3 ms·

What is the point of this article? The bulk of it is explaining that things are bad in SF, and that the city government is to blame. Sure I’ll buy that. But the

What is the point of this article? The bulk of it is explaining that things are bad in SF, and that the city government is to blame. Sure I’ll buy that. But then it makes a leap of logic by claiming—or rather insinuating—that the reason for why they don’t fix those issues is because they are dysfunctional. As for why it is dysfunctional. Well: > As it is, the city has been safely Democratic for 40 years and seems allergic to choosing a Bloomberg-type figure from one of the big tech companies to try something different. So it is the voters fault, I guess. And specifically, the voters fault for not electing a conservative enough of a mayor. This is a trash article. And is more of a partisan propaganda piece then actual news.

zaphar 5y ago
I mean it's hard to argue that it isn't the voters fault. Whether that is because they are not electing a conservative enough mayor or not isn't the point of the article. Vote in non-corrupt officials who are willing to clean house and you start to make a dint in the problem. Ideology is irrelevant as a qualification for the candidate. The fact that they choose largey based on ideology rather than integrity is the problem.
- shuckles 5y ago
  At this level of evidence, every problem in a nominally democratic society could be explained by “voters” in the abstract. Would you blame local discretion over land use, Prop 13, or CEQA - semi-permanent features of the Californian democratic system - on today’s San Francisco voters? How about the lack of national healthcare system that can support drug abusers and other mentally incompetent which drives a lot of net migration of homeless people to the city?
  - zaphar 5y ago
    In a democracy the answer to all of the above has to be yes. You literally get what you vote for in a democracy. Even more so in the kind of direct democracy that San Francisco engages in so frequently.
    - runarberg 5y ago
      At the risk of engaging in a childish yes-no debate—and of using the No true Scotsman fallacy, you are absolutely wrong. In a real democracy you cannot vote your self a dictator. So there are policies—at least on a constitutional—level which you cannot blame the voters for. Also—at the risk of Godwin’s law—historians usually don’t blame the German voters for the horrors of the Nazi regime, even though it was democratically elected, they blame the Nazis them self. As a current example, voters are not blamed for the current climate crises, even though politicians are.
shuckles 5y ago
I agree. I think the only explanations it gives are that the city has no middle class and politicians try to solve national problems with local solutions. Neither are root causes in my opinion. The former is explained by a lack of new home building which is a statewide and national problem and the latter is explained by the fact that the San Francisco political machine generates a lot of national political candidates! The city is hugely over-represented in national politics. I have no clue why, and the causes of both are probably more explanatory than whatever the article provides.
- babesh 5y ago
  Nope. There are plenty of local problems that the city has been completely inept at solving. Go look at how much it costs to build a mile of tunnel and how late it is. Roughly 1b and 10 years late and the clock is still running.
  - shuckles 5y ago
    Which is in line with infrastructure costs throughout the country. How much did the 2nd Ave subway cost? LA Metro expansion?
    - babesh 5y ago
      That doesn't mean that SF isn't incompetent. That means they are all incompetent. You have those cities also complain about those costs.
      - shuckles 5y ago
        Then root causes that put blame on San Francisco voters are not very convincing.
        babesh 5y ago
        I never blamed the voters. Others did. Also, you can also put forth the hypothesis that voters in all those cities are to blame. That isn't my hypothesis by the way.
lostdog 5y ago
Yeah, the article completely ignores that the voters are prioritizing other things. SF voters don't want to send so many people to prison. Yes, that means that criminals and the homeless have more freedom than in other cities. But SF voters feel that the US prison and "justice" systems are too immoral to implement in SF. SF voters also want to keep low-rise housing and prevent making it easier to change neighborhoods by adding housing. Of course, this also has the bad tradeoff of over-constraining supply, leading to ridiculous housing costs. But this tradeoff is a response to plowing highways through and dumping toxic waste in poor neighborhood. So yeah, if you hate these tradeoffs, then you'll also feel that SF is dysfunctional. Thanks Economist for your un-insightful article.

zaphar 5y ago

I mean it's hard to argue that it isn't the voters fault. Whether that is because they are not electing a conservative enough mayor or not isn't the point of the article. Vote in non-corrupt officials who are willing to clean house and you start to make a dint in the problem. Ideology is irrelevant as a qualification for the candidate. The fact that they choose largey based on ideology rather than integrity is the problem.

shuckles 5y ago
At this level of evidence, every problem in a nominally democratic society could be explained by “voters” in the abstract. Would you blame local discretion over land use, Prop 13, or CEQA - semi-permanent features of the Californian democratic system - on today’s San Francisco voters? How about the lack of national healthcare system that can support drug abusers and other mentally incompetent which drives a lot of net migration of homeless people to the city?
- zaphar 5y ago
  In a democracy the answer to all of the above has to be yes. You literally get what you vote for in a democracy. Even more so in the kind of direct democracy that San Francisco engages in so frequently.
  - runarberg 5y ago
    At the risk of engaging in a childish yes-no debate—and of using the No true Scotsman fallacy, you are absolutely wrong. In a real democracy you cannot vote your self a dictator. So there are policies—at least on a constitutional—level which you cannot blame the voters for. Also—at the risk of Godwin’s law—historians usually don’t blame the German voters for the horrors of the Nazi regime, even though it was democratically elected, they blame the Nazis them self. As a current example, voters are not blamed for the current climate crises, even though politicians are.

shuckles 5y ago

I agree. I think the only explanations it gives are that the city has no middle class and politicians try to solve national problems with local solutions. Neither are root causes in my opinion. The former is explained by a lack of new home building which is a statewide and national problem and the latter is explained by the fact that the San Francisco political machine generates a lot of national political candidates! The city is hugely over-represented in national politics. I have no clue why, and the causes of both are probably more explanatory than whatever the article provides.

babesh 5y ago
Nope. There are plenty of local problems that the city has been completely inept at solving. Go look at how much it costs to build a mile of tunnel and how late it is. Roughly 1b and 10 years late and the clock is still running.
- shuckles 5y ago
  Which is in line with infrastructure costs throughout the country. How much did the 2nd Ave subway cost? LA Metro expansion?
  - babesh 5y ago
    That doesn't mean that SF isn't incompetent. That means they are all incompetent. You have those cities also complain about those costs.
    - shuckles 5y ago
      Then root causes that put blame on San Francisco voters are not very convincing.
      - babesh 5y ago
        I never blamed the voters. Others did. Also, you can also put forth the hypothesis that voters in all those cities are to blame. That isn't my hypothesis by the way.

lostdog 5y ago

Yeah, the article completely ignores that the voters are prioritizing other things. SF voters don't want to send so many people to prison. Yes, that means that criminals and the homeless have more freedom than in other cities. But SF voters feel that the US prison and "justice" systems are too immoral to implement in SF. SF voters also want to keep low-rise housing and prevent making it easier to change neighborhoods by adding housing. Of course, this also has the bad tradeoff of over-constraining supply, leading to ridiculous housing costs. But this tradeoff is a response to plowing highways through and dumping toxic waste in poor neighborhood. So yeah, if you hate these tradeoffs, then you'll also feel that SF is dysfunctional. Thanks Economist for your un-insightful article.