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Tech giants have turned San Francisco into a dystopian nightmare
- mylons 7y ago“high tech feudalism” is such a succinct and accurate description
- almost_usual 7y agoWith Boudin as DA expect it to get a lot worse. On a positive note SF’s homicide rate was 41 in 2019. That’s incredibly low, hasn’t been that low since 1961 https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/san-francisco-officials-unveil-new-crime-stats/2218901/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/san-fran....
- cameronbrown 7y agoAmazing how quickly this fell off the front page. I get that it's Daily Mail, but there's still an important conversation to have here, right?
- sys_64738 7y agoThe conversation is that you shouldn't click Daily Mail links.
- dang 7y agoOn HN, we go by article quality, not site quality. No major media site is reliably good, and even the reliably bad ones sometimes produce a good-for-HN article, i.e. one that can support intellectually curious discussion. I wouldn't say that about this post though. The topic is not only divisive, but has been covered many times before, and curiosity withers under repetition. But the call should be about the article, not the site. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%20%22article%20quality%22%20%22site%20quality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- masonic 7y agoOn HN, we go by article quality, not site quality But you do ban entire sites[1] without explanation. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ancient-origins.net https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=ancient-origins.net
- dang 7y agoOf course. If we didn't, HN would be a spam site. Explanations are always available when people ask, and we answer questions like this every day. We banned the site you linked to because promotional accounts have been spamming HN with dozens of submissions from it, and because it appears to be mostly blogspam, i.e. lifted from other sources. I just did a spot check, and indeed the most recent submission (https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/medieval-ship-0013178 https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/med...) was lifted from https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/newport-medieval-ship-opening-date-17288380 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/newport-mediev.... HN readers expect us to ban that kind of thing. This isn't the class of sites I was talking about above (note the word "major").
- dang 7y agoUsers flagged it. That is probably some combination of (1) the title being baity and/or misleading, (2) the topic having had many thorough discussions in the past, and (3) some people's feelings about the publication.
- EvanAnderson 7y agoI wonder how the tourism industry is doing. I visited friends in San Francisco a number of times in the early 2000's, and spent two weeks there for my honeymoon in 2007. I'd love to take my 6 y/o daughter to show her some of the places she's seen in our photos, but it sounds pretty horrible out there. (This article is the most over-the-top sounding coverage I've heard yet, but I tend to think, based on what I hear from friends, that it's probably mostly accurate.)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mceachen 7y agoI've worked and lived by San Francisco for 25 years. Downtown (market, tenderloin, mission) have always had blocks that are fine right next to blocks decidedly not fine. But if anything, the streets are less gritty than 20 years ago. There is rampant car theft. Don't leave your stuff visible in your car, and don't conspicuously open your trunk with sparkling goodies inside. But that's advice that was reasonable 30n years ago. It's as safe to bring your family to SF as it is to NY. And, like NY, there are wonderful things to see and do here. You just need to be smart about it.
- CapricornNoble 7y agoApparently tourism is solid. from: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/A-year-after-calling-his-own-city-filthy-SF-13842394.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/A-... "Tourism is still booming, despite San Francisco’s miserable side making headlines around the world. In 2018, 25.8 million people visited San Francisco, up 1.2% from 2017. They spent $10 billion, which was also up slightly." As an anecdote, my S.O. watches a Youtuber, a Japanese airline stewardess who makes typical travel/foodie content. She had a San Francisco vid a few months ago.....which made the place look like heaven on Earth. I don't think she even once touched on or mentioned some of SF's problems. I wonder how many other foreigners are formulating travel plans based on similarly one-dimensional picture-perfect content.
- akiselev 7y ago
- TulliusCicero 7y agoThis has nothing to do with the tech companies, and everything to do with failed local and national governmental policies.
- nsnick 7y agoNowhere in this article does it blame tech giants except the title.
- dleslie 7y agoThe article mentions, several times, the number of billionaires and millionaires who live in the city, as a result of the tech industry. The housing issues cannot be disentangled from the buying power and demand of tech workers.
- coleifer 7y agoIt's unclear to me the connection between tech giants and the horrors of drug addiction. Are the tech giants supposed to enforce laws on the street, or is this the duty of law enforcement officers? Is it because of the great disparity in wealth that makes "tech giants" culpable? I think that's bullshit. The blame rests on the city officials, in my opinion.
- Pfhreak 7y agoThe connections are not simple to see immediately. There are many interwoven systems at play here. For example, high pay attracts engineers, landlords prefer high earning tenants. Other companies start in SF because there is a lot of talent there. They grow and attract more engineers. That's just one system that can contribute to a changing city, and there are many others. (including city officials like you mention). I'd encourage you not to dismiss the idea outright and try to fit it with a simple root cause.
- coleifer 7y agoThe article points the finger at tech but in my opinion utterly fails to make a connection.
- TulliusCicero 7y agoWhat you're describing comes from a successful economy. There's nothing specific to tech there, you could've been describing media or finance or logistics and it'd be the same. Most of the time, when people complain about tech in SF, they're really just complaining about the economy being good. But they can't say that, it sounds silly, so they act like it's something specific to tech.
- dleslie 7y agoThey draw in huge numbers of well-paid employees, who place enormous pressure on the housing market and have the buying power to allow it to skyrocket in value. If you believe that housing is a key concern, then the effect of the presence of tech workers cannot be overlooked.
