10 ms·

His emphasis on social justice (re: your fourth point) is what makes this article a bit confusing to read. I don't live in SF, but from a distance it certainly

His emphasis on social justice (re: your fourth point) is what makes this article a bit confusing to read. I don't live in SF, but from a distance it certainly looks more liberal and progressive than China: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35217218 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35217218 Häagen-Dazs or no Häagen-Dazs, I feel that SF's moral compass is screwed in slightly tighter than Beijing's.

rimantas 10y ago
I have the impression that that compass is a bit too sensative. In theory that should be a good thing, but in reality is just results in being less useable because you never know if the direction it's pointing to is the one you want to go.
wtbob 10y ago
And some of the problems of SF (e.g. the homelessness, the mentally ill, the dirtiness & shabbiness of the city) are a direct result of its liberal & progressive government.
- piva00 10y ago
  Can you define your use of liberal and progressive? From my point of view a liberal and progressive government would have the opposite impact on homelessness and mentally ill people: by providing social support and welfare to those in need. So I got a bit confused by the usage of liberal and progressive on this sense as they're fuzzy definitions by themselves.
  - TorKlingberg 10y ago
    I think wtbob means either a) liberal & progressive government is inefficient and therefore things are bad, or b) homeless people move to SF because liberal & progressive government makes it better to be homeless there than in other places in the US. I am not sure which.
    - Someone1234 10y ago
      I really dislike the second argument (which I've read before). Effectively they're arguing for shifting the problem rather than actually solving it, we've literally seen states put mentally ill people on buses out of state(!). Utah has a lot of problems (and is really conservative in most other ways), but you have to give them props for actually trying to solve the homeless issue[0] rather than hiding it or sending it out of town. Although the same state turned down Medicaid expansion funding which would have helped those with mental illness, so it isn't all rainbows and sunshine. [0] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic...
      - thaddeusmt 10y ago
        I'm sure it doesn't compare to SF, but the "homeless issue" is hardly solved in SLC, Utah, from my anecdotal experiences living here. If the homeless population has been reduced "91%" as this article maintains, then I cannot imagine what it was like before.
  - zeveb 10y ago
    > From my point of view a liberal and progressive government would have the opposite impact on homelessness and mentally ill people: by providing social support and welfare to those in need. San Francisco does that, but it has also cut back on the most important social service for those who aren't impoverished: policing. By refusing to punish people for defecation in public, bathing in public fountains, panhandling &c., as well as by offering standard welfare service, SF has made life very easy for the homeless and mentally-ill. Unsurprisingly, there are many of them. It's also made life not so nice for those who aren't homeless and/or mentally ill and aren't wealthy enough to afford to live above the mess, but I don't think the SF political class cares about them.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    From what I've heard, SF's social services are good enough that other cities and states actively have their homeless people bused to SF on the grounds that SF will take better care of them (Nevada has actually been sued for this).
- pavlov 10y ago
  That argument would be more convincing if the original poster were not comparing SF to Sweden -- the country that essentially solved those problems in 1950-1980 by having the most liberal and progressive government in the world.
  - objectivistbrit 10y ago
    Those policies were both very expensive and caused a slowdown in economic growth. Sweden has rolled many of them back recently. https://mises.org/library/how-modern-sweden-profits-success-its-free-market-history https://mises.org/library/how-modern-sweden-profits-success-...
    - pavlov 10y ago
      How is that theoretical slowdown apparent in today's Stockholm? The city is a buzzing growth center, as wealthy on the surface as San Francisco, but without any of the obvious problems with "homelessness, the mentally ill, the dirtiness & shabbiness of the city" (which the grandparent poster wanted to blame on liberal government). You make it sound like Sweden in the '80s was a pseudo-Cuba. That was never the case.
      - aminok 10y ago
        A slowdown is a remark on a change in trajectory, not a change in absolute position.
    - Kurtz79 10y ago
