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Comment by up2isomorphism | Hacker News Reader

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Have you looked in Temecula?

While a low effort comment, it does touch on an important topic.

Imagine if CA was run with the kind of efficiency that Singapore or South Korea was run. Clean, safe streets. Modern infrastructure.

Instead we get a state government that is going to waste the goose that laid the golden egg. The high taxes paid disappear in a black hole centered in Sacramento.

CA reminds me of New Jersey. Other states used to be jealous of New Jersey's economy, yet the riches were frittered away by an inefficient government.

Panhandling / begging and sleeping in public places is punishable with prison time (assuming you can't pay the massive fine) in Singapore.

California wouldn't be California if it was run like Singapore or if it had the 9-9 chaebol work culture like South Korea.

> punishable with prison time

The police can force you to stay in a shelter, yes. But they have them available. Most very poor people in SG stay in subsidized housing.

In SF there literally are not enough shelter beds. If you were homeless today you would have to sleep on the street.

Great idea, eradicating visible poverty from public spaces by putting people in cages and punishing them for being poor, I think the Nazi party would like to have a friendly word with you.

I bet you also think jails are a "housing program".

I have probably never felt more insecure (and disgusted at the same time) in a Western country, the way I felt on the streets of LA. Not all of them, of course, some are obviously well guarded - which in turn makes me think the government and city council is not doing a great job really.

Is the situation as bad in San Francisco?

LA is gigantic. There are more safe streets there than most major cities in the world.

Tokyo begs to differ

I was going to use some numbers but because Japan doesn’t really do street names it wasn’t really comparable.

Tokyo has 25k km of streets. LA has 9k miles.

Edit: Missed the ‘most’, sorry.

LA is freaking large. Depending on where you are some places are more disgusting then others while other places are completely pristine.

SF is worse. But SF is also tiny.

SF is better than I remember 6 years ago.

Purely anecdotal

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