7 ms·

San Francisco has disgustedly and unfortunately became a third-world country.

kranke155 4y ago
And who’s to blame for that? It’s population of wealthy entitled tech employees who are disconnected from local politics? Or something else?
- mc32 4y ago
  Disconnected of not, the wealthy snobs aren’t doing violent crime. The criminals are mostly from outside the city. The criminals commute to their crime targets because the risk reward balance is on their side.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    To be fair, the rich wealthy snobs are doing plenty of criming as well. It’s unfair to label only those who commit crimes against the wealthy snobs as “criminals”. We should at least realize that the wealthy snobs are criminals as well in their own right.
    - mc32 4y ago
      Unfortunately, wealthy snobs can sustain crime --they can buy bigger houses with guards, cameras, fences and beckon the DA when needed. It's your poor and middle class who do not have the means to deal with the crime who suffer the crime brought on by opportunistic criminals. Mundane examples are people have had their third and fourth catalytic converters stolen. It may not be a lot of money to you, but for your average worker, it's a day or two of inconvenience and a few hundred each time --money that now has to be reallocated.
      - hunter-gatherer 4y ago
        I've been victim to two home burglaries when my wife and I were starting out and living in Prince George's county, Maryland. At the time I was working at DIA as a measly GS-9, which means that I was basically 2 or 3 paychecks away from being completely broke. The few possesions we had were taken. The most unfortunate was my wife's grandmather's wedding band. It probably wouldn't have fetched more than 20 or 30 bucks, but given that it was a family heirloom from WWII-wrought Finland, the sentimental value was high. Being white and working for the government in a predominantly minority area, I'm sure I was stereotyped as being able to handle some abuse (in fact my neighboor informed me so). Fortunately we didn't own anything of serious financial value, but having your personal space violated by petty theives is not a pleasant experience.
        mc32 4y ago
        Totally. I remember working with friends of thieves during HS who'd say, yeah, "my friends hit the rich areas because rich people call their insurance instead of coming at you with a baseball bat".
  - asveikau 4y ago
    Violent crime is lower than 10 years ago, and much lower than 30 years ago.
    - mc32 4y ago
      "Domestic Violence is lower than X years ago", [let's not worry about it].
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - asveikau 4y ago
        Eh, so you name drop a nasty topic and I'll look bad defending it. Cheap trick. Do you think that people in healthy relationships should fear that outcome? Do you think people should become celibate because some percentages of relationships end up that way? The point is you are encouraging living in fear of low likelihood events. The world is not perfect, crime and poverty exist, as do disease, many types of suffering, it's bad, but we don't need to be afraid and motivated by irrational fear.
        mc32 4y ago
        No, you're proposing that if things are statistically demonstrably better and also low probability events, then we can look elsewhere for problems and de-emphasize resources to fight these things not warranting attention. There are lots of things that were statistically demonstrably worse in the past and also statistically miniscule in occurrence, but I think you would get righteously clobbered if you proposed defending their current rate of occurrence as acceptable. Lots of things.
        asveikau 4y ago
        I agree with your first paragraph unironically. If we don't measure it as an important problem, it probably does not deserve disproportionate resources. There are outliers to that. I think medical research for something like a rare disease is a good one. High cost, and by some metrics, low payout, but worthy. I don't think this recent right wing paranoia about crime is a good example. Especially since the "tough on crime" policies that people want to enact in reaction to it do not work and have a tendency to incarcerate innocent and undeserving people as collateral damage.
- nickpp 4y ago
  > And who’s to blame Left-wing policies enacted by left-wing city governments.
  - piva00 4y ago
    Not sure if I'd call a government that isn't expanding housing in a very constrained housing market a left-wing government. It might have traces of progressivism in some social areas, even to a fault as I'm reading from these SF's reports on crime, but calling a government that sides with the current rich/millionaire houseowners left-wing is quite disingenuous. Maybe that's my foreign view as I don't see any political stance in the USA as left-leaning, some Democrats are, at most, left-adjacent in some social policies.
    - nickpp 4y ago
      Failing to understand Supply and Demand law of basic economics is a defining characteristics for left-wing politicians. Protecting their turfs and their own is quite common across both sides of the spectrum.
      - nonethewiser 4y ago
        They may understand it. It's just inconvenient so its downplayed.
      - starkd 4y ago
        They understand it, but they actively work to undermine it by engineering the human race.
    - starkd 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - piva00 4y ago
        This is the second time this week that a comment I made regarding anything to do with a passing mention of left-wing politics gets a reply like this. I didn't state at any point anything about communism, I didn't say anywhere I'm a supporter of "Communism™". Stop chasing ghosts and stop being a fucking bore, you are shoving your words in my mouth and I thoroughly dislike that, it's intellectually disrespectful. This is a fucking dumb comment with no substance and not addressing anything of what I mentioned in my comment. It's so fucking dumb and tiring to get your kind of knee-jerk red-scare reaction from people like you. To be extremely clear: I don't support Communism, please point exactly where you believe your comment has anything to do with what I've written there or just shut up, what a fucking bore to keep getting to read this bullshit.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  There are lots of factors. But at this point liberal policies are buttressing the problem.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    Agreed. Progressives identified a problem and tried to fix it. Their choice of DA was recalled by others (including liberals) and was replaced with a “tough on crime” DA who they promised would fix the problem. So far, this DA hasn’t made a dent, things have gotten worse, and all we hear is “it takes time to fix things! Give them a chance!” Yeah no shit, but that courtesy that was not extended to the progressive DA before the recall campaign started.
