70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll • Hacker News Board

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#161

Post by Consultant32452 » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:16 AM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #140

Consultant32452 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory is that if people like you are forced to see the homeless you’ll be more willing to fund helping them. Tuck those homeless into shelters and you’ll forget. The problem is people with options leave. They might be willing to help but not at the cost of their own children. The thing 2020 taught me is 90% of the population considers me an acceptable sacrifice. I’m going to have to live with that now and act ac…

Don’t homeless shelters help the homeless… by giving them shelter?

Yea. But the people running the system don’t want them all in shelters. They want them on the street making you feel unsafe and uncomfortable.

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#162

Post by astrange » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:16 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #157

astrange wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things, like housing, are so expensive that canceling other projects wouldn't actually get them done. The solution is to find ways to make them cheaper. Other things, like education, are actually unrelated because they're literally different tax districts (eg property vs sales tax) applied to different people. In that case you can't vote on defund + fund at the same time. But also, some people just don't like ta…

It turns out housing isn't actually that expensive to provide (SF's unusual housing market aside, for a moment), and solves an enormous number of these problems on its own. https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...

Yes, I agree. Putting homeless people in houses is the most effective thing you can do for them. (sometimes this means forcing them, unfortunately, but it works)

And many people think homeless people ended up there by doing too many drugs or other moral failures, but it's more like being homeless is really bad for your mental health and there's nothing else to do.

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#163

Post by throwaway316943 » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:18 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #142

throwaway316943 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that addressing underlying causes would reduce those problems but it would take decades even if we went all in on fixing those things. What exactly do we do about them in the mean time?

Well, that's why the slogan's not "defund the police immediately ", I guess. That it'd take a while to make significant progress isn't a reason not to start.

Many people seem to take it to mean that. It even seems like some are trying to implement it that way. Catchy slogans tend to result in shitty implementations.

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#164

Post by desine » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:18 AM UTC

jboy55 wrote: post #144

desine wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's other differences between Poland and the United States, but only some of them are things you can vote on.

I think that's a dog whistle, but please enumerate them.

>I think that's a dog whistle

By today's standards? Yeah, it probably is. I don't even care anymore though. Homogenous societies have fewer problems of inequality, less crime, more social cohesion. We've known this since Aristotle in Greece, since Marcus Aurelias in Rome, and probably with some other writers I can't think of in between then and now.

It's not a statement of any one group being better than another.

It's not a statement that I don't enjoy many aspects of our diverse society.

It's merely a rebuttal to your argument.

Cancel me as you see fit.

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#165

Post by dougmwne » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

youmustbeblind wrote: post #154

dougmwne wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a block away from it in Praga. There are a handful of drunks, but I understand this is the worst area of the city, but I was interested in getting to know the other side of the Vistula. I haven't seen any rough sleeping or open air drug use near me. Very little public drinking over here (unlike all the students on the other side of the river). Praga has nothing on the Tenderloin. Elsewhere in the city, I saw pus…

Fair play, might of changed with covid, the many times I went I always thought they should do more for them, same in Katowice, Lodz, etc.. perhaps care has stepped up a bit, always felt safe but that's probably due to male and size. You couldn't move for pushy beggars in 2019

I really think there must have been a recent push to clean things up then based on what you and some friends here have said. I think the Mayor wants to run for President again and one of the richest persons in Poland is making a huge investment in Port Praski a few blocks from here, so they might want a guaranteed ROI, drunks be damned.

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#166

Post by chrisseaton » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:23 AM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #147

chrisseaton wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is your default that the road belongs to the car in the first place? Why should people need to stick to limited spaces 'designated' for them? How do you think we manage it in the UK without these laws and why do you think our road-death rate is lower?

Cars aren’t fully autonomous yet. There are people in those cars who have just as much right to tax payer funded roads while in a car as they do on their feet. The deciding factor should be if the law contributes to civil order, or reduces injury.

