viable, etc.

> "My orgasms aren't as fantastic as porn movies imply everyone else has. It's not fair! Whatever shall I do?"

Ok, you are self reflective. What next?

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#212

Post by DoreenMichele »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #211
DoreenMichele wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you solved all our problems, they would magically be replaced by new ones. "Oh, I'm so bored . It is a tragedy!" "My orgasms aren't as fantastic as porn movies imply everyone else has. It's not fair! Whatever shall I do?" Etc. But, I mean, some kinds of problems are better to have than others.

> We need to make affordable housing available, make a car-optional lifestyle more viable, etc. > "My orgasms aren't as fantastic as porn movies imply everyone else has. It's not fair! Whatever shall I do?" Ok, you are self reflective. What next?

Nope.

My point is I'm not trying to solve all of our problems and framing it like I am is as ridiculous as some rando on the internet accusing me of not enjoying sex as some kind of bizarre cheap shot.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#213

Post by seanmcdirmid »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #212
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to make affordable housing available, make a car-optional lifestyle more viable, etc. > "My orgasms aren't as fantastic as porn movies imply everyone else has. It's not fair! Whatever shall I do?" Ok, you are self reflective. What next?

Nope. My point is I'm not trying to solve all of our problems and framing it like I am is as ridiculous as some rando on the internet accusing me of not enjoying sex as some kind of bizarre cheap shot.

Unless that is a shaggy dog, then I don't get what it is doing in your comment.

Yes, affordable housing, we need it. No, no one has a clue on how to achieve it (except maybe stop having children like in Japan or maybe become a city state like Singapore and have the government sell to everyone in the middle class an affordable flat).

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#214

Post by DoreenMichele »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #213
DoreenMichele wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. My point is I'm not trying to solve all of our problems and framing it like I am is as ridiculous as some rando on the internet accusing me of not enjoying sex as some kind of bizarre cheap shot.

Unless that is a shaggy dog, then I don't get what it is doing in your comment. Yes, affordable housing, we need it. No, no one has a clue on how to achieve it (except maybe stop having children like in Japan or maybe become a city state like Singapore and have the government sell to everyone in the middle class an affordable flat).

I have a clue on how to achieve it. But no one is listening to me.

Possibly because I'm a woman and everyone thinks I'm only good for sex and will jump on any chance to comment on sex at me while shooting down or ignoring everything else I say much of the time.

And don't claim it's because I brought it up. The expectation that men can comment on sex and women can't without inviting social nonsense is a sexist assumption.

I've studied housing issues. I blog about housing issues. Etc.

I think I'm done here. This entire conversation has been a profound waste of my time today.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#215

Post by tootie »

wonderwonder wrote: post #201
tootie wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's both speculative and illogical. Police don't prevent crime. They can only arrest after the fact. And that's only if they catch them. And police did not withdraw from anywhere. No city defunded police. The defund movement was predicated on the fact that police are ineffective at preventing crime. That economics plays a much bigger role. Employment in places like NYC took much longer to recover because so many j…

Police and empowered prosecutors prevent crime. Remove a criminal from society and they will not commit a crime again. The broken window theory is true, arrest and prosecute minor crimes to prevent larger ones. Perfect example is Jordan Neely who was killed in NYC. He was arrested 40+ times for assault and the prosecutor kept letting him out to continue to terrorize the population. Eventually it ended the only way it…

You're piling speculation on speculation. Broken Windows has never held up to scrutiny. Neely served jail time for his assault charges and was known to be severely mentally ill. Witnesses also all confirmed he did not attack anyone on the train. DAs and police do their jobs appropriately. You sound like a conservative media bubble denizen who has never been near a city.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#216

Post by scoofy »

shockeychap wrote: post #194
scoofy wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about people looking at $1,500+/month rent with multiple roommates... if they're lucky, for the rest of their lives. That is not offering people a future. There is no viable path to prosperity. There is no path for lower-class folks to achieve a private residence with a spouse. When these people increase productivity, rents will capture that wealth. Why should people play by these rules? A tiny condo in…

I don't disagree that SF has a major problem with housing affordability. I also think that problem was self-imposed by the use of restrictive zoning and ordinances that made it nearly impossible to construct high-density housing of any kind. (Look at Bob Tillman's struggle as one example.) I also think this conduct by state and local governments are hypocritical, odious, and disgusting. That said, I also don't see ho…

>That said, I also don't see how these things can justify one's decisions to steal from others in the same place. At the very least

When the system is literally rigged against you with things like... and I can't stress this enough... literal inherited tax advantages. Again, I think it's hard to argue that the legal system isn't bordering on tyranny.

Thankfully we can already see changes moving forward at the state level, but I see the increases in property crime as something akin to the beginnings of a type of political revolution.

