San Francisco could collapse – what should California do about it?
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
"1,000 days of meetings" sounds like the ultimate office horror movie.
Right now San Francisco is not "too big to fail", but rather "too bloated to save".
San Francisco is going broke. Not because of terrorism, but due to its own devices. It will need to be bailed out. When that happens, the state will take over and face the realities its voters choose to ignore.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-night-new-york-...
Not a dime of public money should go to bailing out the Guggenhimes, Buells, Swigs, Marcuses, Fishers, Gettys, and Pritzkers.
As Biden said: oh boo hoo, capitalism working as intended.
I imagine a lot of the direct comparisons break down in various ways. But, at a high level, you see similarities.
> Wow. They were almost the last person murdered in NYC! Stats say murder in NYC ended later that year.
Probably not unless you wanted everyone in the bar to look at you with disgust. In fact, the entire tone and topic of the conversation would probably change to accommodate this new information. If you wanted to say something, you’d probably say something along the lines of:
“Jesus, I’m sorry to hear that. Do you want to talk about it? What happened?”
If someone is sharing something sensitive like this and you don’t think it’s relevant, just don’t say anything. Add something constructive on another comment. What have you gained from that comment other than potentially upsetting another person? I don’t think anyone is thinking “oh I’m really glad he stepped in there otherwise that one thread on the online debate would have got really off track”. And I don’t think mgarfias is going away from this thinking, “well he really opened my eyes to the fact that my anecdotal experience is not the totality of existence, my entire stance on New York City is changed now.”
Honestly dude, there are unlimited threads on every post. Every thread does not have to be a direct argument or counter argument of whatever is stated in the original content. We can just all talk and be humans going through life together.
You’re reading a comment thread where no one even knows you exist and/or are reading the particular comment thread.
This is the equivalent of writing a letter to a newspaper’s editor in the old days (with less friction).
https://www.google.com/search?q=california+budget+surplus+20...
I wonder if it'll end like NYC where the state takes permanent control of various municipal services, e.g. NYC subway it's controlled by the state.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/02/budget-deficit-may...
Bonus to incentivize: I'll even be providing the weird mix of native-San-Franciscan-cum-tech-person take, being born & raised in the Sunset. Therefore I promise to infuse it with a sense of entitlement & disaffection, as if it was possible to have any scope on in-migration/emigration policy across city limits.
This can't be posted enough. Twitter currently employs 100x more developers than Mastodon. It's comically incoherent to claim that people should move from Twitter to Mastodon because Twitter obviously can't be run by half or a third of the developers that it used to have, because scale or something.
Collapse, in this article’s context, means insolvency. That doesn’t mean San Francisco disappears. But public transit may halt for a while, and the city may have control and assets forcibly removed from itself.
In reality, San Francisco is solidly investment grade [1][2]. It can borrow its way out of this hole.
[1] https://www.fitchratings.com/entity/san-francisco-city-count...
This Dot-Com Boom period (roughly 2001 to now) kinda fucked up the city. I can't wait to clear out the folks who were only here for money and hype, and start getting the weirdos and hippies back in.
> Today's outrageous prices are exactly in line with the 6.6% trend that began 60 years ago.
https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme...
NYC tries to make itself an appealing place to live. SF does not. I'm not sure quite what SF is optimizing for, but "pleasant" is not it.
Even if crime is "just" theft and broken windows, it's still an unpleasant day (or week) when it happens. Enough of that and people just don't want to live there.
“…if you were the state of California, and you were staring down a projected $22 billion budget deficit, would you invest your scarce resources in San Francisco, which has repeatedly proven itself unfit for such investments by building a vast, inefficient bureaucracy at the expense of taxpayers and vulnerable residents?
No.”
The problem is adding more housing downtown doesn't really help the problem beyond making a shorter commute (to WFH jobs?). Especially for the people who moved out, SF's pandemic policies weren't attractive, and it's even worse in a dense neighborhood. There's still the homeless problem. There's still a lot of property crime. This week, there was a post about how hard it is for 8th graders to take Algebra.
Like the article said, I don't really want to give more money to a city that's been so mismanaged.
I agree, but without jobs, as a major city, SF looks pretty unattractive. It was better a decade ago, but since then, all its problems got worse.