- m0llusk 4y ago
  There are many factors. The biggest is the failed drug war. Conservatives thought that by getting tough on crime and drugs that those problems could be eliminated. The result was the most full prisons on the planet. The prisons are so full that even the huge California GDP can barely pay for them. So something had to ease up. Now there is a breakdown in the justice system regarding what crimes are worth convicting and incarcerating people for and it is not unusual for even violent criminals to be quickly released. But the conservative tough on crime folks are completely unable to come to terms with the consequences of their actions on society. So we end up with a stalemate where liberals are trying to trim down the prison population and focus on violent crime while most conservatives still want to fix the problem by getting tough and imprisoning more people for longer.
  - nickpp 4y ago
    Should we see a mass pardon now that drugs are becoming more and more legal in the US?
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      That’s exactly what’s happening. Governors around the country and even the President have been issuing pardons for weed “crimes”.
  - xrd 4y ago
    For some context: California imprisons about 550 people per 100k. Florida imprisons about 750 per 100k. Interestingly, Florida refuses [1] to even allow a vote on whether you can force prisoners to work (unlike 20 other states [2]): "Died in Criminal Justice & Public Safety Subcommittee" 1. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/39 https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/39 2. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/08/22/yes-slavery-is-on-the-ballot-in-these-states https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
  - whiddershins 4y ago
    This is so hilariously backwards. The conservative tough on crime policies may have been inhumane or even immoral, but they did reduce crime. The soft on crime policies have allowed increased crime. Here are US murder rates: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I know this one. Republicans. San Francisco just needs more liberal representation.
- rodolphoarruda 4y ago
  > who’s to blame for that? Illegal drug suppliers, as they keep the vulnerable population (born poor and/or not educated) within the vicious circle of being too high on drugs to perform any decent type of work. This in turn reduces their income and increases their social risk at the same time. The root causes to this problem are far from the reach of local government, and this explains why the problem looks/feels unsolvable.
  - 4ggr0 4y ago
    Then legalize drugs, voila.
  - soco 4y ago
    Well, once the problem identified, the local government would be in the right position to enact policies and implement programs to educate and help those in need. But that would be called "socialism" thus a big no-no.
- olao99 4y ago
  it's almost like extreme inequality is bad or something
- simonsarris 4y ago
  The people who commit crime and the people who make excuses for criminals are to blame. No one else. There are plenty of places all over the earth full of wealthy entitled people who do not have such violence problems. Eg Geneva is approximately as boring as SF, but certainly doesn't have the crime.
  - soco 4y ago
    You forgot the authorities which are elected/nominated there exactly for this aim: to make the place a good place to live. And they so obviously fail at their job.
- more_corn 4y ago
  How about blaming the criminals? The inadequate policing and utter lack of investigative follow-through? The half-asses leadership? The people attacked in these reports are photographers helping people at their weddings. Are those people disconnected, entitled people who need to be violently robbed to teach them a lesson or something? How about blaming the people who do wrong? That’s a novel thought. Or maybe even stretch and blame the people whose entire job is catching and punishing the small number of people who are ruining things for normal people.
asveikau 4y ago
Don't believe everything you read. Crime was worse in the 90s.
- whiddershins 4y ago
  I’m not sure if that’s as true as we want to believe. The only stat that is reliable is murder. And murder is way up, not 90s level, but way up. Meanwhile the non-policing of property crimes is a completely new phenomenon, so I don’t know if we’ve even seen this much shoplifting, public defecation, window smashing, etc.
  - whiddershins 4y ago
    Actually I was wrong the murder rate is as bad as the late 90s: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
    - asveikau 4y ago
      But look at 1993. You're citing a graph and asking to ignore the huge peak.
      - whiddershins 4y ago
        Crime was worse in the early 90s. Crime has gone way up recently, so bad that it is similar to 1997. 1998 and 1999 had lower crime than now. This is at minimum a bad trend, and 1997-level crime is not great.
        asveikau 4y ago
        You're calling the pandemic spike a long term trend. I haven't checked in a while, but last I knew it was already showing signs of reversing. This says 2021 was lower than 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
soemdu23 4y ago
- lm28469 4y ago
  Throwaway account and disposable opinions, name a better HN combo
  - soemdu23 4y ago
    Disposable opinion? As far as no one has countered it just ignoring it.
    - lm28469 4y ago
      Because it doesn't even make any sense, countries and races aren't interchangeable, you're the only one bringing race into the discussion btw
      - soemdu23 4y ago
        "The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Oceania, and Asia." Mostly non white people. As someone from third world i take offense to it. You are entitled to your opinion. But the question still remains why associate violent crimes with just third world countries.
- chucksta 4y ago
  Hm third world countries are the same race. Casual Racism.
  - soemdu23 4y ago
    Are you implying that people who are violent in first world countries are the ones from third world countries? White man is the savior?
    - 4y ago

