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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

Crime and gang activity is increasing, especially in prisons where every yard is now active. Local street gangs sets have multiplied with the influx of people (many homeless), drugs, welfare and larger organized crime operations. Also recent policies decriminalized many acts and have led to rampant street crime in areas like SF and LA.

CA provides sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, along with driver licenses, free healthcare and other benefits paid for by tax-paying citizens. Traffic is terrible because of a lack of any other alternatives that are routinely defunded, destroyed and dismissed from high-speed rail to bus lines to ridesharing.

CA is now worse than before. It's also worse than many other places. Just because 1 facet is better than somewhere else doesn't impact the objective collective decline. Again, please name 10 things that have gotten better in CA over the last decade if you can.

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This description of California reads like a description that somebody that has never been in California but watches fox news would give.

Agreed. There's a lot of boogeymen in there.

Do you live here? What area?

I've been a California resident for over 20 years. Feel free to come down to LA and I'll walk you through the actual streets from downtown to Inglewood. We can even visit a few prisons where I can introduce you to people on both sides of the law, visit the various homeless areas, and talk to the gang task force and DEA agents. Maybe we can also go down to the border and see how things are.

Or perhaps are you too used to a single media perspective and have little experience with the reality on the ground?

I've lived in California all my life which is over 40 years now, everywhere from LA/Sand Diego to Sacramento, in the bay now. I'm afraid I seem to have more California experience than you.

I'm also from a multi-racial family with rich African American roots and spent many summers and trips with my family who mostly live in Lynwood/Compton (no these aren't scary names to me, just places with fond memories of summers spent with cousins).

> Or perhaps are you too used to a single media perspective

I don't get my perspective from media. I get it from living.

Life-long Californian as well.

There is such a high degree of historical segregation in the state, that sheltered white folks definitely do have a big shock when they, say, hop onto the Purple Line to visit Watts Towers. It's just so different, and I think people don't know how to process it since they have no frame of reference.

It's a shame, because historically African American parts of Los Angeles have a wonderfully rich history that is much more than just 'Crips and Bloods.'

Glad to hear your perspective.

Great, so you know the area. What about the experience with the people then? Because that's where the perspective comes from, not the location. If you haven't spent much time with the homeless, criminal, and their countering police and federal agencies here then you don't actually have the experience.

But since you have such a long history, what part of my previous comments are you disagreeing with? Care to tell us what in CA has improved over this last decade?

I don't have a stake in this but I am aware from my own personal experiences that we all tend to overfit based on our lived experiences.

The border sounds wonderful! Great suggestion!

Cross at San Ysidro, grab lunch at Tacos El Franc and some craft beers at Border X Brewing in Tijuana. Visit CECUT, navigate the traffic circle around Las Tijeras for a real Latin American driving experience, and pick up a torta and some chapulines at Mercado Hidalgo, and then head over to Tecate for a relaxing stroll around the zocalo and a visit to the brewery. Or even south to wine country, and beautiful Ensenada where I've spend many weekends wandering around on-foot exploring by myself.

The beaches in Ensenada are gorgeous and don't get the crowds of the So Cal beaches. I recommend the Ultramarino bar for craft beer and live local music (mostly rock), and if you can find them (it's a very walkable city), the fish taco stand across the street from the birria stand (you'll know it when you find it) is where my family and I head straight-for when we enter the city limits. If you're just looking to hang out and get some work done with your laptop there are several good hipster coffee shops with wifi.

If you're really, really fancy, Verde y Crema in Tijuana is pretty cool (I've only eaten there once, it's a little pricey for me). Tijuana also has a bunch of hipster bars, that are what I imagine SF looking like back when Lenny Bruce was doing shows (Try a big 'ol caguama of Indio beer at El Tigre - It's walkable from the San Ysidro pedestrian crossing).

We could even do the biannual Rosarito to Ensenada bike ride when things open up again after COVID. Hundreds of people turn out, they let you cycle along the toll road, and it's very family-friendly. That Tijuana-to-Ensenada toll road drive is my favorite coastal drive, only second to California 1.

Aw hell, maybe we could even go to a Xolos game.

