San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide • Hacker News Board

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#151

Post by kerkeslager » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #125

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…

Until SF becomes more willing to regulate companies... Alternatively, SF (and the rest of the world) could stop accepting lobbying as an acceptable practice, and your loop breaks. ;) Lobbying is the problem. Asking for more regulations when there are still opportunities for the big companies to get what they want through lobbying will never solve the problem.

I think we're in agreement; I view anti-lobbying regulation as a form of regulation. :)

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#152

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #131

asdf21 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think this issue / attitude is a major problem with the US. Both Detroit and Baltimore have over 600k people living there, a lot of whom don't have the option to just pack up and go. To claim the cities are dead is a disservice to the very real adults and children living there. If the nation dropped its war on drugs and instead waged a war on poverty those cities would be able to thrive in a generation or two.

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#153

Post by tntn » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #122

tntn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Good criticism of my post. Here's a more extensive list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_city . So when the author writes "they rarely die" it seems to me like the author has a serious historical blind spot. But why do we need to only talk about "great cities?" Why aren't all the "ghost towns" of the wild west a good enough example?

Because people tend to distinguish between "cities" and "towns." There are a lot of ghost towns, but few ghost cities. Once a settlement becomes large enough to be called a city, it is rare for it to die.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#154

Post by jdlyga » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

dawhizkid wrote: post #10

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…

Wow, human feces. I've literally never seen that in New York, and I thought we were the dirty ones.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#155

Post by KirinDave » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

dawhizkid wrote: post #60

closeparen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to dismiss this completely, but there are neighborhoods with lots of kids around. SOMA just isn’t one of them.

SF has one of the lowest % of kids of any major US city. https://www.sfgate.com/mommyfiles/article/Many-families-leav...

What's curious: this stat actually fails to represent quite how many parents from more normal surroudning communities bring their kids into SF because of the co-op school opportunities there. SF has done a lot of work to make co-op schools work, so lots of people with kids under 9 (myself included) find outright superior education options by bringing our kids into SF. It does involve putting parent hours towards the school, but many people with young kids are already geared for less raw hours towards work (either through superior economic resources or local support; everyone who can't hack it relies purely on the public systems).

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#156

Post by vowelless » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

sbzodnsbd wrote: post #66

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?

A black friend of mine lived in Savanah, ATL, NYC and in the Midwest. She said that you find just as many racists everywhere, but she “appreciates” the (urban) Southern racists ones more because they don’t try to hide, so she knows where she stands.

I completely agree with her. Some of the worst racism I experienced was passive aggressive type on the west coast. It made me leave my job and move back to the east coast.

Some of the best racism I received was in your face “sand n-word” type — it was easier to digest and joke about after the fact.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#157

Post by wccrawford » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

sbzodnsbd wrote: post #66

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?

A black friend of mine lived in Savanah, ATL, NYC and in the Midwest. She said that you find just as many racists everywhere, but she “appreciates” the (urban) Southern racists ones more because they don’t try to hide, so she knows where she stands.

I have to wonder... Do all the southern racists hide it less... Or are there so many blatant racists that the coy ones are a lot harder to detect?

I'm sure there are plenty of racists everywhere, but I do find it hard to believe that there aren't more percentage-wise in the south.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#158

Post by boringg » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

dawhizkid wrote: post #142

rib3ye wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived here for 20 years, I can say things are a great deal better than they were before the Downtown tech explosion that happened 10 years ago. Market was filled with pushers you would only now only see on 6th St, and I literally saw a drive-by shooting (resulting in murder) on Mission at 19th (Beauty Bar). Both of those things are unthinkable today. I feel like people are forgetting how bad things use to be.…

There was a double murder in Fillmore 2-3 weeks ago during a busy Sat night.

That's only one.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#159

Post by freehunter » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #127

freehunter wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those cities were more like nations and the city fell when the civilization did. If we're using Ur and Babylon in reference to the complete abandonment of SF, we would need the entire American nation to collapse and be abandoned as well. Without that, SF will "die" the way Rome did or the way Detroit did. Not the way Ur or Babylon did.

I'm sorry, I should have provided more context. Here's a list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_city that includes the kinds of cities I'm thinking of. Many of these cities declined and depopulated due to climate change, economic factors, etc. Ie the same kinds of factors that are affecting SF and Detroit right now. Cities don't just die because their nation falls.

How many of those were from post-industrial societies in a stable developed nation with a population of nearly a million people supporting a metro area of nearly 10 million people?

Because what I'm seeing on that list is ghost towns, nomadic civilizations, or a complete civilization collapse. What I don't see is a city the size of San Fransisco in a civilization as powerful as the United States of America completely collapsing and disappearing from the face of the planet like Ur or Babylon.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#160

Post by W-Stool » Tue, Apr 09, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

jdlyga wrote: post #154

dawhizkid wrote: post #10

Having lived in SF for a number of years now, I 100% agree that SF is just dystopian as hell. Trash everywhere downtown, human feces/needles/smell of urine all over downtown & SOMA, depressing mix of aggressive and zombie-like homeless, very few kids/families, very few minorities (especially African-Americans), barely functioning public transportation system, high rents forcing six-figure earners to live with 2 roomm…

Wow, human feces. I've literally never seen that in New York, and I thought we were the dirty ones.

I spent a few days in NYC recently and I could not believe how clean the city was compared to SF. The difference, at least where I explored, was amazing.