And who’s to blame for that? It’s population of wealthy entitled tech employees who are disconnected from local politics? Or something else?

mc32 4y ago
Disconnected of not, the wealthy snobs aren’t doing violent crime. The criminals are mostly from outside the city. The criminals commute to their crime targets because the risk reward balance is on their side.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  To be fair, the rich wealthy snobs are doing plenty of criming as well. It’s unfair to label only those who commit crimes against the wealthy snobs as “criminals”. We should at least realize that the wealthy snobs are criminals as well in their own right.
  - mc32 4y ago
    Unfortunately, wealthy snobs can sustain crime --they can buy bigger houses with guards, cameras, fences and beckon the DA when needed. It's your poor and middle class who do not have the means to deal with the crime who suffer the crime brought on by opportunistic criminals. Mundane examples are people have had their third and fourth catalytic converters stolen. It may not be a lot of money to you, but for your average worker, it's a day or two of inconvenience and a few hundred each time --money that now has to be reallocated.
    - hunter-gatherer 4y ago
      I've been victim to two home burglaries when my wife and I were starting out and living in Prince George's county, Maryland. At the time I was working at DIA as a measly GS-9, which means that I was basically 2 or 3 paychecks away from being completely broke. The few possesions we had were taken. The most unfortunate was my wife's grandmather's wedding band. It probably wouldn't have fetched more than 20 or 30 bucks, but given that it was a family heirloom from WWII-wrought Finland, the sentimental value was high. Being white and working for the government in a predominantly minority area, I'm sure I was stereotyped as being able to handle some abuse (in fact my neighboor informed me so). Fortunately we didn't own anything of serious financial value, but having your personal space violated by petty theives is not a pleasant experience.
      - mc32 4y ago
        Totally. I remember working with friends of thieves during HS who'd say, yeah, "my friends hit the rich areas because rich people call their insurance instead of coming at you with a baseball bat".
- asveikau 4y ago
  Violent crime is lower than 10 years ago, and much lower than 30 years ago.
  - mc32 4y ago
    "Domestic Violence is lower than X years ago", [let's not worry about it].
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - asveikau 4y ago
      Eh, so you name drop a nasty topic and I'll look bad defending it. Cheap trick. Do you think that people in healthy relationships should fear that outcome? Do you think people should become celibate because some percentages of relationships end up that way? The point is you are encouraging living in fear of low likelihood events. The world is not perfect, crime and poverty exist, as do disease, many types of suffering, it's bad, but we don't need to be afraid and motivated by irrational fear.
      - mc32 4y ago
        No, you're proposing that if things are statistically demonstrably better and also low probability events, then we can look elsewhere for problems and de-emphasize resources to fight these things not warranting attention. There are lots of things that were statistically demonstrably worse in the past and also statistically miniscule in occurrence, but I think you would get righteously clobbered if you proposed defending their current rate of occurrence as acceptable. Lots of things.
        asveikau 4y ago
        I agree with your first paragraph unironically. If we don't measure it as an important problem, it probably does not deserve disproportionate resources. There are outliers to that. I think medical research for something like a rare disease is a good one. High cost, and by some metrics, low payout, but worthy. I don't think this recent right wing paranoia about crime is a good example. Especially since the "tough on crime" policies that people want to enact in reaction to it do not work and have a tendency to incarcerate innocent and undeserving people as collateral damage.
nickpp 4y ago
> And who’s to blame Left-wing policies enacted by left-wing city governments.
- piva00 4y ago
  Not sure if I'd call a government that isn't expanding housing in a very constrained housing market a left-wing government. It might have traces of progressivism in some social areas, even to a fault as I'm reading from these SF's reports on crime, but calling a government that sides with the current rich/millionaire houseowners left-wing is quite disingenuous. Maybe that's my foreign view as I don't see any political stance in the USA as left-leaning, some Democrats are, at most, left-adjacent in some social policies.
  - nickpp 4y ago
    Failing to understand Supply and Demand law of basic economics is a defining characteristics for left-wing politicians. Protecting their turfs and their own is quite common across both sides of the spectrum.
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      They may understand it. It's just inconvenient so its downplayed.
    - starkd 4y ago
      They understand it, but they actively work to undermine it by engineering the human race.
  - starkd 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - piva00 4y ago