A visit to the border sounds just wonderful right now, and I can't wait until we get the vaccine out so I can start heading down every weekend again.

So you had some tacos and craft beers in hipster cafes and and now understand drugs, homeless, cartels and criminal activity along the border? What is the point of your comment?

Maybe you should visit scenes like these to get an understanding of the topic discussed: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-24/cartel-c...

Yep, it's sad that we are selling all of that ammunition into Mexico. The fact that the United States is supplying the cartels with military-grade weapons and ammunition is a tragedy, and my heart goes out to the Mexicans whose lives have been ripped apart by weapons and ammunition imported into the country from the United States.

The drugs coming this way I couldn't give less of a shit about. I'm pro-decriminalization anyway.

I hope that doesn't stop anyone from spending time in Baja, California. It is truly one of the hidden gems of the area. The people are wonderful, and the region has a lot to offer. Your least pleasant experience will be dealing with US Customs and Border protection on the way back in. Those people have a real stick up their ass.

To add on to the understanding thing above, I did a master's in International Affairs with a focus on Latin American Politics and a special interest in the Drug War in Mexico at UCSD's school of Global Policy and Strategy. I took a class from David Shirk. My final GIS project was tracing narcotics trafficking routes up through Mexico. I know more about it than I want to. And yet, despite all that, I will talk anyone's ear off about the absolute wonders of Baja, California to anyone who will listen because it really is a special place.

I guess border patrol and customs can be mean. They do save the most lives on the border while dealing with some truly evil people but sure, they can improve their approach to tourists and well-meaning citizens.

As for the rest, yes the situation complicated, although I'm not sure what the people of Baja and its tourism have to do with the state of California and its conditions. Were you using this to refute any of my previous comments or something else?

No, no I'm not trying to refute anything. You were just being very, very negative, and if you read any of my other comments I have a deep passion for the southern part of California extending down into Baja, California.

This state has massive problems that do come with its massive population and economy. But it is also a truly special place with a totally unique geography, a rich, diverse culture, a robust economy, and one of the best public university systems on the planet.

I hate it when people start on the 'California is falling apart' train, because it's not. The state has massive problems. Yes, I've walked alone south of Los Angeles street recently. I've seen the used needles scattered on the Gold Line tracks. But that is just one tiny part of what is a truly magical place. For all of that, there's Joshua Tree, and Grand Central Market, and Lake Sabrina, and the quiet postwar bungalows of San Diego, and the Sutro Tower poking out of the fog, and Coronado island, and the Griffith Park Observatory, and the Broad, and Big Bear Lake, and Kelso Dunes, and Telescope Peak, and the French Laundry, and Pappy and Harriet's.

California is falling apart in some places and booming in others. It's a big 'ol nuanced tapestry. That's how it goes when you have 40 million neighbors. But, I wandered around downtown Palm Springs this morning, and lemme tell ya San Jacinto has never looked more gorgeous. I was in Oklahoma two weeks ago, and man the first thing I did when my plane landed back in California was remind myself how fortunate I am to live here.

So if I understand your response to everyone in California in this thread: "Yes, but there are also bad things, and thus everything positive can be contemptuously dismissed."

You misunderstood then. The very first sentence in my first post: CA has gotten worse in every metric.

Of course positives exist, but they are few and decreasing. Unsurprisingly, nobody has yet to answer my repeated question to name 10 things that have gotten better over the last 10 years.

1. The Gold Line got extended out to Azusa.

2. Craft beer has continued to get better and better in San Diego.

3. The Black Mountain bouldering area has been more highly developed.

4. Shoshone got internet.

5. Grand Central Market got refurbished.

6. Angel's Flight is open again.

7. Modern Times got Black House on nitro (ok, so this belongs in 2, but it's just so good it deserves its own point.)

8. They re-did the 10 between Redlands and Cabazon.

9. The San Diego light rail got extended out to UCSD.

10. Pho came to 29 Palms (although the loss of Palm Kebab is deeply mourned).

11. Here's an extra one just for fun, Mira Mesa got an 85 Degrees. Hello sea salt coffee.

12. Oh, here's another one. They fixed the toll road between Rosarito and Ensenada where it got wiped out by a landslide, so it took like 40 minutes off the drive.

