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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure it's skewed because of the Internet, but between Twitter and Hacker News it sounds like San Francisco is basically Somalia now.

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I’m not taking offense wt your statement, but do want to say: You are being unkind to Somalia. I’m serious.

The perception of Somalia is skewed heavily by western news for the simple reason that the Somali people rebuffed the attempted invasion by US & UK proxy forces. (Guessing you most Americans don’t know that even happened.)

Somaliland isn't somewhere I would want to live, but I would pick it over the Bay Area. With an arrangement with the tribal elders, one would be safe, and property crimes like this would be dealt with by a judge. Unlike in SF.

Fair enough. I don't actually know that much about Somalia other than the (probably outdated) impression that it's a place that literally has no government.

Somaliland is an autonomous region seeking to break away from the larger Somalia and get international recognition as an independent nation. From what I hear, it is a relatively peaceful and orderly place

As a person whose family is from East Africa, saying that you would literally live in Somalia over the Bay Area is really goofy.

There's a GDP per capita of ~250 bucks, the 4th lowest in the world. Even if you lived in some western enclave of Mogadishu, your quality of life would be so much lower that it's incomprehensible. You think the poop in the streets in the Bay Area is annoying? In Somalia 1/3 of people have to defecate in the open. 50% of people don't have access to a basic water supply. The government is still trying to contain Al-Shabab--bombings and skirmishes still happen. As a westerner, especially if you're white, you'd live in constant risk of being kidnapped for ransom.

I don't like the bay area either, but at least keep the criticism tethered to reality. Somalia isn't Syria or Venezuela, you probably wouldn't be murdered but it would be a very dangerous situation.

https://www.unicef.org/somalia/water-sanitation-and-hygiene

A US Service member was dragged dead through the streets in '94 in celebration of defeating a UN peace keeping mission to ease an on-going famine, and those images were broadcast all over the world.

It's easy to underestimate just how powerful that image is in shaping perceptions, and rightfully so: a lot of violence has been done to us citizens by thugs and pirates using the the lawlessness in Somalia as cover.

The pirates didn't start the practice of abusing lawlessness. After the civil war and the breakdown of the state, fishermen from other countries would illegally trawl the waters off the Somali coast and industrial waste was being dumped by foreign opportunists. Just one instance involved 600 drums of radioactive waste from Europe and the US. This exacerbated the problem by reducing the fish supply further.

Eventually, this led to violent clashes where Somali fishermen would take over ships in the area illegally for ransom. This quickly became the piracy industry as we know it.

Most people I know who didn't see the writing on the wall and get out 2-3 years ago is looking for the exit fast. I only hope they understand when they leave that they voted for this outcome, over and over.

People love to hate San Francisco. Even before this current news cycle of pretty crime there were constant negative articles about sf.

I decided to stop going there back in 2015. It was embarrassing to bring a friend from Argentina to the city and have her regard it in the same light as the worst parts of Buenos Aires (that she had seen, anyway). It doesn't sound to me like things have improved...

It’s just Hacker News confirmation bias. San Francisco has roughly the same level of property crime per capita as Toronto, Canada.

Never left the Palisades, have you? SF has tons of property crime but much less of the violence you'd find in hellholes like St. Louis, Missouri or Baltimore, Maryland.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate

The thing about high murder rates, at least in American cities, is that it's mostly gangs fighting each other over selling drugs. If you're not part of the drug trade, your odds of being murdered are not that much greater than anywhere else (stray bullets are a concern).

Property crime, on the other hand, affects a much broader swath of the population.

Ok, so SF doesn't have the same amount of murder as the most rough and ugly ghettos in the Western World? That's good and true, but I'm not sure it helps make an argument.

The difference is in the level of violence. The property crime is ubiquitous in SF, but it's largely crimes of opportunity. Having something stolen when nobody is looking is very common while being mugged (at knifepoint or gunpoint) is quite rare. I once directly confronted a would be bike thief and he merely walked away. I would not recommend such confrontation in other cities where the possibility of violence was greater.

The difference is more stark.

In St. Louis and Baltimore it's crime inside the ghetto - very violent.

In SF it's homeless, semi-homeless and jerks stealing from the upper middle class who have an odd view on community and crime.

I live in SF, and the comments you've seen on HN are accurate.

It's not Somalia, but there's always the potential for escalation to violence on the street, in stores and near ATMs - I've seen it.

I wouldn't allow any of my family to walk alone anywhere.

You're shadowbanned btw.

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