Hacker News Reader

Comment by nathanvanfleet | Hacker News Reader

> "I just find it so ironic that San Francisco is a bastion of liberalism, yet in Tenderloin every day for decades tech bros have stepped over needles and homeless people on their way to make their 200k a year"

What is the irony?

View on HN

That the most liberal place has such disparity, I assume.

Where is the black middle class, or upper class? See the Housewives of Atlanta. Nothing like this to be found in Oakland.

I agree that’s not irony, and cities will often have the highest disparity simply by having more people.

Tokyo is the biggest city in the world. 10x the population of SF. Not that many homeless addicts lying around, and the average skilled worker doesn't make that much. I can name you 50 cities bigger than SF that don't have this problem.

So it seems the correlation between population size and 'rich people literally stepping over needled addicts' is not that strong.

Stepping over needles is considered an acceptable tradeoff in SF. That's where the differences lie.

Right, but isn't that exactly the irony, or at least the hypocrisy? That people with the most liberal sensitivities seem willing to accept this level of visible human suffering for whatever personal benefits they get from living there?

People will stereotype Texans as rugged individualists ready to shoot you for stealing from a fruit stand, or Chinese as some heartless mass that will run you over and go about their day. But I don't see any cities in those places with such visible social problems.

Those drinking the SF Kool-Aid will tell you it's because of the weather being a magnet for homeless people, or some other such nonsense. As if nowhere else in the world keeps temps above freezing year round.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com