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San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

nationalreview.com

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Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#101

Post by zzzeek »

danso wrote: post #2

For those who are wondering, given the publisher, no, the essay is not simply a rant against rent-control: > True revolution would involve curbing the authority of the San Francisco Planning Commission. If Democrats in the city or in Sacramento actually cared about the poor or the environment (density is green), they would enact a land-value tax and establish a redistributive policy to align the interests of the city…

yeah this was odd, it goes into a typical "meh DEMOCRATS ruin everything" but then he calls for new taxes, a redistributive policy and however vague "strong government housing policy". Doesn't sound very free markety ?

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#102

Post by closeparen »

muzani wrote: post #89
Communitivity wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could so see a planet-bound version of the movie Elysium. The elite top 5% live in walled off fortresses, a la Aeon Flux's city, and have everything - while the rest live outside in a daily fight to live against a dystopian environment financially and economically. I don't think it's inevitable though, so the question is - how do we stop it? We have some of the brighter minds in tech on this forum, what are your th…

This isn't so far fetched. Much of the world lives in overpopulated dystopian slums. Kuala Lumpur is covered in walls, spikes and barbed wire. Rio de Janeiro walls off their favelas: https://assets.rbl.ms/14235733/980x.jpg The question with many cities is the same - is it worth saving? A lot of any city's downfall is often the fault of its older residents. Why do the poor stay? Why do the rich not focus on changing i…

San Francisco is nowhere near overpopulated. We have the tech and the money for perfectly civilized mid- and high-rise buildings. We just choose not to use it.

Postwar sprawl is grossly underpopulated which makes SF seem like Kowloon by comparison, but it’s still lower density than a standard European capital.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#103

Post by rtkwe »

dev_dull wrote: post #33

Here’s what I don’t get. The real struggle seems to always be against local governments and the residents. The residents all know how jacked up it is and have good ideas for fixes, but constantly butt heads against their city. Somehow everybody knows this, but votes in people who increase the power, scope, and responsibility of the local government which works against their interest?

Well to start saying everyone agrees on something is never right but it's also just that even if you know something needs to be done doesn't mean you agree/support a) the tax increases that would be needed to fund projects X/Y/Z and b) are willing to be the person that has to have their neighborhood change (NIMBYish).

Supporting affordable and dense housing development somewhere in the city is easy but then someone has to either agree to have it be them that sells their house and moves or get forced to by the city to have THEIR neighborhood change.

I also think there's also skepticism that allowing them actually meaningfully changes the renting situation because each individual project generally has mostly very expensive 'luxury' apartments. And the answer that 'well we'll basically have to cover all but the richest areas in these multistory dense apartment complexes to actually meaningfully impact the market' is understandably not satisfying to people who like the city they live in now.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#104

Post by KirinDave »

kerkeslager wrote: post #67

The elites of SF and many people on HN are caught in this loop: 1. Companies don't take personal responsibility when they do antisocial things, claiming they can't be blamed, since they are just following incentives in order to compete. 2. Companies follow incentives, and lobby government to incentivize the behaviors that make them the most money (even if those behaviors are antisocial). 3. Government, influenced by…

Pardon me, what?

SF has a minority of VCs caught in this loop. You're talking about the folks 40 (okay well it's a Tuesday at 7am, so 90) minutes south driving on 280.

To seamlessly conflate them is not my experience, and I have been working in SF for over 10 years in startups in various stages of creation or acquisition.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#105

Post by veryworried »

justin66 wrote: post #18
danso wrote: post #2

For those who are wondering, given the publisher, no, the essay is not simply a rant against rent-control: > True revolution would involve curbing the authority of the San Francisco Planning Commission. If Democrats in the city or in Sacramento actually cared about the poor or the environment (density is green), they would enact a land-value tax and establish a redistributive policy to align the interests of the city…

Is there anything in the world quite as dumb as this form of argument? If Democrats in the city or in Sacramento actually cared about the poor or the environment

The argument that Democrats are all the best people who always have a genuine interest for others and the environment has it beat.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#106

Post by asveikau »

diab0lic wrote: post #92
asveikau wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say something mathematically precise and then switch into a vague "very few". Take some walks around the parks and go people watching, you will get a better feel for what that "very few" can mean. 13% of 800,000 is about 100,000. Very few.