Was there with my wife and child and tried to go to a cool wine bar at like 5pm, told we weren’t allowed in due to licensing laws as the baby was a minor. Nowhere in Europe would even raise an eyebrow at 5pm in a half full bar, it’s not like I was trying to take him to Berghain. Saw barely any parents with kids out, but I guess that makes sense when you look at the rents.
It could be so much more, I hope there can be some sort of will to change.
It's everywhere in California: minors (under 21 y.o.) are not allowed into bars except on legitimate business (e.g. making a delivery) at any time.
This sounds like the "downtown" real estate interests whining. By "downtown" they mean the area around Embarcadero Center. The working center of SF has been moving south into SOMA and Dogpatch for two decades. There have been desperate efforts to stop this, including the "transit center" and an unnecessary push for tunnels to terminate Caltrain in classic "downtown".
Those parts of SF seem to be doing OK. It's the tall office building sector that's in trouble.
Those parts of SF seem to be doing OK.
SOMA is about 32% vacant. The goal is "Clean, safe and inviting", so I'd say not doing OK right now.
I mean, I can't disagree that the evidence supports the idea that recent policies there have been ineffective in addressing many of that city's most pressing issues. But "radical" ?
You're describing a highly proscribed area of city governance.
Radical left politics generally involves much larger issues, chiefly relating to economic and power relationships between different groups with a society. At least. What's going on in SF has essentially nothing to do with that at all.
Boudin did enforce laws on drugs. Multiple drug dealers were prosecuted during his short watch. And overall violent crime fell during that period as well.
Boudin was recalled, despite no real evidence that his policies had significant impact on crime rates.
Our elections are driven by nonsense “left” “right” media hysteria and propaganda, not any sort of fact.
Look, radical leftist politics in SF (or anywhere else) would be about:
1. corporate taxation
2. minimum wage at $21/hr or above
3. limiting investment in residential real estate
4. major investment in public transit
5. limiting the use of private motor vehicle transportation
6. reducing the role of national/international brands in city-wide retail
7. progressive (i.e. marginal) property taxation
8. pushing CA on a number of issues, such as non-local tax base for education
I don't live in SF, or the Bay Area or CA, so maybe the leftists you're referring to are people I don't hear much at all. But the leftists I do hear (e.g. Jacobin magazine) talk about taxes all the time. I heard Sanders talk about taxes while Schultz was in front of Congress last week.
Here are things I think are radical, and my gauge for that is asking if it could reasonably appear on a BLM demands list. Pushes to defund police, stop enforcing laws (or as Chesa did, enforce weakened versions for fear it would result in “dangerous” deportations) or direct repeat criminals to programs that allow them to avoid jail/records, giving homeless cash and a place to do drugs “safely”. Not to mention the new ask for $5M per black resident for reparations, with some claiming it doesn’t go near far enough.
The idea that these problems are a result of high cost of living and NIMBYism are absurd. When progressive policies fail, the left still find ways to blame it on “the rich”. Marxism 101.
Read the many articles about steps tech companies and employees have taken to promote their own political causes and candidates while stifling opposition. How they had practically had to bring in grief counselors to soothe their tearful employees after their chosen candidate lost in 2016.
There's nothing moderate about it. They are getting exactly what they voted for, schemed for, and paid great amounts of money for.
They are also so polarized by the media they can’t even entertain practical solutions that existed for decades to centuries.
This past week, San Francisco took steps to utterly destroy the nightlife scene, by sending subpoenas to all the after-hours venues to cease and desist. Like the Prohibition, this only serves to drive the scene (further) underground, causing it to be more dangerous because the parties aren't going to stop happening, they're going to happen further out from the heart of the city, into being less regulated, and further away from the hospitals which will result in deaths from that whole fentanyl thing.
Without the party scene (which rivals major cities of the world under the metric "can I party from Thursday til Tuesday"), both above and below ground, there's little reason for young adults who enjoy that sort of thing to live in this tiny city now that work remote is viable in many industries.
The industry forced to be in-person is healthcare, and UCSF is a major medical institution in the US and the world, with a major infectious disease center that played an important role in the recent pandemic, so the city has that going for it, but it's only the frontlines of that industry that need to be in the city. Much of that industry is administrators and patient navigators and all that kind of stuff, which happens on the phone, but with VOIP and the Internet, can go fully remote. Genentech (and co), the other major part of that industry, are in South San Francisco, which is technically a different city, despite its name, and far away enough from San Francisco proper that you need a car to get there (or work at Genentech and take their buses).