> There are people in those cars who have just as much right to tax payer funded roads while in a car as they do on their feet.

But you want to ban the pedestrians from the road - you don’t want ‘just as much right’ to the road - you want more right to it. You want the entire length of a block and think pedestrians should just have tiny crossing points.

> The deciding factor should be if the law contributes to civil order, or reduces injury.

But it doesn’t - we do fine without it in the UK.

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#167

Post by astrange » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #155

astrange wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not. They're the same thing, the slogan was invented by police abolitionists. https://twitter.com/BlackVisionsMN/status/126614972305388339... https://twitter.com/sunrisemvmt/status/1279148959139758080 It actually makes more sense this way, the confusion is when people who don't want to abolish the police still want to defund them.

"Some activists want both things means they can't be distinct proposals" is like claiming the FSF and libertarians are the same group because there's a lot overlap.

The issue is that "defund" would actually work for the original activists' goals (abolishment), so I respect it even if I'm not sure what the world would be like after it.

I don't think it helps anyone else's goals though. So I think they're mistaken to take it up. Also, it's easy to fight against (because your opponents can point to the abolitionists) and it makes you look bad to normal people (most people in the US like the police, including minorities, who are actually more socially conservative than white people).

To stop misconduct a better message would be to define those people as "not the police" by, like, making it possible to fire them.

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#168

Post by knownjorbist » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

foobar33333 wrote: post #42

ivalm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the issue is that there is a tragedy of commons, as SF increases resources for homeless more and more homeless flock to the city thus requiring ever increasing amount of resources. I am honestly not sure what to do other than support more nationwide solutions.

Most places deal with this via border restrictions. One country with better welfare does not allow themselves to be flooded with people from other countries. This problem can not be solved by one city without the ability to restrict movement.

Border restrictions are a recent phenomenon.

If you care about free markets or a smaller state, but not the free movement of labor at the same time, you are holding hypocritical beliefs.

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#169

Post by username90 » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

mwkaufma wrote: post #148

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be a bit more specific about what you mean? By itself, that drive-by comment doesn't tell us much...

There is no rise in crime, but people polled say they believe there is. It's a textbook case of Chomsky's manufactured consent phenomena. It's not a drive-by comment, it's simply concise.

Crime reported to police is fairly constant regardless of crime levels. As crime goes up people just stop reporting minor things that the police now no longer has time to handle, making the number reports not change. This makes the crime maps fairly useless, you'd think that Switzerland and Chicago has similar levels of theft since the amount of crime reports are the same, yet Switzerland is as safe a place can get while Chicago is a notorious crime area.

Therefore hard stats like "homicide rate" or soft stats like "perceived crime" are the only ones that matters.

Re: 70% of San Francisco residents say quality of life has declined: poll

#170

Post by evanelias » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 1:35 AM UTC

creamytaco wrote: post #103

api wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this changing the subject? Or are you implying a connection? There are many major cities in the US that are socially fairly liberal and nowhere near as dysfunctional as SF. Actually most urban areas in the US are pretty accepting even in areas like the Midwest and the South. If you are in a city you are generally fine. Poland could become much more tolerant and accepting of differences without becoming an open…

Maybe not as dysfunctional as SF, but clearly there is severe social dysfunction in a lot of the cities run by liberals: Oakland, Seattle, Portland, NYC, Detroit, DC, Minneapolis. Allowing for some variation, at what point does one begin to blame the policies and ideologies behind those policies, that are substantially similar across the board?

What "severe social dysfunction" are you referring to in, say, NYC or DC?

Among the 10 most populous US cities, not a single one currently has a Republican mayor. Among the top 25, there are only 2 with Republican mayors: Jacksonville, FL and Fort Worth, TX.

Do you honestly believe that most of the other 23 largest cities in the country have severe social dysfunction? Do you honestly believe that Jacksonville and Fort Worth are substantially more functional urban societies?