      Weird that a right-wing liberatarian organization is criticizing liberal social policies... "The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace... Accordingly, we seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order."
      - aminok 10y ago
        So if one concluded, based on an impartial examination of economic facts, that free market economics is indeed the best way to foster economic development and standard of living gains, how should one promote such views without become an advocate of free market economics (and thus become discredited in your eyes)?
- yardie 10y ago
  I'm not sure how cutting back social services points to a liberal and progressive government at all. If anything it points to a more conservative one. Most progressives simply call themselves that but, like the Clintons, their actions are the exact opposite.
  - spikels 10y ago
    Which social services do you believe we are cutting back in SF/Silicon Valley?
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Clinton has the most progressive platform to be nominated in many decades, if not all of American history. They were also behind welfare reform in the 90s. You certainly have a selective view of them.
    - akiselev 10y ago
      It's very doubtful her platform would be so progressive had she not just fought a brutal primary battle against Bernie Sanders, no doubt the most liberal and socialist-democracy leaning candidate to win popular support in the United States, ever. As for what the Clintons did in the 90s, not everyone has a rosy picture of their work. They weren't beacons for progressivism except maybe in education, and many of their reforms including the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act are still very controversial on the left. Other reforms like the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act are widely reviled. The Clintons have always been centrists, that's how they got where they are today, and calling them progressive because they have to appease an anti-establishment wing in their party is extremely disingenuous.
      - duaneb 10y ago
        Well, I think the way to look at Clinton is that she works hard and she can adjust her worldview to fit her constituency. I'm happy to vote the platform and judge her actions. Her motivations aren't necessary to discern if she executes the platform well.
- saynsedit 10y ago
  Not quite -- look up deinstitutionalisation. Many varied forces at play here, most unrelated to liberal or conservative ideology.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  >are a direct result of its liberal & progressive government. This is true of all large cities as most in the US lean liberal. A lot of social programs are targetted at the homeless and poor, panhandling isn't illegal, easy access to transportation makes getting around easy and cheap, popular tourist areas make it easy to find suckers, etc make it attractive to them. I'm not in SF, but I work in downtown Chicago and see this everyday. Meanwhile in autocratic police states these people are just tossed in jail or put in work camps or something no liberal would ever approve. Yet we have a Swede liberal here who sees a police state oppress its people thus no signs of discord and thinks everything is honky-dory, instead of realizing that the boulevards are kept clean via beatings and jailings. Reminds me of how the US communist party would talk about how clean and efficient communist cities were. Well, when you have gulags for "undesirables" and jail everyone who isn't at work (not working was illegal), yes, I imagine they are clean and orderly.
- duaneb 10y ago
  I don't see the homeless as an SF problem but an American problem. SF is just where they gravitate. Same with the mentally ill. I certainly don't begrudge them the streets. SF is the most disgusting city I've ever seen. The smell of human shit is a block by block experience. Nobody makes any effort to pick up trash on the ground. It's shameful. People just blame the homeless when nothing's stopping them from pitching in themselves. Don't want to? Don't complain; just pretend it's not a problem, that you don't see it, or even that it gives the city character. That's certainly the norm.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
backtoyoujim 10y ago
With almost 800 homeless people per 100,000 in SF: http://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-homeless-population-in-us/1407123/ http://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-homel... ... and property values rising near $1,000.00/square foot does indeed seem screwed on very tightly excepting for a few percentage points at the top. So I have a hard time understanding what compass you are speaking of exactly.
duaneb 10y ago
Any morality issues in SF are going to be tech oriented (or derived, like the housing market). I wouldn't look for an objective discussion here.