      This is the second time this week that a comment I made regarding anything to do with a passing mention of left-wing politics gets a reply like this. I didn't state at any point anything about communism, I didn't say anywhere I'm a supporter of "Communism™". Stop chasing ghosts and stop being a fucking bore, you are shoving your words in my mouth and I thoroughly dislike that, it's intellectually disrespectful. This is a fucking dumb comment with no substance and not addressing anything of what I mentioned in my comment. It's so fucking dumb and tiring to get your kind of knee-jerk red-scare reaction from people like you. To be extremely clear: I don't support Communism, please point exactly where you believe your comment has anything to do with what I've written there or just shut up, what a fucking bore to keep getting to read this bullshit.
nonethewiser 4y ago
There are lots of factors. But at this point liberal policies are buttressing the problem.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Agreed. Progressives identified a problem and tried to fix it. Their choice of DA was recalled by others (including liberals) and was replaced with a “tough on crime” DA who they promised would fix the problem. So far, this DA hasn’t made a dent, things have gotten worse, and all we hear is “it takes time to fix things! Give them a chance!” Yeah no shit, but that courtesy that was not extended to the progressive DA before the recall campaign started.
m0llusk 4y ago
There are many factors. The biggest is the failed drug war. Conservatives thought that by getting tough on crime and drugs that those problems could be eliminated. The result was the most full prisons on the planet. The prisons are so full that even the huge California GDP can barely pay for them. So something had to ease up. Now there is a breakdown in the justice system regarding what crimes are worth convicting and incarcerating people for and it is not unusual for even violent criminals to be quickly released. But the conservative tough on crime folks are completely unable to come to terms with the consequences of their actions on society. So we end up with a stalemate where liberals are trying to trim down the prison population and focus on violent crime while most conservatives still want to fix the problem by getting tough and imprisoning more people for longer.
- nickpp 4y ago
  Should we see a mass pardon now that drugs are becoming more and more legal in the US?
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    That’s exactly what’s happening. Governors around the country and even the President have been issuing pardons for weed “crimes”.
- xrd 4y ago
  For some context: California imprisons about 550 people per 100k. Florida imprisons about 750 per 100k. Interestingly, Florida refuses [1] to even allow a vote on whether you can force prisoners to work (unlike 20 other states [2]): "Died in Criminal Justice & Public Safety Subcommittee" 1. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/39 https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/39 2. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/08/22/yes-slavery-is-on-the-ballot-in-these-states https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
- whiddershins 4y ago
  This is so hilariously backwards. The conservative tough on crime policies may have been inhumane or even immoral, but they did reduce crime. The soft on crime policies have allowed increased crime. Here are US murder rates: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
nonethewiser 4y ago
I know this one. Republicans. San Francisco just needs more liberal representation.
rodolphoarruda 4y ago
> who’s to blame for that? Illegal drug suppliers, as they keep the vulnerable population (born poor and/or not educated) within the vicious circle of being too high on drugs to perform any decent type of work. This in turn reduces their income and increases their social risk at the same time. The root causes to this problem are far from the reach of local government, and this explains why the problem looks/feels unsolvable.
- 4ggr0 4y ago
  Then legalize drugs, voila.
- soco 4y ago
  Well, once the problem identified, the local government would be in the right position to enact policies and implement programs to educate and help those in need. But that would be called "socialism" thus a big no-no.
olao99 4y ago
it's almost like extreme inequality is bad or something
simonsarris 4y ago
The people who commit crime and the people who make excuses for criminals are to blame. No one else. There are plenty of places all over the earth full of wealthy entitled people who do not have such violence problems. Eg Geneva is approximately as boring as SF, but certainly doesn't have the crime.
- soco 4y ago
  You forgot the authorities which are elected/nominated there exactly for this aim: to make the place a good place to live. And they so obviously fail at their job.
more_corn 4y ago
How about blaming the criminals? The inadequate policing and utter lack of investigative follow-through? The half-asses leadership? The people attacked in these reports are photographers helping people at their weddings. Are those people disconnected, entitled people who need to be violently robbed to teach them a lesson or something? How about blaming the people who do wrong? That’s a novel thought. Or maybe even stretch and blame the people whose entire job is catching and punishing the small number of people who are ruining things for normal people.

