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Comment by dahfizz | Hacker News Reader

The fact that anyone can see rampant crime in their community and think "that's okay, the victims of this crime are people I don't like anyway" and just ignore it is insane to me.

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As a Brit I'm always shocked when visiting America and the high levels of crime and desperate people. I'm talking clearly mentally ill people in wheelchairs on street corners. No-go zones (for white people). Open selling of drugs near tourist hotspots with young families nearby.

It's like a weird mix of a wealthy 1st world country with all the problems of a 3rd world one.

Here in the UK we clearly have our own problems, but stuff like this just wouldn't be tolerated.

Agree. Every time I visited the US it was worse. The desperation, the trash, the roads full of holes, the broken down cars, clearly crazy people walking the streets. Mixed with little islands of smug self-important doing-well people who clearly didn’t care about the misery surrounding their little island. We are no longer planning to visit the US. It is too depressing.

One thing that surprised me last time I was in London were the signs everywhere warning about people in bikes snatching your phone.

Or no go towns for black people. I feel like america demonstrates the worst and best society has to offer.

> Or no go towns for black people.

Yes of course - but I'm white so was just describing my experience.

I visited SF a few years ago on a road trip and was very shocked by all the smashed car windows and feared for my car. This third world vibe intertwined with pricey restaurants was unreal. Added on top of people screaming in the streets and a public freakout (of rich people) in a room in my hotel with police coming in the middle of the night, I ended up really scared of the craziness of that city.

An extreme contrast between poor and rich is common in third world countries. In many poor nations, you can find high end places for the ultra-wealthy not too far from slums. What I'm saying is that you're not seeing "third world intertwined with pricey restaurants", you're simply getting the full third world vibe in SF.

This. I was in Pune, 5* hotel district. One foot out of the district and boom you are metal scrap district. I think its probably understandable that poorest allocate close to the richest - better left overs, hand wave charity etc. (Charity is good, but just giving money to drug addicts is not really working out, just to clarify distinction)

It was really odd experience, but I was the only one from the hotel traversing the city map on foot. In the night a lot of folks without "metal scrap real estate" would spawn at the edges of the district, put a card board and sleep. They would sleep there since its safe and nobody had heart to force them out in the night. Daytime different story -> go be someones else problem.

SF was not this crazy, but similar vibes.

I think they see it as less crime as asset redistribution. The wealth that they feel ought to have been transferred by taxes is being taken more directly in the sense of Anatole France's "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor ... to steal bread."

Nb: I am explaining a viewpoint not taking a position myself

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