I was restating the line you quoted, and yes precisely SF has very few families compared to other cities in the US. A sister comment seems to indicate that even NYC is 24% (I haven't verified this.) So even for similar urbanization levels SF has very few families.

Go look around. There are a lot of kids.

My point isn't about in comparison to other cities, it is more, does a smaller rate really mean "few" and how much of a problem is it really. It's not the problem that the most negative naysayers will claim. Note I didn't say something like "affordability poses no problems for families". Because it does. But there is indeed a vibrant community.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#107

Post by tntn »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #78

The author lost me at > Cities are nearly immortal; though they decline, they rarely die. Cities great and small die all the time. Ur died, Babylon died. SF will die. Cities die when their purpose no longer justifies their expense. And the purpose of most cities is concentrating people to facilitate trade. But increasingly there’s nothing to do in SF, especially for the masses. If people don’t figure out something fo…

> die all the time

> ur died, Babylon died.

Your two examples are from 2-3 millennia ago. I would think if cities "die all the time," you would have more recent examples.

Maybe it proves the author correct that the first cities that came to mind are from 2500 years ago?

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#108

Post by scarmig »

dawhizkid wrote: post #32
atom-morgan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it that so much aggressive political rhetoric related to race and the tech industry is coming from this area if there are very few African Americans there in the first place? I live in Atlanta where the minority population is much higher all around and I don't get the sense at all that there's rampant racism or discrimination. Is this problem unique to the Bay Area or is this largely white guilt?

SF used to having a thriving black population. It has declined for decades due to exclusionary housing policies that have forced low/middle income earners out of the city, which disproportionately affects minorities. But to you question, diversity in tech has little to do with the ethnic makeup of the Bay Area. This is a transient town...people come here to work from all over and it's a completely separate issue.

That leaves out quite a lot.

Back in the mid-20th century, the Fillmore was a thriving black community, with around 50k black residents in a relatively central part of the city.

The city, however, considered it "blighted." Too many homeless people, too much drug use, too much property and violent crime.

And so the SF Redevelopment Agency decided to knock down a bunch of blighted Victorians, relocate the black population, and replace the Victorians with modern apartment buildings.

That was the beginning of the end of African American SF. Obviously some relocated to other areas of the city, but just as many left for other pastures.

Housing policies since then have hardly helped the situation, but YIMBY types need to understand the history of redevelopment both so they don't make the same mistakes and so they have empathy for when poor folks in a community are skeptical of their promised land.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#109

Post by asdf21 »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #78

The author lost me at > Cities are nearly immortal; though they decline, they rarely die. Cities great and small die all the time. Ur died, Babylon died. SF will die. Cities die when their purpose no longer justifies their expense. And the purpose of most cities is concentrating people to facilitate trade. But increasingly there’s nothing to do in SF, especially for the masses. If people don’t figure out something fo…

Exactly. Are Detroit and Baltimore dead? May as well be, for most intents and purposes.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#110

Post by rayiner »

kerkeslager wrote: post #67

The elites of SF and many people on HN are caught in this loop: 1. Companies don't take personal responsibility when they do antisocial things, claiming they can't be blamed, since they are just following incentives in order to compete. 2. Companies follow incentives, and lobby government to incentivize the behaviors that make them the most money (even if those behaviors are antisocial). 3. Government, influenced by…

Companies are not the problem, San Franciscans are the problem. By all accounts, Texas regulates companies less than California. But Texas is at the national average in cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate, despite being a majority-minority state, while California tops the charts in poverty: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevor.... As compared to California, Texas also has much higher rates of home ownership and lower unemployment for Hispanic people, with a lower Hispanic-White gap on both metrics. (The home ownership rate for Hispanics in Texas, 55%, is closer to that of Whites in California, 62%, than to Hispanics in California, 42%.)

I spent almost two weeks recently in east Texas. I was shocked. It was a more diverse and egalitarian place by a good margin than San Francisco or Palo Alto. Everyone shopping at the same stores and eating at the same restaurants. Versus my memory of Palo Alto, where you’d only see whites and Asians in one place, and Hispanic people over in East Palo Alto (or in service jobs). It’s the difference between a functional, integrated society and a broken one.

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