It's unbelievable the amount of depravity a single DA can inflict. An unprecedented number of companies and workers are fleeing the city. San Francisco is set to become the next Detroit. What's your exit plan?
This is hyperbole. The Bay Area remains an economic dynamo. San Francisco’s culinary and cultural credentials remain largely untouched. It’s a safe city to be rich around, and that will continue to be the case for the near future.
The distinction important. Threatening the city’s economic elite with ruin is a red herring. Contrast that with Detroit, where the city’s economic elite were directly threatened. That threat forced change, by changing opinions and replacing decision makers. That pressure has been inhibited in San Francisco by its continuing ability to generate wealth independent of its problems.
Can you give me some examples of cultural credentials?
San Francisco has a large number of Michelin-rated restaurants. Their clientele are largely insulated from these issues. It also has a large number of independent theatres and performance and exhibition spaces.
One of the city’s problems is its elites can live quite well independent of reality on the ground. That’s essential to the political problem, and why claims that San Francisco is going the way of Detroit can be distracting or even harmfully mollifying. This is not a system that will self stabilise.
I imagine it's more like, do they have reasonable quality international food with say a dozen national varieties, and if they do, that's probably a checkmark on the food option.
Personally, I'd rather have low crime, clean streets, cheap housing, and a good environment for family formation. Anything else can be found on the weekend, even if that means a car ride or a plane trip.
You can’t really insulate yourself from the situation on the streets you have to walk/drive.
Comparatively, NYC has better food and culture scenes. LA has excellent food scene as well with arguably better regional varieties and beach is way better.
What SF really has are proximity to great jobs and reputation/network of SV. So long as these hold, people will continue to tolerate the many issues. This is where comparison with Detroit is not that outlandish - Detroit was once the place to be for good paying automotive jobs. In those days, real estate was booming and prices were high for their day.
If you take away to tech booms, there is still a lot to like - nature, weather, aforementioned food/culture stuff. Unfortunately, that’s offset by issues discussed here, as well as huge amounts of pollution and superfunds, so without the great jobs/industry, it might get a lot less appealing quickly.
This is key. The bad parts of a lot of cities have these sorts of problems to some degree. What makes San Francisco uniquely bad is that even its "good" parts have them.
Trying to predict how many people are willing to put up with these costs in order to build their ideal utopia is a risky enteprise. As Neitszche said, man can bear any how as long as he knows the why. The majority of SF voters are convinced that they are being moral by tolerating this behavior and so they are prepared to bear the burden of living with what they tolerate. In the big picture, this is nothing compared to the human costs of other utopian projects we've tried in the 20th century, so I don't think the voters of SF have reached anything close to peak disgust. Feces and an epidemic of drug overdoses is nothing compared to gulags, and even the ones who built the gulags were absolutely certain that they were doing the moral thing. Thus I am not predicting any change of heart by those who run the city. A few hundred overdose deaths and tens of thousands of property crimes are a small price to pay in order to feel that you are being compassionate.
What I do know is that many people who have different values are leaving the city in droves, trying to find places that are managed more wisely. Thus my prediction is that San Francisco will develop a poor reputation as a mismanaged city that is run by people who think disastrous policies should be continued as long as they are based on good intentions. I am not predicting that SF turns into a Detroit, or becomes a poor city. I am not predicting that most of the tech jobs will leave. My only prediction is that the city will become an object lesson for other cities to learn from.