I live in this area. I am quite well off. It's still quite difficult for even me to find or afford a place to live.

>Within a few hundred miles of SF are tons of options.

This is just ridiculous. There aren't any serious economic opportunities 100 miles from SF. If someone is trying to make their way through life as dishwasher, expecting them to travel 200 miles per day is an absurdity.

I want to be very clear here, I'm not a bleeding heart. I'm just saying, we look back at the great depression, we see hoovervilles. We are living through an extended post-depression era where we never had a New Deal or WW2 to give jobs and homes to the less well off. Instead they turned to opiates and meth, and this is what happens.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#217

Post by seanmcdirmid »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #214
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless that is a shaggy dog, then I don't get what it is doing in your comment. Yes, affordable housing, we need it. No, no one has a clue on how to achieve it (except maybe stop having children like in Japan or maybe become a city state like Singapore and have the government sell to everyone in the middle class an affordable flat).

I have a clue on how to achieve it. But no one is listening to me. Possibly because I'm a woman and everyone thinks I'm only good for sex and will jump on any chance to comment on sex at me while shooting down or ignoring everything else I say much of the time. And don't claim it's because I brought it up. The expectation that men can comment on sex and women can't without inviting social nonsense is a sexist assumpt…

I had no idea about your gender, nor did I think about what your gender might be while I was replying to your comment. That's why I thought why those comments were just distractions in the conversation. I don't see how gender should have been relevant in this conversation at all, and I still see the comment as a shaggy dog.

But, ya, I also agree that this is conversation is a waste of time.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#218

Post by dogmayor »

mywittyname wrote: post #145
dogmayor wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't get "briefly detained and released the next day" if you're caught doing the same thing every other night. And the sentence you receive in the end will be far more severe than if you only committed the one initial offense. Penalties and fines will likely erase any money you made on other nights. And oh maybe an investigation is opened to find out who has taken all these scooters, now that 50% of the time you…

Assuming the police care -- which is unlikely unless you're important. More and more, it feels like police largely care about crimes that generate revenue for them, so drug & (select) traffic enforcement. And the odd harassing people if a venue hires them for "security" at $250/hr. Letting "real" crime go is apparently a good way to get more funding for the department. Every time I go to vote there's another measure…

Agreed. PDs are rackets, and there is far too little interest paid to local government matters. But selective policing is on the police, not the prosecutors.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#219

Post by wonderwonder »

tootie wrote: post #215
wonderwonder wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police and empowered prosecutors prevent crime. Remove a criminal from society and they will not commit a crime again. The broken window theory is true, arrest and prosecute minor crimes to prevent larger ones. Perfect example is Jordan Neely who was killed in NYC. He was arrested 40+ times for assault and the prosecutor kept letting him out to continue to terrorize the population. Eventually it ended the only way it…

You're piling speculation on speculation. Broken Windows has never held up to scrutiny. Neely served jail time for his assault charges and was known to be severely mentally ill. Witnesses also all confirmed he did not attack anyone on the train. DAs and police do their jobs appropriately. You sound like a conservative media bubble denizen who has never been near a city.

"You sound like a conservative media bubble denizen who has never been near a city." :)

voted Dem my entire life (mid 40s) Just realized it doesn't make sense to do so anymore so switched sides a couple years ago. I've lived and worked downtown in a large city for a decade. Drive past addicts every day collapsed in the street that should be in jail for their own benefit and that of others.

You wont admit it but if they took 1% of society and put them in prison we would live in a utopia.

Re: San Francisco: An Elitist Bubble Ignoring a Crime Epidemic?

#220

Post by jakelazaroff »

JamesBarney wrote: post #205
jakelazaroff wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if we built a ton of free and low-cost housing, created a public healthcare system and made it easier for struggling people to get welfare assistance for staples like food and clothing?

> What if we built a ton of free and low-cost housing? Lets imagine homeless people are 3x more likely to commit a crime than the housed. Currently 1 in 800 people are homeless. If you eliminated the homelessness problem you'd end up with less than an even 1% reduction in crime. > Created a public healthcare system? Most crime is committed by young people who have very limited healthcare needs. > made it easier for s…

> Those might all be nice things for a society to provide, but it isn't going to reduce the crime rate.

Sure, because this whole conversation very intentionally ignores the biggest drivers of the crime rate. Most crime is committed by people the “law and order” crowd has no interest in going after. If we really want to make a dent in the crime rate, we should tackle things like wage theft and police misconduct and civil asset forfeiture.

Wait — that last one’s not actually a crime, because crime is socially constructed and we’ve decided that stealing is okay if the right people do it. The entire point of this “crime wave” project is to find ways to criminalize people we as a society don’t like.

Post reply on HN