3 ms·

Can anyone explain to me why a nice rich suburb will not even allow a panhandler to stand in a center divide at an intersection, but SF basically allows open ai

Can anyone explain to me why a nice rich suburb will not even allow a panhandler to stand in a center divide at an intersection, but SF basically allows open air drug use? Is it just a matter of scale? You can stop 1 panhandler, but if you had 100 people to stop you couldnt? If that's the case, once problems reach critical mass, is there any going back?

TurkishPoptart 3y ago
> “Five years ago, it wasn’t like this,” he says about the people openly using drugs around us on Market Street, just outside the Urban Alchemy headquarters, where he sells souvenir photographs of local liquor stores. “Five years ago, a black guy with a pipe got arrested; now the police walk past a white guy with a needle in his arm,” he says. So, as of the past 5-10 years there are these really progressive district attorneys who really do not like to prosecute people. I'm not going to say who generally funds their campaigns, because I'm tired of being downvoted, but you can find out pretty easily.
- Avshalom 3y ago
  5-10? that's a weird fucking range, gascon was 12-4 years ago (and a cop) and boudin was 3-1 years ago.
blagie 3y ago
The US is hyper-polarized. There are crazies on both sides. The bigger the city, the more political processes select for crazies. In a village of 100 people (1) more people are involved, since individual influence is felt (2) there are fewer crazies, since you can only go 2-3 std. div. out. In a bigger city, (1) fewer people follow politics, since there's no direct influence on their lives; civics is dominated by crazies. (2) The absolute number of crazies is higher. If you have 100,000 people, just by statistics, the craziest crazies will be crazier. Having a small number of very bad crazies can ruin civics, since they often operate outside of civic processes. If just one person is willing to tarnish your reputation, smash your windows, or send a death threat, that can have a chilling effect. The worst cities in the US are near-100% blue or near-100% red, since there's no moderating factor. Transient cities also tend to be worse (where a lot of the population don't expect to keep living there in five years), since no one cares about civics. SF is the sort of place people most people move out from when they decide to start a family. SF is close to a million people, VERY blue, and that leads to extremist politics. Note: I'm extrapolating from what I see with cities where I live, as well as accounts from SF. I don't have first-hand experience there. But I think there are a lot of reasons why SF politics might get particularly broken.

TurkishPoptart 3y ago

> “Five years ago, it wasn’t like this,” he says about the people openly using drugs around us on Market Street, just outside the Urban Alchemy headquarters, where he sells souvenir photographs of local liquor stores. “Five years ago, a black guy with a pipe got arrested; now the police walk past a white guy with a needle in his arm,” he says. So, as of the past 5-10 years there are these really progressive district attorneys who really do not like to prosecute people. I'm not going to say who generally funds their campaigns, because I'm tired of being downvoted, but you can find out pretty easily.

Avshalom 3y ago
5-10? that's a weird fucking range, gascon was 12-4 years ago (and a cop) and boudin was 3-1 years ago.

blagie 3y ago

The US is hyper-polarized. There are crazies on both sides. The bigger the city, the more political processes select for crazies. In a village of 100 people (1) more people are involved, since individual influence is felt (2) there are fewer crazies, since you can only go 2-3 std. div. out. In a bigger city, (1) fewer people follow politics, since there's no direct influence on their lives; civics is dominated by crazies. (2) The absolute number of crazies is higher. If you have 100,000 people, just by statistics, the craziest crazies will be crazier. Having a small number of very bad crazies can ruin civics, since they often operate outside of civic processes. If just one person is willing to tarnish your reputation, smash your windows, or send a death threat, that can have a chilling effect. The worst cities in the US are near-100% blue or near-100% red, since there's no moderating factor. Transient cities also tend to be worse (where a lot of the population don't expect to keep living there in five years), since no one cares about civics. SF is the sort of place people most people move out from when they decide to start a family. SF is close to a million people, VERY blue, and that leads to extremist politics. Note: I'm extrapolating from what I see with cities where I live, as well as accounts from SF. I don't have first-hand experience there. But I think there are a lot of reasons why SF politics might get particularly broken.