rimantas 10y ago

I have the impression that that compass is a bit too sensative. In theory that should be a good thing, but in reality is just results in being less useable because you never know if the direction it's pointing to is the one you want to go.

wtbob 10y ago

And some of the problems of SF (e.g. the homelessness, the mentally ill, the dirtiness & shabbiness of the city) are a direct result of its liberal & progressive government.

piva00 10y ago
Can you define your use of liberal and progressive? From my point of view a liberal and progressive government would have the opposite impact on homelessness and mentally ill people: by providing social support and welfare to those in need. So I got a bit confused by the usage of liberal and progressive on this sense as they're fuzzy definitions by themselves.
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  I think wtbob means either a) liberal & progressive government is inefficient and therefore things are bad, or b) homeless people move to SF because liberal & progressive government makes it better to be homeless there than in other places in the US. I am not sure which.
  - Someone1234 10y ago
    I really dislike the second argument (which I've read before). Effectively they're arguing for shifting the problem rather than actually solving it, we've literally seen states put mentally ill people on buses out of state(!). Utah has a lot of problems (and is really conservative in most other ways), but you have to give them props for actually trying to solve the homeless issue[0] rather than hiding it or sending it out of town. Although the same state turned down Medicaid expansion funding which would have helped those with mental illness, so it isn't all rainbows and sunshine. [0] http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how http://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic...
    - thaddeusmt 10y ago
      I'm sure it doesn't compare to SF, but the "homeless issue" is hardly solved in SLC, Utah, from my anecdotal experiences living here. If the homeless population has been reduced "91%" as this article maintains, then I cannot imagine what it was like before.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > From my point of view a liberal and progressive government would have the opposite impact on homelessness and mentally ill people: by providing social support and welfare to those in need. San Francisco does that, but it has also cut back on the most important social service for those who aren't impoverished: policing. By refusing to punish people for defecation in public, bathing in public fountains, panhandling &c., as well as by offering standard welfare service, SF has made life very easy for the homeless and mentally-ill. Unsurprisingly, there are many of them. It's also made life not so nice for those who aren't homeless and/or mentally ill and aren't wealthy enough to afford to live above the mess, but I don't think the SF political class cares about them.
- amyjess 10y ago
  From what I've heard, SF's social services are good enough that other cities and states actively have their homeless people bused to SF on the grounds that SF will take better care of them (Nevada has actually been sued for this).
pavlov 10y ago
That argument would be more convincing if the original poster were not comparing SF to Sweden -- the country that essentially solved those problems in 1950-1980 by having the most liberal and progressive government in the world.
- objectivistbrit 10y ago
  Those policies were both very expensive and caused a slowdown in economic growth. Sweden has rolled many of them back recently. https://mises.org/library/how-modern-sweden-profits-success-its-free-market-history https://mises.org/library/how-modern-sweden-profits-success-...
  - pavlov 10y ago
    How is that theoretical slowdown apparent in today's Stockholm? The city is a buzzing growth center, as wealthy on the surface as San Francisco, but without any of the obvious problems with "homelessness, the mentally ill, the dirtiness & shabbiness of the city" (which the grandparent poster wanted to blame on liberal government). You make it sound like Sweden in the '80s was a pseudo-Cuba. That was never the case.
    - aminok 10y ago
      A slowdown is a remark on a change in trajectory, not a change in absolute position.
  - Kurtz79 10y ago
    Weird that a right-wing liberatarian organization is criticizing liberal social policies... "The Mises Institute, founded in 1982, teaches the scholarship of Austrian economics, freedom, and peace... Accordingly, we seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order."
    - aminok 10y ago
      So if one concluded, based on an impartial examination of economic facts, that free market economics is indeed the best way to foster economic development and standard of living gains, how should one promote such views without become an advocate of free market economics (and thus become discredited in your eyes)?
yardie 10y ago
I'm not sure how cutting back social services points to a liberal and progressive government at all. If anything it points to a more conservative one. Most progressives simply call themselves that but, like the Clintons, their actions are the exact opposite.
- spikels 10y ago
  Which social services do you believe we are cutting back in SF/Silicon Valley?
- duaneb 10y ago
  Clinton has the most progressive platform to be nominated in many decades, if not all of American history. They were also behind welfare reform in the 90s. You certainly have a selective view of them.
  - akiselev 10y ago
    It's very doubtful her platform would be so progressive had she not just fought a brutal primary battle against Bernie Sanders, no doubt the most liberal and socialist-democracy leaning candidate to win popular support in the United States, ever. As for what the Clintons did in the 90s, not everyone has a rosy picture of their work. They weren't beacons for progressivism except maybe in education, and many of their reforms including the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act are still very controversial on the left. Other reforms like the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act are widely reviled. The Clintons have always been centrists, that's how they got where they are today, and calling them progressive because they have to appease an anti-establishment wing in their party is extremely disingenuous.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      Well, I think the way to look at Clinton is that she works hard and she can adjust her worldview to fit her constituency. I'm happy to vote the platform and judge her actions. Her motivations aren't necessary to discern if she executes the platform well.
saynsedit 10y ago
Not quite -- look up deinstitutionalisation. Many varied forces at play here, most unrelated to liberal or conservative ideology.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>are a direct result of its liberal & progressive government. This is true of all large cities as most in the US lean liberal. A lot of social programs are targetted at the homeless and poor, panhandling isn't illegal, easy access to transportation makes getting around easy and cheap, popular tourist areas make it easy to find suckers, etc make it attractive to them. I'm not in SF, but I work in downtown Chicago and see this everyday. Meanwhile in autocratic police states these people are just tossed in jail or put in work camps or something no liberal would ever approve. Yet we have a Swede liberal here who sees a police state oppress its people thus no signs of discord and thinks everything is honky-dory, instead of realizing that the boulevards are kept clean via beatings and jailings. Reminds me of how the US communist party would talk about how clean and efficient communist cities were. Well, when you have gulags for "undesirables" and jail everyone who isn't at work (not working was illegal), yes, I imagine they are clean and orderly.
duaneb 10y ago
I don't see the homeless as an SF problem but an American problem. SF is just where they gravitate. Same with the mentally ill. I certainly don't begrudge them the streets. SF is the most disgusting city I've ever seen. The smell of human shit is a block by block experience. Nobody makes any effort to pick up trash on the ground. It's shameful. People just blame the homeless when nothing's stopping them from pitching in themselves. Don't want to? Don't complain; just pretend it's not a problem, that you don't see it, or even that it gives the city character. That's certainly the norm.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

backtoyoujim 10y ago

With almost 800 homeless people per 100,000 in SF: http://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-homeless-population-in-us/1407123/ http://abc7news.com/news/data-shows-sf-has-2nd-highest-homel... ... and property values rising near $1,000.00/square foot does indeed seem screwed on very tightly excepting for a few percentage points at the top. So I have a hard time understanding what compass you are speaking of exactly.

duaneb 10y ago

Any morality issues in SF are going to be tech oriented (or derived, like the housing market). I wouldn't look for an objective discussion here.