13. Wait, here's another one. They opened the CBX cross-border express in Otay, so you can fly cheap and direct from San Diego to Mexico City by just walking directly across the border into the Tijuana airport.

14. Oh, and the Sand to Snow National Monument got established.

15. California got three brand new medical schools as well.

16. Oh, and now you can fly in a P51 Mustang at the Palm Springs air museum (They have a C47 as well that is so cool. The sound of radial aircraft engines makes my knees weak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbc5OCU0s00 ...Just do it. Why haven't you done it yet? Hurry up and do it. My god...just listen to those engines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlpmHBgHBCg)

17. Marijuana also got recreationally legalized in the state.

18. Bodie remains the same, which in the grand scheme of things I consider a net positive.

19. The Broad opened in Downtown Los Angeles.

20. Oh gosh, I guess I'll round it out. The cops stopped hassling people over doing the Carrizo Canyon hike (to the largest wooden railroad trestle in the world) in Anza Borrego from Carrizo Gorge Road (the coolest route) along the railroad tracks. (If you do it, do yourself a favor and round the day off with a visit to the Arroyo Tapiado mud caves)

Cool California stuff from a Californian who spends their time doing cool California stuff instead of sitting around getting bummed out about statistics. Elon can have fun in Texas, no hard feelings.

This makes me want to check out Southern California more again once it's more feasible.

I'm up in Silicon Valley, and... would say some things have gotten better in 10 years. The craft beer explosion has definitely hit here, too, and even more so around Sacramento.

A terrific new tiki bar opened in Oakland (The Kon-Tiki) and multiple terrific new tiki bars opened in San Francisco (Pagan Idol, Last Rites, Zombie Village; Smuggler's Cove opened in 2009, so not technically within 10 years, but they're considered one of the best bars -- not just tiki bars -- in the world).

As much as San Franciscans like to dump on San Jose, I think downtown San Jose has actually gotten pretty cool in a lot of respects, and that's entirely in the last decade.

There's a fair number of other smaller towns scattered around the Bay Area which are seeing some silver linings of gentrification.

I could probably come up with a more detailed list, but despite some very real downsides, particularly economic -- real estate prices really are out of control (and there is no One Single Cause to point to, despite a lot of folks trying); homelessness has become a genuine epidemic -- it's still a great place to be, and it's hard for me to think of another place in America where I'd genuinely rather be. (This is distinct from "another place I'd still like.")

I guess every place is jam-packed with cool stuff if you're the kind of person who actively goes out and hunts for cool stuff. I could go on-and-on about So-Cal, but I guess the die-hard Nor-Cal folks could do the same. I know I've blown a fair number of weekends at Morro Bay, the Monterey Bay aquarium, and wandering around The Mission. Haven't gotten around to San Jose yet. Maybe after this whole thing blows over. My buddy keeps trying to get me to go up for the Cherry Blossom festival.

I hadn't heard that tiki bars were a thing! That's pretty cool. Talk about a blast from the past.

With regards to real estate prices, that is one thing where I can really, really understand people's complaints. Even down in So-Cal you can see desert cabins on the market for $300k. I figured a bubble would burst at some point, but it hasn't so far. Maybe with more WFH folks who don't really want to be here can go somewhere that they can get more bang for their buck in terms of property, and the die-hard California folks can catch a break on real estate prices.

Cheers though! Good to hear from someone who isn't so down on California. It really is a cool place, and it's easy to take it for granted until you've spent some time in the Midwest.

Assuming it makes it through the pandemic, one of the original huge "tiki palace" type restaurants from the 1950s, Bali Hai, is in San Diego. There are some older ones in LA, but Bali Hai is more of an experience. (And actually has good drinks and food, from what I remember, unlike its closest surviving relative in San Francisco, the Tonga Room.)

I expected real estate prices to start going down, well, any year now, and they're definitely a drag on things. I'm likely to have to leave California in a year or so for family obligations; moving back a few years after that will prove difficult, I suspect, unless I find one of those "merely" $300K desert cabins!

Just the kind of disingenuous commentary that led to the policies that have turned the state into such a sad state of affairs. I'm glad you're fortunate enough to not realize the plight of so many others but clearly there's no discussion to be had here.