- 7y ago
- ezoe 7y agoI don't get it. To me, everything the article mentioned about dystopian nightmare sounds like a issue of the government, not caused by the private companies. The root of the cause is they aren't redistributing the wealth well. They should offer the poor, an affordable medical care, a shelter, and just simply hand them the money. The cost should be lower than dealing with daily thefs and drug dealers crowded in the street. Most of them choose theft and illegal drug because they can't afford the foods, houses, and medical care.
- pinkfoot 7y ago> They should offer the poor, an affordable medical care, a shelter, and just simply hand them the money. Surely, when news get to other poor people in the USA you will jet be rewarded with a new, probably larger, batch of urban poor? My guess is you will run out of money before the USA runs out of poor people? (And that doesn't include the literally billions elsewhere who will be motivated to join in the fun). Sadly.
- slowmovintarget 7y ago> The root of the cause is they aren't redistributing the wealth well. They should offer the poor, an affordable medical care, a shelter, and just simply hand them the money. Except you have to get them to care about more than getting high, first. The one man in the article who lost his family started with an addiction to pain killers and progressed downward to heroin and homelessness. His problem wasn't a lack of the material, it was a lack of meaning. "Handing them the money" reinforces meaninglessness. It won't work. Throughout history there have been poor people who were virtuous. I grew up poor, and poverty didn't make us turn to stealing. Yes, we actually had too little food. My mother often went hungry as she made sure her children were fed. There are millions of the poor all over the world, and only a few of them are criminals. Most are good people. The only possible conclusion to draw from this fact is that crime is not caused by poverty, otherwise all or most of the world's poor would be criminals. It turns out that handing out needles just makes it easier to do hard drugs. Turning a blind eye to crime leads to more crime, it normalizes it. Getting these people medical care would be a beginning. Ask them to meet some standards. Food if you avoid drugs. Shelter if you help care for it, and avoid drugs. A clean place to bathe and groom yourself, if you help clean it. A shot at getting a job by keeping yourself clean in several senses. Setting the conditions begins providing meaning. Helping others and caring for one's surroundings provides meaning and dignity. That, more than anything, is the strong foundation from which to attack addiction.
- imtringued 7y agoWhy is it the tech giant's fault that the city failed to convert money into housing? Why did the city let the tech giants in if they are so harmful? If you don't want drug addicts to use their drugs on the street why don't you build special drug clinics where they can clean drugs [0] for non inflated prices [1] at controlled dosages [1] if they sign up for a program for addicts? [0] dealers often are addicts themselves, take their own cut and fill the missing amount with foreign substances and more potent substitutes which then cause multiple orders of magnitude more health issues (including death) than the original drug [1] when you have to spend $1000 per month on your drugs you are more likely to become homeless, homeless people have to steal or become prostitutes to fund their drug addiction [2] physical dependency to drugs can be satisfied without becoming high. this means you can have people that go to the clinic every week for the rest of their lives but live completely normal lives but if you shut down the clinic they will die a few weeks later because they overdose on street drugs like every other drug user
- taylorlapeyre 7y agoI’m a little tired of people coming to San Francisco, staying only in the tenderloin, spying on the homeless, writing about how disgusting the tenderloin is, and coming to the conclusion that the city is a liberal dystopia. Every city has places like the tenderloin, ours is just more visible than yours. That doesn’t make San Francisco a dystopia. The writer of this article should probably also visit Noe Valley, McLaren Park in the Excelsior, Merced, Hayes Valley, visit Salesforce Park. Go on a walk in Golden Gate Park on a Sunday, browse dive bars in the Mission, and see a show at the Castro Theatre. Walk up Potrero Hill at sunset, get some coffee at at Trouble in the sunset, visit the MOMA or Academy of Sciences, and sit around at Washington Square. Then write your article on how San Francisco is a shit-filled dystopia.
- dleslie 7y agoI wouldn't be so quick to diminish the severity of SF's crisis. As per the article: > But one statistic stands out: almost half of homeless people in the United States are in California, according to a recent White House study. > And San Francisco, a comparatively small city that is home to tech giants such as Twitter, Uber and Airbnb, has the highest rate of ‘unsheltered’ citizens – at ten times the national level.
- taylorlapeyre 7y agoDon’t get me wrong, we do have a homelessness issue. It’s just that the city is also other things and other people.
- dleslie 7y agoI live in Metro Vancouver, BC. We get our fair share of articles about street crime, homelessness, and opioid abuse. Rightly so, because we have a crisis. San Fran has a crisis, too. Your city may be other things to you, but this crisis is coming to define it in both the eyes of outsiders and in the lives of a significant number of its residents.
- 7y ago
- tynpeddler 7y agoThe article does not support the title. Tech companies are hardly mentioned at all. The article devotes the entire length to blaming the city government and lax criminal policies.
- mieses 7y agoIt could be that tech companies attract people who are more educated, disciplined, and therefore more politically progressive than the average person (because they think that policies that work for them should be applied to people who are less educated and less disciplined).
- TulliusCicero 7y agoSF was already highly tolerant of the homeless population before the recent startup and tech boom moved there from Silicon Valley. If anything, people have been complaint that techies are less tolerant and progressive.
- georgeburdell 7y agoAll major West Coast cities from Seattle to San Diego have massive homelessness problems, so the title cannot be true. Reading the article there’s a more plausible theory that runaway tolerance has allowed the issue to metasthesize. However, that could be refuted by evidence that an “intolerant” city has a massive homeless problem
- ctulek 7y agoPretty bad written article. I wouldn’t give any credit.
- nunez 7y agoFeels like clickbait.