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Comment by covercash | Hacker News Reader

Or just local SF politics… the billionaire/VC obsession with SF politics is very odd and unhealthy from my outside perspective.

It could also be related to the libertarian utopian startup cities VCs are funding.

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It's a deeply dysfunctional city with lots of low-hanging-fruit policy changes available, it's surprising there aren't more VC people involved.

I'm not sure what special skills VCs have that would make their contributions more useful and valuable than those of other contributors. They have a certain perspective around improving the startup business climate, but cities aren't built and operated to serve them in particular.

I don't think they have any special skills, just that they're concentrated in one of the most dysfunctional cities in the country.

Maybe they're part of the problem?

I'm not interested in litigating the merits of VCs, I was commenting positively and not normatively on the peculiarly small ratio of engaged financiers to obvious urban dysfunction in San Francisco.

I don't know the answer to my question. I just observe that it's a factor that sets San Fransisco apart from a lot of other cities. In my opinion it's worth investigating at least.

In my experience, the San Franciscans advocating policies that are clearly misguided (e.g., not prosecuting property crimes) are usually not VCs.

You don't need VC level skills, just a healthy dose of common sense pragmatism, something which SF leadership has consistently lacked for decades now.

Which is why it won't be fixed with a Ruby on Rails app and $10m in venture capital funding in pursuit of a $5b evaluation.

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