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Comment by pstuart | Hacker News Reader

Indeed. Is it really Orwellian to not want a homeless encampment in front of your business?

The author should stick to reviewing music itself, and stop whining about the "abuse" of same.

There’s a weird phenomenon in life, and especially the arts, that people with a certain level of real or perceived expertise/accomplishment sometimes feel a sense of ownership over a medium. Their aesthetics start to seem a bit less like something personal, and more like what they’d enforce during a period of martial law. In the U.K. there’s a group that’s fanatically against elevator music. Oh, fair enough, but one of their leaders is against music not being performed live. He’s taken his love and appreciation of something and turned it into a burden.

My personal guess is that in some fields expertise is ultimately self-justifying. What is art after all? Whatever notable artists and critics and dealers say it is. Try that same shit in software, and you’ll lose your job. At some point the artistic type can be so thoroughly cut off from challenge to their beliefs that they feel free to impose them on society without much reflection.

It's the mission statement, not the intention, that's described as Orwellian. "Delivering services beyond those the City of San Francisco can provide" is a really weird way to say "chasing off homeless people and delinquents."

I don't find it so. Opaque, but that is what they are doing: addressing a key problem their constituents have.

It's a tough situation and a rather benign solution to the problem immediately at hand (ignoring solving the homeless problem itself).

Disclaimer: my mother was one of those homeless people in the area, so I have some bias here.

That's not what the article said.

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