Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway049 | Hacker News Reader

The problem they escaped was high crime rates. Do you think they came to the Midwest to commit crime?

I assume the comment you replied to meant the policies that led to the high crime rate. Which, I know many people who fear people leaving big cities to keep voting for the policies that lead to why they left the city in the first place.

Cities crime rates have little to do with their local politics. Giuliani for example got a great deal of praise for lowering crime in NYC but wildly different approaches also seemed to “work” in other cities.

Look at a graph of murder rates for LA vs NYC and their surprisingly similar even with very different politics. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/18/us/chicago-mu...

Chicago, NYC, LA, and many other US cities all had similar trends over similar time periods which line up with national trends. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...

Aren’t the politics very similar?

NYC had “tough on crime” republican governor’s for about half of that time period. Try and locate their policies on the graph before looking up the details.

“Broken Windows” policing was a radically different paradigm that initially got a great deal of praise because it seemed to be working.

No, they’re coming & heavily disrupting the local economy which will lead to the current population unable to afford their lives after some time, which will lead to crime.

Do you disagree?

Call me crazy, but perhaps if those in SF could afford a home/ to live/ the basic necessities of a U.S. citizen, they wouldn’t be out on the streets being low lifes.

Not all of them, some people are truly irredeemable - but truly irredeemable people are typically doing much harder crimes than property theft & petty break-ins.

So you are against migration?

I think the gp is referring to coming in and buying a house for cash, something which is likely unaffordable for people who grew up in that community (because op says that pay scales are about 1/4 of what they are in tech metros).

Yes, so against migration. Migration always introduces these factors.

No, not necessarily.

Even poor migrants increase demand for housing unless they somehow can live in the meta verse or carry their own housing like a snail.

Wow, you sound like the people in my midwest hometown who freaked out when the Punjabis came in and bought all our gas stations.

When you look at the desperate parts of the midwest, of the ones that weren't always that way, you'll find most of the worst of the ones became that way after all the skilled / rich people left coupled with other capital flight. Not the other way around.

I never understand these types of comments, appeals to empathy over individual rationalism. How do people not understand at this point that societies are shaped by individuals making rational selfish choices in their own interests within a market system.

Do you think SF had a high crime rate before the tech industry crated intense wealth inequality and a homelessness crisis?

I know for sure it did. SF was famous for it for decades. It's even worse now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com