asveikau 4y ago

Don't believe everything you read. Crime was worse in the 90s.

whiddershins 4y ago
I’m not sure if that’s as true as we want to believe. The only stat that is reliable is murder. And murder is way up, not 90s level, but way up. Meanwhile the non-policing of property crimes is a completely new phenomenon, so I don’t know if we’ve even seen this much shoplifting, public defecation, window smashing, etc.
- whiddershins 4y ago
  Actually I was wrong the murder rate is as bad as the late 90s: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
  - asveikau 4y ago
    But look at 1993. You're citing a graph and asking to ignore the huge peak.
    - whiddershins 4y ago
      Crime was worse in the early 90s. Crime has gone way up recently, so bad that it is similar to 1997. 1998 and 1999 had lower crime than now. This is at minimum a bad trend, and 1997-level crime is not great.
      - asveikau 4y ago
        You're calling the pandemic spike a long term trend. I haven't checked in a while, but last I knew it was already showing signs of reversing. This says 2021 was lower than 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...

soemdu23 4y ago

lm28469 4y ago
Throwaway account and disposable opinions, name a better HN combo
- soemdu23 4y ago
  Disposable opinion? As far as no one has countered it just ignoring it.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    Because it doesn't even make any sense, countries and races aren't interchangeable, you're the only one bringing race into the discussion btw
    - soemdu23 4y ago
      "The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Oceania, and Asia." Mostly non white people. As someone from third world i take offense to it. You are entitled to your opinion. But the question still remains why associate violent crimes with just third world countries.
chucksta 4y ago
Hm third world countries are the same race. Casual Racism.
- soemdu23 4y ago
  Are you implying that people who are violent in first world countries are the ones from third world countries? White man is the savior?
  - 4y ago