Yeah, if you don't spend your free time sitting in your apartment wringing your hands over statistics on a Silicon Valley startup incubator's message board, you are a terrible person who is totally disconnected from reality.

I was clearly being a bit snarky with my first response, but I'm going to be sincere now: you asked for people to list good things about California, and they can be summed up as "there are, despite the problems, still genuinely good things about the life one can have living in California." If none of those matter to you, so be it, but that doesn't make those things irrelevant, and mentioning them is not disingenuous.

And let's be real here: the policies that have driven California's economic woes date back to the 1970s (tax policy, rent control) or far, far longer (water and fire management), and many of those old policies were pushed into place because California has long been a place people genuinely want to be. If you think we're being obstinate in pushing back against you, it's perhaps because we think you're coming across like "California is NOTHING BUT A PIT OF STEAMING DESPAIR." No, sorry, it isn't. Even now, heading into 2021, it just isn't. The highs aren't going to balance out the lows for everybody, and yes, it would be disingenuous to pretend the lows aren't there -- but it's just as disingenuous to pretend the highs aren't, either.

I asked specifically for things that have gotten better.

The lack of people being able to answer yet type multiple paragraphs in response is extremely telling. If you can't even explain how quality-of-life has improved for yourself then what argument is there?

In Seattle, the official crime rate is down, but a lot of people have simply stopped reporting crimes because of lack of response. The actual crime rate is unknown. But the boarded up shop windows say a lot.

Crime has been coming down after prop 47 passed. This is such a common myth that I put the data into google sheets for these discussions.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QgrfJvfa8XaVm0MEfU4j...

...based on reporting of crime; reporting which is directly affected by the very proposition that completely reclassifies criminal acts, and in reality makes many of them go unpoliced and unreported.

Do you have any source on these claims? Cause these are typically hard to measure and I get suspicious when I read "Also recent policies decriminalized many acts and have led to rampant street crime" and other welfare correlation with crime. Happy to learn new things tho :)

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/An-exp...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-prop-47-shoplifting-th...

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/14/shoplifting-cal...

Why are you suspicious? When you stop arresting people for crimes and allow criminal behavior then you get more crime. This is so correlated as to be mathematical fact. This is no different to NY removing bail and then being surprised that criminals walk right out of the courthouse and back to their operations the same day while being further emboldened by these policies.

Many think there isn't much crime because they're usually sheltered from it by distance and police activity. It only takes a small gap to notice how bad conditions can get, and how quickly they deteriorate.

I'm suspicious because oftentimes things are more complex than a single source. These articles all point to a single prop (47) and seem to really point out to shoplifting. At the same time the homelessness increased 14% from 2016 to 2017. So is there more crime because of lawmaking or more crime because more desperate people with seemingly no other recourse? Not claiming to know better, but when it comes to social issue I'd stay away from claiming "mathematical" like correlations. Just my 2c :)

Illegal immigration should not be seen a failing of the state but as the abject failure of the federal government's immigration policies. Texas has, proportional to total population, more illegal immigrants than California and indeed any other state (at least by estimates). And guess what? They are getting free healthcare there and everywhere else too! If California's sanctuary policies are what's preventing the feds from deporting them, why does Texas, who is staunchly anti-illegal, continue to boast such a high illegal population? I'm actually proud that California gives some small humanity to the illegal immigrants here since the federal government has decided not to do the job that they decry as such a huge problem.

Also, it's really...strange...to place the blame for the fires or the weather at the foot of the state.

Does your point only work if you do "proportional to total population"? Why does that matter? Texas has El Paso which has major criminal drug and border activity. What does Texas have to do with California anyway?

Why is your only defense picking single skewed metrics and comparing it to separate places? Are you going to compare CA as a whole against TX or would that reveal your bias?

You still haven't answered what has gotten better in CA over the last 10 years so I'm going to end this here.

EDIT for your newly added last line: I thought about this and figured that HN readers would understand that "weather isn't great either" was in addition to the other issues and even specifically wrote "main cause" in the hopes that nobody would conflate the issues but here we are. But yes fires are mostly due to poor planning and infrastructure. Wildfires are the most preventable disaster but California has gotten to the point where insurance companies are proactively cancelling policies because of the fire damage.