This feels like a ridiculous assumption. Maybe in the emotional moment, but sensible minds wouldn’t for long think that that’s it for the concept of working downtown.
Which is why I absolutely advocate locally for more housing.
Of course in the US, homes are first and foremost an investment, so losing resale value is one of the worst things that could happen to a homeowner, or something.
Until you retire or for other reasons find yourself living on a fixed (and possibly diminished) income, while property taxes based on home value continue to rise.
I feel like if you were truly motivated they could have had over New York's population by now if they were to build homes and skyscrapers. It doesn't take 100 or 200 years to build a skyscraper, they could simultaneously start like 20 of them every year.
After this (SFUSD's delay of algebra 1 has created a nightmare of workarounds)
https://www.sfexaminer.com/forum/put-algebra-1-back-in-eight...
It's pretty clear tech isn't making the rules.
The world is finding that they want to always treat us nerds how they treated us in our formative years...
It has nothing to do with tangible harm and a lot with the attitude of techno public figures, as well as, in San Francisco, the civic detachment of its tech workers.
I don't blame them tbh. Frankly, society should be very happy uniquely for the "nerds at the HF event" since those nerds are working very hard on open source and democratic AI, which is basically the only protection that the non nerds of SF have against the coming AI job apocalypse.
You’re describing rich and powerful people. If someone with those resources can’t grow up, yes, it’s reasonable for others to dissociate from them.
What I’m describing is also uniquely San Franciscan. Tech workers in Berkeley, Oakland, Sunnyvale, Seattle, New York and overseas are civically engaged. They volunteer; join organisations, protests and campaigns; they run for office.
> the coming AI job apocalypse
It’s odd seeing AI embrace crypto’s language. Past revolutionaries for computers or nuclear power were motivated by the good they could do. They didn’t pat themselves on the back for riding a supposed pale horse. NLP has no more ability to bring an apocalypse than personal computers did, but it’s a call for regulation if this becomes mainstream.
Anyway, we nerds help the normals despite their bullying and lack of respect because we are human beings and humane. It's not their fault they're stupid and ignorant, after all? And do we not enjoy pleasures and rewards beyond their understanding? It's not so bad, being a nerd.
- - - -
Did you watch "Avenue 5"? That scene where the folks are trying to leave the ship and the captain and chief engineer are trying to stop them... Wooo boy that was a horrifying scene, eh? But you can't just let them leave. You still have to help them as best you can, if only so you can live with yourself, eh?
Right, and that's my point: the old timers resent the new wave. The hippies didn't give us the city, we took it from them.
The argument that sways me (as an oldtimer who misses the way it was) is that this is the way of it here: The Ohlone were savagely fucked over by the Spanish, who in turn were run out by the Americans, then the Gold Rush folk gave way eventually to the Beatniks, who then yielded to the Hippies, who have now been displaced by tech bros. Seen from that perspective, we're actually making fantastic progress, in the sense that each wave is less violent than the last, eh?
LOL. Since when?
SF existed in the 1850's. There was no such thing as a tech bro then.
2. Again, huggingface open source meetup was the OPPOSITE of authoritarian tech bros. It's literally the people trying to democratize and keep this stuff available to the masses.
This post here is the resentment I'm talking about. The reality is that the average HF event attendee has done far more to help "flyover states" than most SF tech workers. They should be treated as such, not scorned like they're part of a "techno authoritarian future". The techno authoritarians are OpenAI and their cronies.
If nuance isn't possible from non tech bros who resent tech bros, maybe there is a reason why the world is leaving them behind.
And I am a tech bro who moved to rural and bought the farm in 2020.
I support you HF guys though. Also if you want to get into clubs in SF, at least when I use to party there extensively in the 00's you either:
A) Go to a rave style club that lets anyone in
or
B) You wear nice "preppy" clothes. With a fresh haircut.
I've been turned away from clubs for not having a button down shirt on. Dress code is a real thing.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note that they ask you not to call names or fulminate.
Nah, they'd reject him. They voted themselves into this.