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Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

And here's the reason why. SF is arguably the most progressive city in the most progressive state in the nation (well, maybe Berkeley is more progressive but let's consider large cities). They have enjoyed Republican-free politics for decades now. Last Republican mayor of SF has left office in 1964. And on any trouble, what are we seeing? "Akshually, the real socialism has never been tried yet, let's try it more!". Well, I guess we can call it an experiment on how long it would take for people to recognize the pattern here. Unfortunately, so far the results are not encouraging.

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SF is a city fully controlled by a wealthy elite who buy themselves a sense of moral superiority and/or clean conscience by dabbling in "progressive causes".

If you're insinuating that progressive politics per se somehow inevitably lead to crime and urban decay, have a look north of the border.

What passes for centrist politics up here in Canada's major cities would make Berkley look like a conservative stronghold (at least in terms of economic policy... maybe we lag behind in biodynamic freegan wine co-ops). Yet Toronto and Montreal are by far the safest large cities on the continent. We absolutely have the same kinds of problems — homelessness, poverty, inequality — but our "socialist" welfare safety net and public healthcare have so far kept us out of the dystopian mess that seems to be unfolding in the US.

Did Canada also defund the police?

> but our "socialist" welfare safety net and public healthcare have so far kept us out of the dystopian mess

I've been to Vancouver a while ago and that's the first time I've seen open drug market and homeless camp taking over a city block. SF didn't feature such sights by then yet, that came later. Haven't visited since then - maybe something changed, but certainly the same dystopian mess could be found in Canada back then.

Yes... in the same way that SF did: there were many calls for "defunding the police" in 2021/2022, but by 2023 the police budget in Toronto is higher than it was pre-pandemic. I understand that the same is true in SF.

One thing to note: Toronto's police annual budget is about the same as SFPD's, even though Toronto has more than 3X as many people. In other words, SF has much worse pre-capita crime than Toronto, even though they spend 3X as much on policing per capita.

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