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San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

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Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#161

Post by bilbo0s »

rayiner wrote: post #110
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 o…

I lived in Houston and the surrounding areas for a good long time. (Three of four hurricanes.) I would argue that what you left out is the fact that Eastern Texas has a more evenly distributed racial makeup than places like the Bay Area. Yes, maybe they have some hispanics and blacks in the Bay Area, but it's not quite like a place like Harris county for instance where you literally could have an even mix of all three. Along with a large foreign contingent of arabs, asians, and africans. (I would even bet that Harris county along with a surprising amount of eastern texas is actually majority minority. I'm not sure, but it sure seems like it.)

At any rate, if you tried to do business the way they do it elsewhere as a retailer or restaurant, you'd go under. There is just not the population numbers that would allow you to do that. This is not to say you don't have areas that make the San Fran model work. (Just visit Rice Village if you want a sort of "authentic white/asian elitist experience".) But most businesses are going to need to be open to serving everyone. Because like I said, it really did seem like most of the people, at least in Houston area, were either hispanic or black.

(I'll admit that my view of Houston was coming from the perspective of a small town Wisconsin farm boy type. So it's entirely possible that Houston is not majority minority. But it really did seem like it to me.)

EDIT:

Just looked it up. Harris county, and a lot of east texas is, indeed, majority minority. It's about 60% black and hispanic. It's about 31% white. So, yeah, it wasn't just my imagination or my upbringing.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#162

Post by irq11 »

rib3ye wrote: post #138
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…

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.…

I lived there ten years ago, too. You’re remembering selectively.

Yes, the Mission has gentrified and mid-market is a bit cleaner. But now there are widespread homeless camps, and open defecation and needles (formerly isolated to certain neighborhoods) are everywhere. And it’s not as if the Mission crime has gone away - it’s just further south now.

Property crime is up; even in SOMA, broken car windows were an occasional thing. Now it’s every day. Twin Peaks overlook is a robbery hotspot, and some guy was shot and killed for a camera up there not too long ago.

If you only ever visit the gentrified tech zones of SF, you’d be excused for thinking things have improved, but there’s no way to argue about it objectively.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#163

Post by kerkeslager »

rayiner wrote: post #110
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 o…

There are numerous factors in play, and I don't think you can conclude that regulation is the only factor in play here. Texas is dealing with a much greater supply/demand ratio of a key resource: land. Given a wealth of resources, nearly any system would work--that doesn't mean the system is better.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#164

Post by Redoubts »

Finnucane wrote: post #39
api wrote: post #13

San Francisco is a bonsai kitten. It wants to grow into a major world city like NYC, LA, or Tokyo, but its older residents are steadfastly opposed and want to keep it in a jar so it stays cute. The result is a painful deformed mess. I don't really think city planning boards can control how cities grow. A city is a living thing. If it "wants" to grow, let it grow. If it doesn't, I don't think it can be forced. Detroit…

I've lived in New York. Why would anyone want San Francisco to become like that? Is NYC cheap, clean, free of homeless people? No, it is crowded, smelly, expensive, and only livable for the extremely wealthy.

> I've lived in New York. Why would anyone want San Francisco to become like that?

Yeah, I'd hate for SF to be a world class city.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#165

Post by dustinmoris »

szbalint wrote: post #24

It's weird that technology oriented people see code/IT in terms of infrastructure, but too little from a city as such. I'm living in Vienna, Austria which is a city consistently rated to be in the top 5 most livable cities by multiple independent evaluations. How did that happen? A strong sense of ownership and infrastructure thinking over a _century_. Just to mention the obvious, property prices do not exist in a va…

I'm originally from Vienna too and now living in London and I can see the differences very well, but the main reason why Vienna is rated so highly is because the population has remained mostly consistent for a long period of time.

However, Vienna isn't without its faults. In Vienna you have a huge segregation between better and worse off people. You have a lot of low income people living in places like the 10th district and people in higher income brackets living in Doebling for example. This is counter productive in the long run as it will slowly create "ghettos" and mono cultures within the city. In London the wealth gap is much higher than in Vienna and yet people live more closely together. You can walk down a millionaires street one second and in the next moment be surrounded by council housing. In my opinion this is much better, as it prevents places from turning into ghettos and helps to keep the city in a sane state. There is a lot of gentrification happening in some parts of London too, but this is more of a side effect of the consistent growth rather than segregation.

The other problem which I see is that the average person in Vienna does not own any property. Most people are in rental properties for most of their lives and they mostly rely on a future state pension in order to retire. To me this is a fragile system, because it forces the country/makes it reliant on a highly taxed middle class. It is extremely difficult to prosper from middle class to being rich in Vienna - for the better or worse.

The entry barrier to creating a new company and the huge amount of regulation also makes it extremely unfriendly for startups and innovation.

Long story short, socialist cities in a capitalist Western country only thrive as long as the population is small enough and stable for a long period of time. It takes many years to build new schools, hospitals, GPs, train lines and bus routes, whereas it takes only a few weeks for an individual family to settle in a new place. If a city undergoes a massive growth in population then it doesn't even matter if everyone who moves into the city is a hard working high tax paying person, because the new money which they bring in will not be able to keep up with building the necessary infrastructure to comfortably accommodate everyone. It will take decades to catch up and only if there ever will be a slow down of growth, otherwise it will be a never ending chase.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#166

Post by boringg »

asveikau wrote: post #53
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…

> very few kids/families, I am raising my kids here and disagree with your assessment. There is a pretty good community of families here.

Census is dated. I can vouch there are a lot more families now in the city. Hospital baby birthing rooms are filling up - there is a legit surge of babies in the city right now.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#167

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#168

Post by rayiner »

W-Stool wrote: post #160
jdlyga wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

New York is filthy. Try visiting Chicago sometime.

Re: San Francisco’s Slow-Motion Suicide

#170

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

notsofastbuddy wrote: post #100
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…

Your examples are more than 2000 years old.

That was for dramatic effect, if you will ;). SF isn't exactly a legendary human habitation like Ur or Babylon. There are thousands of cities that have come and gone since Ur and Babylon, just because they stopped "making sense" their inhabitants.
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