In a thread about people fleeing from California to other states, particularly Texas, it's certainly an appropriate comparison. Even more so when you consider Texas is about the closest in size and population except with nearly opposite politics. Comparisons are useful when talking about something in relative terms. Absolute statistics don't mean much in the context of moving from one place to another. You can say California is terrible but within the realistic options, not really. I didn't present any skewed metrics.

You twice pointed out illegal immigrants with emphasis on their contrast to "tax-paying" citizens but failed to connect it to any deeper meaning. So what if they've given them driver's licenses or paid for children & young adult healthcare? At least they've made attempts to integrate them, ostensibly recognizing their hardships and to prevent them from engaging in crime or becoming homeless.

Wildfires are easily preventable if you draw the line at individuals not lighting shit on fire in arid areas or private companies better maintaining their infrastructure.

Then make the comparison. That involves all of the details, not just a single facet, so compare all of the conditions of CA against TX.

Instead of costing citizens, working with federal agencies to remove illegal immigrants would be the better outcome. That would do a much better job of actually eliminating crime instead of enabling it with driving privileges.

But... you still haven't answered what has gotten better in CA over the last 10 years. So let's call it done now.

Why should I? I can pick a single point out of your many with which to make a comparison without being obligated to compare them in their entirety and also without discrediting the entire comparison itself, whose purpose you seem to think is proving CA is the best state.

Would it? How do you know?

It's not that nothing has gotten better, but it's obviously relative. Everything has two sides.

- Marijuana was legalized and the convictions of thousands of inmates and priors adjusted accordingly, bettering the lives of thousands.

- Better protections and benefits for those here illegally.

- LGBT protections and rights under the law have greatly expanded.

- Worker protections from discrimination and predatory employers has expanded.

- Most types of crimes have decreased (and if you think things have been wrongly decriminalized, I'd be interested to hear what they are).

- Home values have probably doubled in that time without property tax increase.

- The tech industry continued to grow and employ more workers.

One could go on.

> CA provides sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, along with driver licenses, free healthcare and other benefits paid for by tax-paying citizens.

I see these easily debunked anti-immigration talking points regularly elsewhere on the web in right-wing circles, but I'm surprised to see it on HN.

I encourage anyone interested in the reality of immigration(including the common myths like the above) to either read Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, or watch a short talk on the subject here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6wGLhEW_uc

You didn't debunk anything but only posted some open-border ideology.

Feel free to actually respond to the specific policies that are affecting the state of California instead. Here's just 1 example to get you started: Illegal immigrants have free healthcare until the age of 26 in California, however tax-paying law-abiding citizens are fined if they don't have health insurance.

Why are you comparing a state policy with a federal one? Not to mention the mandate has been declawed and hasn't been enforced in at least a year or two.

It's a clear example of California's policies. There are many more but you have a strange defense of this state that I can only assume is due to being insulated from the experiences of millions and discounting them as false.

Citizens get the same free healthcare as undocumented immigrants.

Citizens are also, in fact, a greater tax burden than immigrants in general.

If you are just as poor as an illegal immigrant, you too can have free health care in california.

I posted some "open-borders ideology" from... noted anarcho-capitalist Bryan Caplan.

Indeed, I didn't attempt to debunk anything you said, other than point out they are easily debunked. You understand that these are two separate things, right?

I didn't say anything about being an anarcho-capitalist, just that it was open-borders ideology that has found zero working application in reality. You understand that these are two separate things, right?

If something is so easy to debunk, then please do so instead of just claiming it is and posting a non-sequitur.

I linked both a book and a talk that covers not only the specifics of the anti-immigration myths you raised by a great deal more on the subject.

To put it in briefly: Concerns over immigration's impact on labor markets and cultural assimilation are not only wildly sensationalized by not supported by any evidence in data or studies on the subject. They are a thin veneer over xenophobia.

The less immigration controls, the better off everyone(worldwide) is.

(I swear, the lump-of-labor fallacy is responsible for like 75% of this kind of populist tripe)

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