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Comment by nottaylorswift | Hacker News Reader

You couldn't pay me to live in San Francisco, but Berkeley and Mountain View are to die for.

Conservatives have used San Francisco as an example of failed excessive liberal policies, and as a liberal, I have to agree. It's a total disaster.

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Seems far too simplistic. Berkeley is actually even more liberal on many issues so your explanation doesn’t really make sense.

> Berkeley is actually even more liberal on many issues so your explanation doesn’t really make sense

This isn’t a single-dimensional system.

Right, I said “on many issues” expressing nuance. As compared to the other poster who claims SF is so liberal that it has problems and Berkeley is not liberal so it doesn’t…

Berkeley is part of Alameda County, but San Francisco has its own county.

Berkeley is almost a village with a uniform liberal population, many young affluent students.

San Francisco is a large city, and at scale is where these policies break down. You can't walk through downtown SF, their system has failed. It's indisputable IMO.

> Berkeley is almost a village

120k isn't a village, and if it was...

> San Francisco is a large city

800k definitely wouldn't be a large city.

What exactly do you mean by "you can't walk through downtown SF?"

I mean the streets are covered in human shit and there are homeless insane people shooting up waiting to sneak attack you if you drop your guard. If you take shelter in a Walgreens you will find thieves filling up trash bags with goods from the shelves while the security guards watch, helpless.

I’ve spent years working in and walking through the TL and civic center every day. Not once have I worried that someone was gonna “sneak attack” me. There absolutely are violent street crimes in SF, including in downtown, but the idea that downtown is some kind of mugging war zone is a farce. Its bark is worse than its bite.

2PM on a bus by Powell station a crazy homeless guy broke a full 40oz over the back of my head without any warning. He thought I was following him on behalf of the government because I had a bright red Nexus 5 phone.

I've also seen 2 stabbings in the TL, one of which killed my friend. Also a mob shooting in a carpark, again in the TL.

Sounds like you should stop hanging out in the Tenderloin. The rest of us lived there for years without being stabbed or hit with bottles. No doubt there are parts of the city with problems but you’re exaggerating greatly for no reason.

You can in fact walk through downtown SF.

Mountain View was a lot nicer place for people to actually live before Google and LinkedIn showed up. If you talk to long time residents they're not thrilled about the changes.

Downtown MV is still pretty nice, and beats the heck out of most of the south bay. Not as charming as it used to be, though. The big used book store moving away was a huge loss.

SF has gone as far left progressive/liberal as Florida has gone gone far right-wing conservative.

It's weird that american society is so divided, rather than meeting in the center as time goes on.

I would wonder if this is natural progression, or covert propaganda performed by foreign states to weaken american imperialism.

>>>I would wonder if this is natural progression, or covert propaganda performed by foreign states to weaken american imperialism.

Heh, this one is coming up a lot recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28823926

Nobody likes to really address this, and those who do get shouted down real fast, but... this entire thing has been well documented [0] and intentional [1].

[0] http://www.marxist.com/georg-lukacs.htm

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institu...

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