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> It’s also a problem that nobody in the city seems very much to care about Because all the rich people living in the North West part of the city are completel

> It’s also a problem that nobody in the city seems very much to care about Because all the rich people living in the North West part of the city are completely insulated from it.

acjohnson55 9y ago
That can't quite be true, given how central the Tenderloin is within NW SF. Which reminds me of an interesting experience I had. I was living in NY, and took a trip that had me spend about 8 days each in SF and Cuba. It took me a couple days to put a name on a feeling I was experiencing in Havana. I realized that it was the dissonance of the staggering inequality plainly in the Union Square area of SF I was staying and the relative flat deprivation of Havana. The latter lacked the overtly utter destitution of the Tenderloin. I didn't have any profound takeaways other than that it seemed like there should be some way of getting the benefits of American society, with the baseline of Cuban society, given how much more we have in resources.
- Fins 9y ago
  Really, in Cuba, like in old USSR and other communist countries, you just don't see the inequality, which is far greater than anything that ever existed in the US. It just goes off a lower baseline.
  - acjohnson55 9y ago
    Obviously there's the political inner circle, who operate with privileges the regular people don't have access to, but I'm really talking about the experience in the places ordinary people tread. And I also do realize that one is simply not allowed to be openly destitute in a place like Havana, as it would discredit The System. By the same token, I think we kind of discredit our own.
    - Fins 9y ago
      I'm not as familiar with Havana, but sure, in Moscow in "good" old times it was illegal to be a bum, or unemployed. Come to think of it, it would be just as illegal to openly compare the living standard of even a third-rate party apparatchick vs. that of a factory worker, for whom the system ostensibly worked. I am not sure if hiding the rather natural that people end up differently (even though in places like Cuba or USSR where you end up depends far less on your abilities than in the US) is in any way better than having the differences in the open.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Because all the rich people living in the North West part of the city are completely insulated from it I was recently invited to an afternoon of board games at the residence of a wealth San Franciscan. I was invited to step over a homeless man at the entrance. I refused. My behaviour was surprising/comical to my host. This isn’t a problem of geographic isolation. Empathetic circles have contracted, and that is bad.

> It’s also a problem that nobody in the city seems very much to care about Because all the rich people living in the North West part of the city are completely insulated from it.

acjohnson55 9y ago

That can't quite be true, given how central the Tenderloin is within NW SF. Which reminds me of an interesting experience I had. I was living in NY, and took a trip that had me spend about 8 days each in SF and Cuba. It took me a couple days to put a name on a feeling I was experiencing in Havana. I realized that it was the dissonance of the staggering inequality plainly in the Union Square area of SF I was staying and the relative flat deprivation of Havana. The latter lacked the overtly utter destitution of the Tenderloin. I didn't have any profound takeaways other than that it seemed like there should be some way of getting the benefits of American society, with the baseline of Cuban society, given how much more we have in resources.

Fins 9y ago
Really, in Cuba, like in old USSR and other communist countries, you just don't see the inequality, which is far greater than anything that ever existed in the US. It just goes off a lower baseline.
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  Obviously there's the political inner circle, who operate with privileges the regular people don't have access to, but I'm really talking about the experience in the places ordinary people tread. And I also do realize that one is simply not allowed to be openly destitute in a place like Havana, as it would discredit The System. By the same token, I think we kind of discredit our own.
  - Fins 9y ago
    I'm not as familiar with Havana, but sure, in Moscow in "good" old times it was illegal to be a bum, or unemployed. Come to think of it, it would be just as illegal to openly compare the living standard of even a third-rate party apparatchick vs. that of a factory worker, for whom the system ostensibly worked. I am not sure if hiding the rather natural that people end up differently (even though in places like Cuba or USSR where you end up depends far less on your abilities than in the US) is in any way better than having the differences in the open.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Because all the rich people living in the North West part of the city are completely insulated from it I was recently invited to an afternoon of board games at the residence of a wealth San Franciscan. I was invited to step over a homeless man at the entrance. I refused. My behaviour was surprising/comical to my host. This isn’t a problem of geographic isolation. Empathetic circles have contracted, and that is bad.